Skipping Town

Research. Preparation. Nerves. These aren’t the things you’d expect a nice dinner out to include. But the dinner Andrew and I had Saturday night wasn’t just any dinner. It wasn’t just any meal out. It was our long-awaited, struggled-to-get-a-table-for, expectations-through-the-roof dinner at Chez Panisse. Chez Panisse—for all you non-foodies out there—is more or less considered the birthplace of “California cuisine,” as well as the harbinger of the now-ubiquitous practice of eating locally and in-season, frequenting farmer’s markets for the freshest produce, embracing all that is artisan-crafted and lovingly made rather than mass-produced. Founded by foodie doyenne Alice Waters in 1971, Chez Panisse is still located in the bungalow on Shattuck Avenue where it made culinary history—and ultimately underwent a transformation from a cozy local hangout to one of the most famous and lauded restaurants in the world. Its claim to fame? Food that tastes, exquisitely, of exactly what it is. N...

Andrew alerted me to this article today on a site called Trend Central. It discusses the rising popularity of social networking sites for "tweens," which apparently stretches all the way back to six-year-olds, an age I foolishly thought to be firmly in the "kid" category. As usual, kids can create "avatars," "chat" with each other, "rate" each other's thoughts and contributions, and, of course, "buy" things with fake money--which you have to pay REAL money to be able to "redeem." It's a total scam, and an outrageous assault on childhood. It's also, unfortunately, a trend. Rise up, people! It's only a trend if we allow it to be! Until its unprofitable for companies to develop these sites, things are just going to get worse! Rile yourself up by reading the article here: http://www.trendcentral.com/WebApps/App/SnapShots/Article.aspx?ArticleId=7366

Humanity. It’s what was on display yesterday at the Bay to Breakers Race in San Francisco, when 65,000 runners gathered at the Embarcadero for a cross-city trek to the ocean. Andrew and I had expected costumes and craziness (Andrew went prepared with a ridiculous hat, a chicken with its legs hanging down by Andrew’s cheeks). But we had underestimated San Francisco. When I say things like “race” and “runners,” I use the terms loosely; though there were some (more or less) serious runners involved, the truth is that this race is actually more of a parade, an excuse for San Franciscans to devise amazing costumes, indulge their exhibitionist tendencies, and throw tortillas. And devise, indulge, and throw they did. Each costume was better than the last. A crowd of forty or fifty runners decked out in hammer-and-sickle t-shirts as the Cold War Olympic Team… A man wearing full-body, skin-tight green spandex, covering even the eyes… Plenty of Vikings, grass skirts, lingerie, and...

It's over a hundred degrees here....I'm melting....But I just wanted to pass along a piece of desperate, sweltering advice: If you envision making ice-cold fresh-fruit smoothies on a hot afternoon, and read that a frozen banana is the ideal smoothie inclusion, PEEL THE BANANAS before freezing them. Not that I'm speaking from anything that has recently happened to me, or anything, but freezing bananas with the peel on turns everything into scary brown mush.

Here are a few life lessons I’ve learned in my cooking recently that seem worth sharing: 1. Despite the fact that they are the same color, cayenne pepper is not a good substitute when the recipe calls for a decorative dusting of paprika and you happen to be out of that particular spice. 2. If you happen to under-boil an egg, and discover its under-cooked-ness only after slicing it in half, you should not put the halves in a bowl and microwave it. The egg will literally explode and create a mess so enormous that the thought of cleaning it up is cause for mild-to-moderate despair. 3. If you’ve married wisely, your husband will peer over your shoulder at the vile microwave and say, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean it up.” 4. Despite what your farmer’s market cookbook says, a paste of food-processed lettuce leaves does not make a tasty sandwich spread. In fact, it’s much like eating mouthfuls of grass clippings. 5. No matter how delicious the end result, it’s hard to make a good case for ...

