Recipes for Nonchefs - Grassroots Recipes

Check out the good work being done by Just Harvest, an economic justice organization based in Pittsburgh, PA — and gather some easy, fresh recipes in the process! Recently posted Grassroots Recipes include Vienna Cinquino’s Pasta and Peas, Azifa and Fat Nic’s Vegan Friendly Beans.

Just Harvest - A Center for Action Against Hunger is a membership organization which promotes economic justice and works to influence public policy and to educate, empower, and mobilize the citizens of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania communities toward the elimination of hunger.

Granville Millinery Company

Years ago I read a story in Victoria about Amy Hamilton and her Columbus, Ohio millinery studio. Since Columbus was only a couple of hours away from where I was then living, I decided to visit her studio and purchase a hat for an upcoming wedding. After that, I became hooked on handmade hats (despite the fact that I can’t afford them). I only have a few, but this time of year always makes me want to splurge. To top it off, her studio is in an old farmhouse. Enchanting…

Recipes for Nonchefs - French Dijon Tart

Put a store bought pastry shell into a suitable pan. Then, caramelize onions (or shallots) in some olive oil. Meanwhile, put about 2 tbsp of Dijon mustard on the bottom of the pie shell. Top with a sliced fresh tomato, a little bit of olive oil, some basil (dried or fresh), and salt/pepper. Next, shred some sharp cheddar cheese or gruyere (or other favorite) on top. Put on as much as you want. Top with the onions, fold in the pie shell and bake (at about 350 or so) until crust is golden brown. Grab a glass of red wine, stream in TSF 89.9 from Paris and enjoy!

Eat, Pray, Love: In Your Own Backyard

I discovered Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia on Oprah. Gilbert’s look is everything I am not, angel soft with perfectly tousled bright blonde hair. I am a tense brunette. But there were days when she was not so angelic and it was then that she decided to go on a journey for, well, everything.

At that moment I knew I wanted to read the book. I appreciated her over-extension. I was reminded of the summer I spent searching, following a particularly stressful first year of college that almost resulted in me moving to Maine to become a fisherman. Gilbert was in a much different place at the start of her journey. Eat, Pray, Love opens with Gilbert crying on a bathroom floor on the brink of divorce. You follow her through a period of self-loathing and pain before she decides to strip herself of anti-depressants and embark on a solo journey to Italy, India and Indonesia.

Overall, Gilbert writes beautifully. Her sentences are honest and crisp. At first, however, I was disappointed with how Italy was unraveling. In Gilbert’s Italy, I did not sense the gastronomic pleasures I was expecting (and, admittedly, desired). But I was missing the point. As I continued, I realized that Italy was Gilbert’s first stop and thus an extension of the pain she carried with her. For any of us who has ever moved on from a painful event you know that the first step is unsteady to the extreme. You are ridiculously happy and laughing one moment, back on the bathroom floor the next. The eating became a path to self-forgiveness and that is what Gilbert was writing about. When you keep apologizing for the way you and your life turned out, surrender to something unrelated. She ate pasta, drank wine, gorged on pastries, and allowed herself not to feel guilty.

For Gilbert Italy was about spiritual gluttony, although in no way an invitation to take on self-destructive habits, because, quite frankly, one must move on. What is wonderful about this section of pleasure eating is how it extends into her journey in India. Gilbert stayed at an Ashram in India, where she challenged herself with restraint and consciousness. In India, she succumbed to a lifestyle opposite from that which she had enjoyed in Italy and, in doing so, turned the process of self-forgiveness from food to the infinitely more complex clogged pathways of her own soul (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). The time and silence she found in meditation allowed her to move beyond selfish indulgence and self-blame to something much more grand.

The discipline she acquires in India allows her to achieve balance in Indonesia. Gilbert discovers that she is not made up of just Italy or just India, but she has both in her. One can be a mystic and eat Tiramisu. In Indonesia she finds she is capable of indulging in a new love at the same time she learns about Balinese medicine with an old medicine man. She dances all night at a party and then watches a traditional baby ceremony – she successfully straddles the line between the world and the divine.

This is an easy, relaxing read despite heavy-handed topics. Beware though - you may end up feeling a little, frankly, pissed off. Many readers are upset they are unable to go on a spiritual adventure like Gilbert. I think that is energy wasted; there are as many paths to transcendence as there are stars in the sky, which brings me to a more important truth that reading Eat, Pray, Love forced me to think about. There are people who accept the messy challenge of transformation in whatever forms it is presented to them and others who creatively concoct excuses not to embark (or, if they embark, to see it through). I am not an expert at any of this, but if there is one thing that Eat, Pray, Love assured me and that I can say for certain (at the ripe age of 2 is that I want to be surrounded by the first group and not the latter.

