From The Top

I like this poem by Jane Hirshfield because A) cooking (as well as weeding the garden and repainting your bedroom) totally is redemptive; because B) "da capo" is a cute Italian phrase for "from the top" — like in music; and because C) as I've said before, there's always hope—for me and for you.

Da Capo

Take the used-up heart like a pebble and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left. Soon the last ripple exhausts itself in the weeds.

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery. Glaze them in oil before adding the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt. Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat. You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.

High Temple Of Chocolate

The next best thing to the coffee already being brewed when you crawl out of bed in the morning (which NEVER happens) is when you come home from what could be described as the longest day evah and there's a tidy brown package sitting on your doorstep from mom and dad, and inside this tidy package are a couple treasures wrapped gently in newspaper along with a note that says "from our trip to Sicily"—and these treasures turn out to be CHOCOLATE. Yeah, the dark evening sings when you get to bite into a thick bar made in the old style with cocoa beans so freshly ground you can feel the grains sliding over your teeth. Cut with butter and sugar, spiced with the deep mysteries of a foreign land. It nearly saves your life, this type of thing.

Sicily is, your google machine will tell you, the "high temple of archetypal chocolate." I am simply lucky enough to be bound by blood to someone who has journeyed there.

That Time I Made Cookies

A while back, I made these rosemary butter cookies and they were the best.

Basically I never bake—for a number of reasons, including the fact that I cannot be held responsible for having baked goods in the house. If there're cookies, I will eat them ALL. If there's a sheet of brownies, I will eat it ALL. This isn't that out of the ordinary, I suspect.

Anyway, I made ’em for a garden party, AKA a BBQ, so they were someone else's problem at the end of the night.

I'm always really happy when I get to cook with rosemary because it was the first plant I installed in my garden when I became a homeowner seven (crikey!) years ago. The thing has beyond flourished—it's a fucking tree!

The rock and the hard place here is that the dough might be better than the cookies—but the cookies are still really, really good. Do what you can with this conundrum.

A Year Of Food Life

Just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Have you read it? Do! It’s all about the rural life, food, and what it’s like to eat only things grown, raised, or made in your neighborhood. “Locavore” is what the kids are calling it these days.

Now, I’m not a hardliner on the subject of food. I’m longtime vegetarian, and I like eating the nourishment of simple folk. Fresh bread, a chunk of hard cheese, a pile of chopped greens—this stuff fills me up. No big deal. But growing and making your very own food (or knowing the person who did) is a concept I like. I want to knead my own bread dough. I want my kitchen to smell constantly of berry jam bubbling on the stove and big piles of basil about to become pesto. I want to sprinkle seeds in the spring and chop wood in the fall and potentially do all of it from a cabin in the woods ... But everyone’s gotta make that paper, right?

Anyway, a couple points I latched onto:

We should all spend more money on food and less on other, like, stuff. I mean, food—we’re gonna eat it! Let’s care about it and shit!

The school carriculum should teach kids where food comes from and how to cook, and we should def make those little people help us prepare all our meals. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to cultivate a little health and gratitude.

The recipe for zucchini chocolate chip cookies.

Gardening rulez: “Nothing is more therapeutic than to walk up there and disappear into the yellow-green smell of the tomato rows for an hour to address the concerns of quieter, more manageable colleagues. Holding to the soft, viny limbs as tender as babies' wrists, I train them to their trellises, tidy the mulch at their feet, inhale the oxygen of their thanks.”

Tiny Batch Jamz

Fresh, just-ripe strawberries can make your head spin. They’re deeply sweet and tragically tender. Wait too long to eat ’em and they disintegrate into a pile of mold and mush on your countertop. Wait too long to buy ’em and their season (the fleeting cusp of summer) is over.

With that in mind, I bought a couple pints of said berries last weekend and simmered up a tiny batch of homemade jam. No pectin or fancy canning equipment—just three simple ingredients (strawberries, sugar, a few lemon wedges) and a spell simmering on the stove. This recipe makes just the right amount—and the way the jam tastes is rivaled only by how a pot of bubbling strawberries can make your house smell. Divine is a pretty good word to employ here.

Ingredients

3 1/2 pounds strawberries, washed, hulled, and halved

2 3/4 cups sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 lemon, quartered

Preparation

Mix all ingredients in a heavy medium pot. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until fruit releases juices, about 30 minutes. Continue to cook, stirring as needed to prevent sticking, until thick and slightly darker, about 1 1/2 hours.

Chill jam in airtight containers up to 1 month or freeze up to 6 months.