food!

We may not have everything (like, I don't know, my thesis, or, occasionally, where to park the car), but we do eat well. There are popovers for breakfast, scrambled eggs with feta and fresh parsley snipped from Kirsten's potted herbs on our patio, occasional sourdough pancakes, and recent rotations of french toast. Our lunches are usually devoted to eating leftovers or recovering from the excesses of the morning, but our dinners have been consistently lovely.

Tonight, for example, this was dinner: Kirsten went to work in the afternoon, I hung around and wrote a little; about five, I wandered over to the subway, hopped up to Sunset and stepped into one of our local Jons (and while my initial enamoration - that's a real word, I promise, it means the process of falling in love - with the market has faded a little, it remains rock-solid for two-pound containers of feta, cheap tomatoes, and more varieties of pepper than you could shake a stick at) to pick up some stuff for dinner: a couple of pickling cucumbers for an appetizer, some pumpkin filling for pumpkin muffins later this week (I told you we eat well), and about two pounds of Roma tomatoes for tonight's pasta.

Tonight's recipe came by way of our friend Melina. She had us over for dinner a couple of nights before we skipped Chapel Hill, and made a remarkable pasta out of a sumptuous cook book titled On Top of Spaghetti. Being a pasta lover myself, I was in love, but for one reason or another, held off from buying the book until a recent foray onto Amazon just before dinner time resulted in a spur-of-the-moment cookbook. Go figure.

But the book is remarkable. Seriously. I've just finished dinner, and leafing through the cookbook is making me hungry again.

Without further ado, then, two recent recipes:

4 am spaghetti for one (but double for two):

4 ozs. spaghetti; 1 large garlic clove, peeled and trimmed; 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil; 1/2 to 1 teaspoon powdered Esplette pepper or hot or sweet paprika; large pinch of dried oregano; freshly ground black pepper; pinch of sea salt.

1. Bring your water to a boil; generously salt the water; cook, stirring often. For the love of all that's holy, don't put oil in the water.
2. While the pasta is cooking, heat your pasta bowl (seriously. It's a new trick and I love it) in the oven or in warm water; once heated, rub the garlic clove all over the bottom of the bowl; pour in the olive oil; throw the herbs over; add the salt and pepper; the oil should warm up in the bowl and release its flavors; smile broadly, sip your wine.
3. Drain the pasta, leaving it a little wet; toss it into the bowl. Enjoy.

This next recipe is in honor of my dear friend Giovanni, who made me a version of it a year ago; little did I know I've been saying Matriciana when it should really be Amatriaciana. Go figure.

bucatini with fresh tomatoes, pancetta, and onion (I changed proportions to reflect the pancetta packet that Trader Joe's sells)

4 oz. pancetta; 5 tblsps. olive oil; 2 lbs. ripe roma tomatoes, chopped; 1 heaping cup diced onions; 1/2 tsp. sea salt; pinch of red pepper; 1 lb. spaghetti

1. Put the pancetta in a big saute pan over medium heat; toss often to keep it from sticking; let it render a little, lose some of its fat, and brown on the edges; lower the heat, add the olive oil, the tomatoes, the onion, and the salt (Don't worry about the excess liquid, it'll cook down). Stir in the red pepper; cover, bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, until the onions are all the way cooked; taste and salt as necessary.
2. Boil your water; salt generously; cook, but before you drain, reserve about a cup of the water (another trick - the starchy water that is to be drained is really good for keeping the pasta moist and supple as you mix in the sauce). Once drained, toss the pasta into your saute pan with the sauce and mix until well-coated; as needed, add water to keep the pasta supple. Serve in heated bowls.

Like I said, we eat well.

a month gone by?

A couple of weeks back, I saw Kirsten working on putting some photos up from her trip to Arizona (and still have faith that she'll finally post them), but since then the two of us have been frightfully remiss in posting/writing/sharing much of anything about our respective lives. To be flip, I might beg off by saying That's life.

But perhaps some measures of repentance: We shared a light picnic dinner tonight (tomato, mozzarella and basil sandwiches on fresh-baked bread, a bottle of syrah) in Barnsdall Park tonight, sitting on the wide lawn while night stole its way over the city. At one point, Kirsten turned and looked north at the creased mountains, saying, It's like Hogwarts!

She was pointing out the Griffith Park Observatory, perched as it is on a shoulder and lit up in the deepening dusk. Set off as it is from the houses below, it has a curiously magical sense to it, a way of floating in the darkness. We didn't linger too long, as the evenings have begun to tend towards the chill damp that marks what passes for winter, and we didn't have a thing to light our books. So we slipped our way back down onto Hollywood, then down Vermont to the Metro station. A quick two stops home and then the last couple of blocks into our place.

It's still filling in, but we've mostly set ourselves up. A television - courtesy of my brother - sits shrouded in one corner of our dining and living room, and photos are still making their slow way onto the walls. We both take great pleasure in the coat and shoe rack that sit in our hallway, and Kirsten's plants are thriving on the patio. Rolls of muslin and a large tool box filled with fashion implements have made their way into our bedroom, but I'm not one to complain, as there's a kind of tidal rhythm to the papers that pile upon my desk (low tide as a trash can).

I wake early Tuesday mornings, and Kirsten slips out of the house before me Wednesday through Friday, but we're still managing to share most of our dinners. Teaching is going well enough for me, and though I don't want to speak too much for Kirsten, she's finding enough in her first two weeks of FIDM to keep herself busy. But all told, it's a nice life.

I'm still riding my bike, fixing it when need be, starting new blogs, finding new things to read, and keeping busy. Kirsten is, I think, not doing the same things but enjoying what life brings her. The kittens are well - they've discovered catnip, thanks to my mom's friends Stephen and Phillip - and so it goes. Hopefully, it won't take us another month to write something.

Uh, it's "Sah-wah-roh"...

This past weekend I braved many dangers. Heat over one hundred degrees. Prickly thorns and dusty soil. And certainly not least, I braved perhaps the most terrifying experience of all- the Los Angeles Freeway System. Cue ominous music. I must confess that driving in Los Angeles has been the stuff of my nightmares. But I survived. Navigating the craziness of on-ramps, merging lanes, exit lanes that aren't really exits (just thinking about it stresses me out), I proved to be a capable, if occasionally profane driver. Anyway, this pointless musing belongs elsewhere, but the story I'm telling takes me to the town of Tempe, Arizona and the Lovely Kate "Koala" Wicker. And since I'm out of time and am not really sure that this will be interesting anyway, let's just skip to the desert photos.


I'm sure that I had something to say about my trip when I began this post, but I think I shall end with the thought that it's wonderful to be able to visit friends.