My New Job

I work down the hall from robots and telescopes.

Long, sexy Parisian windows…

Paris made me feel elongated like a movie star in a silent film, stretching, in sepia tones - you see every curve, but not at rest. It may be the long, sexy peak-inside-me windows that allowed me to watch ordinary Parisians go about their business. I could have spent the entire week eating pastries from three floors up, while spying on Paris with a pair of Lemaire opera glasses, and been very happy indeed.

Of course, that would have been silly. Almost as silly as realizing that my answer to the question, “What was the best thing you ate in Paris?” is “mashed potatoes.” If you are ever in Paris, visit Le Christine (I must congratulate my mother, a wonderful traveling companion, for finding this little gem). Hidden down a narrow street in St-Germain-de-Prés, Le Christine is exactly what I imagined of a Paris restaurant. Cozy and off the main drag with wooden beams and windows to view relaxing street scenes - couples with their hands in each other’s back pockets. I ordered wine from the owner’s vineyard in Saint Emilion. Better yet, the chef often broke out in what seemed like French folk songs (of course, it could have been the latest hit from a Parisian pop star but these non-French speaking ears likes the former idea rather than the latter).

After an olive mousse, we decided to go with the cote de boeuf du Limousin pour 2 pers, puree de pommes de terre maison, béarnaise – or “meat for two” (we would later rename it “meat for twelve”). We were delighted when our cheerful server cut the steaming, tender roast at our table. It was accompanied by a generous helping of rustic mashed potatoes. I don’t know what made these potatoes so good, but we were both swooning over their simple deliciousness. I finished the evening with three flavors of crème brulee and another glass of wine.

Indeed, we ate well and walked a lot. We walked from Montparnasse to the Louvre, through the Jardin des Tuileries, down the Champs Elysees, up the Arc de Triomphe, back over the Seine, around Invalides, to the Musee d’Orsay, all over the Left Bank, back over the Seine, down the Champs de Mars, to the Eiffel Tower, and through the Luxembourg gardens.

But nothing compared to the extreme peace and extreme movement of the Ile de la Cite, the center of the city and a stage for medieval Paris, most visually represented by Notre Dame. It took about 170 years to build this cathedral and standing inside the nave, listening to the faint hum of religious music, made me think about patience – patience and faith. I found myself intrigued by a statue and as I moved towards her I discovered it was a statue of Sainte Therese. I must have looked awkward staring at her. I wasn’t sure what to do with this moment. After a few minutes I lit a candle and prayed. The thing is I have no idea what my prayer contained, as if my own yearnings were being kept a secret, even from me. Patience, I guess. 170 years of it.

The Ile de la Cite has also been home to justice (or injustice) in Paris since medieval times. A few blocks from Notre Dame, the towers of the Palais de Justice line the quays. Home to many French courts, including the “court of last resort,” this area is bustling with sirens and dashing policemen (the sirens reminded me of Inspector Gadget – insert theme here).

It is also home to the Conciergerie. Once a royal palace, the Conciergerie eventually housed thousands of prisoners during the Reign of Terror. This is a hodge-podge kind of museum but it showcases wax figures that make a visit here quite, well, creepy. I have always been fascinated by the passion and insanity of the French Revolution (so much so I almost specialized in it). Marie Antoinette was imprisoned here before meeting her fate and they have a wax figure of her, dressed in black, facing away from you. If you think history has a pulse (and I certainly do) then you will feel drama seeping from the cells. Charlotte Corday, Marat’s fascinating murderess, in addition to Danton and Robespierre called this home before being taken to their deaths. You can stand where they believe the gate was, the gate that opened to load the convicted on carts –on their way to the infamous guillotine. According to historian Simon Schama, “even by the standards of the time, the Conciergerie was a wretched whole…many of the prisoners compared it to one of the lower circles of Dante’s Inferno, a house of vermin, smelling of sickness…”

 

Obviously, these are only highlights. I could go into detail about the kind waiter at L’Epi Dupin, who went over the entire menu with us, or the stop at Laduree for their famous macaroons (something I have dreamed about since a teenager thumbing through Victoria, my favorite magazine), the smallness of the Mona Lisa, my intention to buy a Parisian wedding dress, the loveliness of the Musee d’Orsay, the fabulous hotel breakfasts with fresh-squeezed blood-orange juice, etc, etc. And to top it all off, I was with my mother, one of my best friends. Needless to say, it was a wonderful trip.

Travel adds layers of adjectives and interests to your bones as if, while I spied on Parisians behind their long windows, they were spying on me, making up stories about me– French stories –that I tucked away in my suitcase to translate back home, on my terrace, with a glass of wine.