Valentine's Day

Our editor, Amy asked that I think of something about candy for this Valentine’s Day issue, so I racked my brain trying to come up with something to say about candy that I haven’t already said. It would be one thing if I found a new candy, but I haven’t.  Also, since my last story about the sweet, romantic thing my husband did when he presented me with a gorgeous piece of jewelry for my birthday, his romantic gestures have taken the form of making sure I didn’t come home to a messy house when I’ve been out of town. I gotta tell ya, that stuff goes a long way with me.

It did occur to me though, that my recent trip to San Francisco for Sketchfest would qualify for the spirit of Valentine’s Day. I fell in love with the city….again. Eugene Pack, the creator of Celebrity Biography: In Their Own Words and Dayle Rayfel invited me to join them in the show and they were my food adventure buddies. Dayle is a vegan and Eugene slowly revealed himself to be the kind of exercise fanatic that tells you a location is a” nice walk” when its 27 blocks away. 

Sharing things is always dicey, and dicing while cooking together is definitely no exception.   The kitchen can morph into a metallic boxing ring.  One of you is the wild, inventive cook and the other is the chop-a-holic, compulsive one.  But one thing I’ve realized after decades of co-cooking is that both co-chef-partners are actually doing the same things, just at different moments. 

Take me, for example.  I am not a compulsive dicer and slicer, but I do like my implements put back in their proper places.  My co-cooker partner likes to splatter garlic when throwing it with wild abandon into a pan, but follows recipes as if his children’s lives depended on it. 

The trick is to find a way to have our mutating cooking styles come together rather than clash.  In formal holiday moments, I have learned to stand back and let him plan away.

As a little girl, my favorite candies were Twizzlers and black jelly beans. Every Easter I would pick all the black jelly beans out of the bowl and leave the rest for everybody else. Though I rarely eat jelly beans any more, I love to cook with fennel, which has a distinctive licorice scent and flavor.

Although fennel has become fashionable over the last couple of years, this herb has actually been enjoyed in cooking since antiquity. Many cultures use fennel as a culinary ingredient and as an herbal medicine, and as evidenced at my house, it’s a staple in Italian cooking.

It is a remarkably versatile herb and pairs beautifully with fruits such as oranges and apples as well as classic Mediterranean ingredients such as olives and eggplant. When eaten raw, its crunchy celery-like texture and sweet licorice flavor gives depth to salads. When sautéed or roasted, it takes on a savory quality. In fact, all parts of the fennel, from the bulb to the feathery fronds, are edible.

And since it’s St. Valentine’s Day this week, I thought you'd like to know that ancient Romans considered fennel an aphrodisiac and likely would have used it instead of chocolate for a romantic evening. As so many culinary trends are cycical, I'm predicting that fennel will become the new chocolate for Valentine's Day.

Around fifteen years ago, my wife and I decided that eventually we wanted to leave Los Angeles and move to the country.  Although neither of us had ever lived on a farm, we both had grandparents who did and had fond memories of visits where we “helped” with chores such as milking and gathering eggs.  However, I soon learned to avert my eyes whenever I saw my grandmother pick up a chicken, as I knew this was Step 1 of the recipe for the pot pie which would appear on the supper table. 

Once we had decided to move, we spent our vacations looking for the perfect place.  We checked out Northern California, Oregon, Washington and the Canadian Maritimes before eventually deciding on Vermont because it actually looked like “the country” of our imaginations.