The second cookbook I bought, as a new bride, was Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. My First Cookbook was the Alice B Toklas Cookbook, but unfortunately for me, that proved too esoteric for the grocery stores in Fort Worth Texas.
I was a new bride. Who knew grocery stores didn’t carry larks and laurel branches. Alice B Toklas cooked for “writers, artists, and expats who lived in Paris between the wars,” but my dreams of dining with Picasso and Hemingway faded quickly.
Then, just in the nick of time, Julia brought me not only a cookbook I might master, but with ingredients that were available. Just having that cookbook on the shelf made me courageous in the kitchen, while I prepared my canned tuna and green noodle casseroles.
It might have ended there - a young bride clutching Julia’s culinary wisdom of France, while she burnt the toast – had I not seen Julie and Julia so many years later.
That gave me Nora. With Nora comes true girlie wisdom: Humor, Love… and Butter.
In Nora’s honor and with both love and humor for my darling friend, Amy Ephron, I searched for a recipe that overflowed with butter, in hopes that eating Scottish Shortbread might bring comfort to us all.
We will truly miss Nora Ephron’s talent and beauty, but fortunately for us, the magic of film allows it to linger always, and I will always have what she is having.
Three years ago, I walked into one of LA’s many Whole Foods stores and saw a pint box of Del Cabo Organic Cherry Tomatoes for $4.99. Wouldn’t buy those here, I thought, because Trader Joe’s always has them for $2.99. Three days later, I was in the 99¢ Only store and, I swear on a stack of tomato crates, they had the same box of cherry tomatoes for, yes…99¢. Of course you can’t possibly rely on dollar stores for your grocery needs, because their stock is limited, constantly changing, and rarely of the Del Cabo quality. But finding these upscale tomatoes at the discount store where I go to buy gift bags and sink stoppers really drove home the point that prices for the same foods can vary wildly depending on where you shop.
When it comes to serving wine with seafood, we want the wine to marry with the delicate flavors of the fish. In other words, the wine or the fish should not upstage each other in any way. Remaining complementary is key.
You will be pleased to know that I will not rant, complain, sigh or otherwise indicate my GREAT displeasure with the week that has just passed. Suffice it to say that Mistakes Were Made. I will, instead, look at the good stuff: we ate our first Michigan asparagus of the year, all of the flowering trees are just popping into bloom and looking and smelling so good that it’s almost surreal, the vegetable seeds that Sam and I planted are mostly coming up, I found a fantastic bread recipe, and I got a beautiful box of lemons in the mail from Eric, in San Francisco. (About which more, later). In the TMI department, I started meditating this week and found that I can sit cross-legged for 20 minutes, and that I can keep random thoughts from intruding about 10% of the time. It may not sound like much, but my mind is a busy place, and I find that my “ohms” are frequently swept away by a recollection of the picture that was taken for my London Tube pass 24 years ago, or musings about which Netflix movie to watch.
Broccoli is my least favorite vegetable. To me, there is simply nothing appealing about its taste, texture, or appearance. The sign above it at the farmer’s market, heralding “broccoli crowns cheap today” does not make my pulse beat faster or my heart sing. I’ve tried chopping up those crowns and hiding tiny slivers among carrots and zucchini. I’ve buried florets in omelets, fajitas, and quiches and covered them up with sauces ranging from hollandaise to mole to duck sauce and ketchup. I’ve tried arguing myself into taking just a bite or two under the category of “strong medicine” for the sake of health and wellness. But nothing has led me to reconsider my position: I don’t like broccoli. This may in fact be the only philosophical stance that I share with former president George Bush, who once went on record to declare his aversion to this particular vegetable.