The Food

Some, uh, interesting plates have gone out on my dinner nights.  If you ever wanted to be transported to a mid-90s Better Homes & Gardens dinner party that is either Brought to You By the Color Mauve or subtly revealing of a personality disorder, welcome, sit right down.  It will all taste good (really!) -- even if I awkwardly describe the salad as being tossed with homemade pickle-liquid dressing.  Somehow, duck night is so very purple: cherry-red-wine sauce, cabbage or roasted cauliflower, fingerling potatoes...some force swallows light frequencies throughout the visible spectrum, leaving only shades of violet.  "Middleterranean" night is vibrant yet dingy (perhaps an irrepressible manifestation of the region's sociopolitics?) with chalky tapenade and flecks of spice all over.  Italian night is a brilliant frenzy of color, culminating in a dessert composed with fine-dining precision.

Are things too brown, too beige?  Sprinkle some paprika.  Yes, even on chocolate cake.  All the eggplant mushy and discolored?  Roast or grill the shit out of it, saving the skin to chop into tiny squares you can caramelize and sprinkle like confetti.  Some stuff looks pretty nice.  Thinly-sliced radish makes the salads elegant, and grilled pork tenderloin is just classic.

And then there's breakfast.  Ahhh, my chance to have total order and replicability.  The symmetry of rows of pancakes on platters, the grace and harmony of simple things done well.  Because no garnish or sauce or special treatment can improve upon a pile of crispy bacon.  And for a while, on clear days, that's when the sun shines in the kitchen windows.

I derive an inordinate amount of happiness from this lemon tart + shortbread cookie + lemon curd + brie.

EAT YOUR COLORS

It's a good thing.

The Wind in the Alders

I'm not usually one for "doing the voices" -- maybe a bit higher or lower tone depending on age and sex, clipped and precise or drawling.  I'm sure my nephew would enjoy goofier interpretations when I read to him, and luckily the characters were vivid enough on their own when Matt and I read to each other.  But of late I've been inspired by two of my day-off buddies to amp things up a bit.  Their creative accents and tones so bring to life "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place" and "Skunk and Badger" that I'm following suit. From within a tent we put on quite a performance for anyone in the vicinity of Kayak Beach on Kachemak Bay the other night.

We started reading aloud a couple weeks ago when, after dinner dishes and work was done but it was a bit early for bed, several of us gathered of an evening.  This past weekend we had extra days off, and three of us journeyed in storybook fashion to a storybook land: a boat ride, a short drive, a long drive, another boat ride, to Grace Ridge trailhead at the far end of a fjord, in misty, densely wooded mountains.  Past towering stands of devil's club and cow's parsnip; along a steep and muddy path; traversing a land now lush with ferns, now low mossy tundra; filling the air with varied cries to warn bears of our presence as we encountered alarmingly frequent and fresh piles of poop; we ascended to a hollow just shy of the summit and set up camp among the clouds.

It was very beautiful.  Some patches of snow provided drinking water, and intermittent rain didn't stop my stove kicking out good meals.  The next morning began with heavy fog down below which rolled up to sock us in with uncanny gauze.  It wasn't quite to the level of imminent danger, but our perspective and sense of time were utterly suspended as we wound our way down, seeing only a hundred feet or so ahead.

And like Rat and Mole after an Edwardian adventure, I'm back in my cozy den, washed up and well fed, curling under heavy blankets to be rested for the next chapter with my fellow creatures.

Dramatic foreshadowing...

Not quite its thickest, but you get the idea.

view upon arrival

On Hats

One of my earliest memories is being 3 or 4, riding in mom's Datsun in winter, with my knit hat on.  It was scratchy against my forehead and pressed my ears against my head, muffling my hearing.  As snow melted in the car's warmth, little spheres of water beaded along the hat's edge and tiny rainbows fringed my view.  I enjoyed this effect; but I did not like hats.  As a perspire-acious person, a warm person, an itchy person, a self-conscious and not naturally fashionable person, hats have always been a source of compound discomfort.

Ok, I guess the pictures are going here this time.  The wild roses are still going strong.

Yep.

A wonderful little beach to pull off on.

Among the many joys of my current job is not wearing a hat in the kitchen.  Our mixer might not always get full power, I might pause with floury hands to clap the life out of a dozen mosquitoes, but I'm not getting forehead rash from a sweaty cap.

But I have to concede there is one activity for which I willingly don a brim.  Kayaking along our shore, east and west in the near-endless afternoon, I more thoroughly enjoy the craggy curving coast and boundless forests when I can minimize squinting.  I was also pleased to find during yesterday's rain that my hat bill protrudes enough to keep my hood up and my glasses mostly dry.  I felt like a huge dork, and the loons were surprised enough by my sartorial choices to stare back at me for some minutes before diving, perhaps to chortle over the awkwardly maneuvering paddle-creature.