Last night Andrew and I decided to make a Spanish meal consisting of albondigas (meatballs) and alioli (a garlic and olive oil dip). We bought a mortar and pestle specifically with alioli in mind, and we found a recipe in a tapas cookbook Molly and Ian had gotten us for Christmas. The instructions seem simple: crush four cloves of garlic in the mortar, and continue stirring slowly with the pestle as you add one-and-a-half cups of olive oil (!) in drop by drop. It’s a labor-intensive, time-consuming process, but the cookbook chef assured us that eventually, the garlic and olive oil would fuse into a fluffy, rich paste. We stirred. We added and stirred. Yet after thirty minutes of stirring, the crushed garlic and olive oil mixture was still liquidy—the magical, alchemical reaction was, it seemed, not in our future. It was still tasty (we just drizzled it over our albondigas and fingerling potatoes), but definitely not alioli . Andrew suspects our olive oil was to blame, a cheap groce...

Andrew and I have done something that feels, to us, particularly California: we've become members of a wine club. This isn’t a wine-of-the-month club or anything like that; all wineries around here offer clubs, which usually get you twelve or so bottles of wines a year in shipments of two or three or six, and many of the selections are available only to members. A few months ago, we found a winery whose wines we love; and we finally took the plunge and became Priority Release Program members. The first shipment of six bottles arrived yesterday. In the box came a lengthy description of the included wines, with suggestions like “Enjoy now, or cellar for 10-15 years.” We likely will not be cellaring any wines (that’s a new verb for me—I like it), for reasons such as these: we don’t have a cellar, we don’t know enough about wine to confidently know the difference between a new wine and a fifteen-year-old wine, and the thought of trying to transport a wine collection when we inevitabl...

In the past week or two, I’ve come across several articles about a growing phenomenon: the rise of social networking sites for children. By “children,” I don’t mean twelve-year-olds; I mean pre-schoolers. Pre-schoolers! What on earth could a pre-schooler have to social-network about? Or even five- to eight-year-olds? The whole thing makes me feel full of unexplicable rage and horror. I don’t feel I’m overstating things to say I find the idea revolting. I speak, of course, from the perhaps uninformed position of as-yet-childless observer. I speak from a position of having gleaming, idyllic ideas of what I want my future children’s childhoods to be like, a vision that not only does not include social networking sites, but also does not even include a computer. Who wants to spend time staring at a screen, reading horrid, incorrectly punctuated-and-capitalized user-generated content, when one could be outside—planting a garden—bike-riding—drawing with chalk—and reading high-quality childre...

I'd just finished my workout: a circuit of weight-lifting, a series of ab work, and a run on the elliptical. "Here you go, Miss Fitness," the gym employee said, handing over my membership card. Miss Fitness! The gym employee was referring to me. I was stunned. No one, ever in my life, has ever referred to anything related to fitness or athletics in conjunction with ME. Yet here I am, referring to "weights" and "run" and "ab work." Who am I? Miss Fitness, apparently. I suppose I can understand his error. I've been at the gym about four times a week for the past month or so, ever since a little mishap with a Watermelon bridesmaid's dress that I ordered two months ago and then--horror, oh horror--could not fit into when it came in, prompting a frenzied return to David's Bridal and an even more frenzied seeking out of a dress, any dress, that would arrive before Molly's wedding. (Please see previous post for possible sources of t...

There’s nothing like new cake stand to inspire baking. At least that’s how it’s seemed to work with Andrew, whose favorite wedding gifts include the KitchenAid mixer and a variety of muffin tins, cake pans, and the like. (I do my fair share of baking too, though at this point my baking is limited to bread via the bread machine.) Each time he bakes something, we artfully arrange it on our new cake stand and contemplate becoming bakers. That thought is discarded after acknowledging the grim reality of waking (and baking) at 3am. In any case, here’s some evidence of the masterwork: Chocolate cake... Strawberry, blackberry, and kiwi muffins...

Big news on Broadway: they’re reviving South Pacific . When I heard the news yesterday, I groaned and said in an alarmed voice, “Are you serious?!” Andrew raised an eyebrow, backed away. “It’s a wonderful show,” he said suspiciously. “It’s based on a Michener book. It’s full of great songs.” He sang a bar of “Some Enchanted Evening.” But Andrew can’t fully appreciate my difficult relationship with South Pacific . After all, he hadn’t been there for the buckets of fake-tan-paint. Sophomore year of high school, I was in South Pacific . Many of you reading this blog saw, or were also perhaps in, that play. It was hardly the worst high school play I’ve experienced; as far as shows go, it was blessedly free from complicated dance numbers, complicated, dissonant Stephen Sondheim ensemble pieces, or overly complicated scenery, which would have “inspired” our director to “improvise” in ways that were always—so consistently!—a complete and utter disaster, leaving already-dramatic high school ac...

The Call of the Wild . White Fang . The Klondike stories. “To Build a Fire.” The Sea-Wolf . Chances are good that one or more of these works by Jack London once kept vigil on your bedside table, or maintains a place on your bookshelf—he was once a neighbor, after all, a denizen of nearby Glen Ellen, a tiny town in the Sonoma Valley. This weekend, I stalked Jack London—through the town where he lived, to the ruins of the house he loved, to the very bedroom where he died at forty. My exploration began on Friday, with drinks at the Jack London Saloon, next door to the Jack London Lodge in Glen Ellen. This bar/restaurant was established in 1908, which coincides to the time when the Londons were living in the area—conceivably, Jack London once hoisted a pint (or three) just as we did, overlooking the creek that runs beside the outdoor patio. Saturday, we headed to the Jack London State Historical Park, an 800-acre park that was Jack and Charmian London’s “Beauty Ranch.” Though Jack Lon...

I feel something stirring—A Good Thing. I can feel it seeping into my brain and hands; I can feel it shaping me. It rises up in very clear ways… …like these deviled eggs… …and my collection of Patio Tomatoes and flowers… …and here, in my Nicely Set Table. It rises up when I say to Andrew, “I’m so excited about cooking dinner for your parents—we can use our new serving pieces!” It rises up when I feel a thrill of excitement over using a new granite cheese board. For now, the dust bunnies and piles of leaves on the terrace keep it all at bay. But it’s lurking, biding its time, while I spend ungodly numbers of hours at home and look for diversion desperately wherever I can find it (and if that happens to be in my kitchen cabinets, then so be it). The transformation begins.

I was reading in the New York Times this weekend that the Encyclopedia Britannica is phasing out its print editions, in favor of online versions. The same goes for other encyclopedia companies as well. This struck the same chord of horror and disgust that I felt years ago, when I first read Nicholson Baker and became aware of the endangered state of card catalogues and print newspapers. Horrifying. It’s been a while since I’ve read Baker—but I do remember him obsessively buying bound newspapers from libraries, collections that were on their way to the trash, and stockpiling them in his garage or barn or some other structure. I was so inspired by (terrified by?) Baker that I purchased my own card catalogue, and I aspire to one day acquiring the card catalogue from the Connellsville Carnegie Library as well, cards and all. I’ve never had an encyclopedia, and I admit that if I did, it would probably get just as much usage as my thesaurus and dictionary currently do—that is to say, not m...

Andrew and I have started trying to “eat healthy.” We’ve never done too badly—we cook almost every meal at home, and we eat fast food only when we’re stuck in an airport—but at the same time I have a fondness for soups and gratins and pastas that would be healthy if only they didn’t contain several sticks of butter or cups of heavy cream or delicious slices of prosciutto. But after our bodyfat-testing adventure this weekend, we went to the food co-op, then another grocery store, and stocked up on genuinely Healthy Choices: rice cakes, Kashi all-natural crackers, fruits, vegetables, V-8, cranberry juice, grapefruit juice, salad, lean meats, yogurt, granola. It was an impressive display. This has nothing to do with our becoming “Californian,” really, and more to do with things such as the fact that since moving to California our walking has been reduced by about 99%. Hence the health food, and hence our gym membership. I’m shocked at the effect that California has had on us: who knew th...

Greetings, greetings. It’s been a while since I posted on Skipping Town—I’ve been writing regular posts on my new Sacramento blog, Desperately Seeking Sacramento ( http://saclights.com/blog/MargoOL ), but have neglected to stay up to date here. Part of the reason is that there hasn’t been too much to report these days. Andrew and I are finally settled into our possession-filled home; the last box has long been unpacked, our books are on the shelves, and we’re relishing the convenience of having pretty much every kind of kitchen utensil and appliance known to mankind. Though we blow a fuse anytime we microwave anything for longer than three minutes, for the most part our home life is functioning smoothly. We’re about four months into married life now; and it’s getting better every day. Of course I always appreciated the charms and humor Andrew brought to my life…but now I’m starting to appreciate his value as A Husband. That oil problem the mechanic told us about two months ago? I forgo...

Whale-watching and wine-tasting—could there be two more fabulous, and Californian, ways to spend a weekend? For weeks Andrew and I had planned a trip to Mendocino for the annual Mendocino Whale Festival, so early Saturday morning we loaded up the car and headed north. Sacramento’s location remains, hands-down, my favorite thing about the city. The drive to Mendocino was beautiful—we wound through vineyards and redwoods and rocky hillsides, through sun and rain. We stopped at Dean & Deluca as we went through Napa—who knew there was one out here?—and sipped coffee while debating what could lead a D&D cupcake to cost a shocking $6. Fortified, we continued on, passing several signs warning FLOODED and SLIDE AHEAD (but we saw neither floods nor slides). And soon enough we were surrounded by wine-glass-carrying crowds and more than a few former hippies. The Whale Festival name may suggest a focus on whales, but the real focus of this weekend—Saturday in particular—was on wine. Ei...

A year ago last weekend, Andrew and I got engaged in Girona. A year ago today, Andrew and I celebrated our engagement in Venice. A lot has happened in one year...and we've come a long way, literally. But it's sunny and warm today, an early spring. And I finally uploaded pictures of our spectacularly impressive radiator covers. We may not be in Europe anymore, but we've learned how to use a saw!

This weekend, Andrew and I went antiquing in Midtown. And we found treasures, bureaus and desks and shelves and buffets we don’t have nearly enough room for. We didn’t have much luck at our first stop, Homestyle (2403 21st Street); there were some beautiful pieces, but too beautiful for our budget. We fared much better at our next stop, at the antiques place on J Street in the 20’s (I’m not actually sure what the name is…). This enormous furniture and knick-knack warehouse was crammed with dusty bookshelves, colorfully-painted bureaus with charming rounded edges, dark wooden buffets that made me wish we owned a big Gothic mansion. Still not ready to commit to anything, we drove on to Shabby Shack (3655 J Street), where we instantly wanted everything inside: farmhouse cabinets with peeling paint, worn-looking chests of drawers, cupboards with stained-glass doors. Ultimately we chose a cream-colored cabinet, and delivery was promised within the hour. When the man arrived, he helped A...

March 26, 2006. On or around that date, I packed up everything in my Brooklyn apartment, carefully wrapping each mug, each bowl, each framed item from the walls. I wrapped some especially breakable things in pillowcases that would otherwise have gone in the trash. I rolled the carafe to my coffee maker in sheet after sheet of paper, turning it into a big pillow of newsprint. On Monday, when our ReloCube finally arrived and we began unpacking, Andrew smoothed out a sheet of the Times and noted that date: March 26, 2006. Pieces of a former life, frozen in time. I remember those days of packing up. Though saying “yes” to Andrew’s marriage proposal was by far the easiest and most exciting decision I ever made, deciding to move to Barcelona was pretty close. And then there were so many weeks of waiting, of planning and loose-end-tying and more waiting, before I could finally start packing. I don’t remember the specifics of packing—but I remember the constant sense of giddy anticipation as ...