Yesterday afternoon I was working from home — in this case, my parents’ house — when my mom knocked on the door.

Hot corn muffins, right out of the oven! she called.

Luckily I had reached a decent stopping point and could take a wee break because when someone, especially your mother, tells you she’s just made corn muffins you do exactly what I did which was to jump up and bolt straight for the table, the lavender honey, and that pile of golden bread.

Corn is a little bit of America to me every time I eat it — at least, it seems like something you’d want to eat on the day to celebrate that country’s liberation from England so long ago (and I am not saying anything but today Andy Roddick, a Yank, beat Andy Murray, a Scot, to advance to the Wimbledon final on the day most Americans have off to commemorate the holiday — I mean, surely it’s just a coincidence, right?). Dried and pounded into flour it invokes the days of the early Americans who ate it both out of necessity and economy.

These days corn distilled into syrup is slipped into so much of our processed foods (as per Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” which is long but really will blow your mind a bit and is worth the read) and there’s unfortunately much to criticize.

But corn in its natural state is a thing of beauty and, I’d argue, something to be celebrated. It grows tall and straight and hardy and if you were lucky enough to grow up as I did you might be sent out back into the garden to gather ears for dinner. Fresh ears of corn still mean summer to me, and when it appears in the farmers’ markets I know no matter how persistent the San Francisco fog my favorite season has arrived at last. When the heirlooms come in I make great bowls of fresh corn and tomato salad, seasoned just with salt and a little balsamic vinegar (and, if I’m feeling really decadent — or hungry — an avocado). I’ll eat it straight off the cob dripping in salted butter or I’ll toss kernels into frying pans along with green beans and garlic.

It’s all delicious — and this is not even getting into things like polenta, or upside-down apricot cakes baked with cornmeal instead of flour, or or or.

Today, the day before the day to celebrate American independence, it’s sort of reasonable to be thinking about this most American of crops. Native to the Americas, corn has been around since even before the days of the great Revolution (as a kid when I read all those biographies of Paul Revere and his ilk — of course noticing and remembering the food — it seemed they were always dining on corn porridge, corn pudding, corn cake, etc.). People throw around the saying “American as apple pie” but couldn’t it be instead “American as corn bread”?

Either way, whatever your plans are tomorrow I’d entreat you to consider making a batch of corn bread or muffins. This is a recipe I’ve been using for awhile and calls for buttermilk, which saves the bread from being too dry as it can tend to be. In the winter I made it a lot along with pots of lentil and spinach soup, and it was the perfect complement. But I bet a plate of grilled vegetables or even a veggie dog or two would go along just fine.

I can’t promise I’ll get up at 7a tomorrow morning to watch two Americans (and sisters at that) fight it out at the women’s Wimbledon final, but if there’s a corn muffin and a cup of tea (of course; I need to have both that American and British influence to properly celebrate the fourth) when the alarm goes off I’ll be much more likely to do so.

Maybe you will, too.

Cornbread
Alas I can’t remember from where exactly I adapted this, but most likely it was epicurious.com or williams-sonoma.com. If you can manage the buttermilk, do — it really makes it. But regular milk will also work if necessary.

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, cooled slightly

Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter 12 regular (1/3-cup) muffin cups. Sift cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. Whisk buttermilk and egg in another medium bowl; whisk in melted butter. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients; stir just until incorporated (do not overmix). Divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups. Bake muffins until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 15 minutes (muffins will be pale). Cool on rack 10 minutes.

Saturday night I was in the kitchen chopping an onion and thinking about August. The dog was sprawled on the rug near the front door sighing softly in his sleep as I plotted and dreamed a little. As I scrubbed a squash the cat leaped up on a chair and eyed me suspiciously (he’d earlier realized his sweet meows wouldn’t make me feed him and so gave up in disgust); too bad for him. While I peeled a knobbly carrot and sipped at my gin and orange (the tonic unfortunately having all been drunk), I thought about the homegrown lemons glowing on the counter before me and what I could make with them: granita, lavender-citrus syrup, madeleines.

As I swirled mushrooms into olive oil on the stove and added a splash of red wine to make the pan sizzle and spit, I smelled more than just the frying garlic; underneath those comfortable scents was the one singing of outside — bay leaves, sea breeze, eucalypt standing tall and straight against a darkening sky. I thought about Australia and wondered if my bit of wanderlust will ever be ‘cured’ (and if I want it to), imagined Jack London’s last days, wished for sun the next day.

I pulled out the dish of roasting cauliflower to check (not yet) and shredded cucumber for salad, mentally putting together packages to send to far-flung locales. I thought a bit about Greece and swimming in a warm ocean, searched the cupboards in vain for pine nuts, contemplated figuring out if it’s possible to make feta from scratch.

Cooking does tend to make the mind wander.

[In the fields, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, June 2009.]

I was out of town again this weekend. I think that’s my summer pattern; though I’m quite happy here in my cozy blue-and-white San Francisco apartment with its bare and gleaming hardwood floors I truly love a weekend Away. If I can’t manage a backpacking trip I aim for the next best thing: a few days in the ‘country’, either in Sonoma County or Inverness/Pt. Reyes.

But I have to, I think. I need the quiet stillness of a long twilight without the clatter of street noise. I need to hear the wind in the trees absolutely knowing it’s not the cars rushing past instead. I need to have drinks and lunch outside on a deck, even if the mosquitoes descend and force me back inside.

I need to have home, even if only for a few days.

So my weekend, of course, was just lovely. I know I say that a lot: oh, lovely California with its lovely light and lovely blue hour and lovely blackberries just beginning and lovely, lovely golden hills. But really, my weekend was entirely lovely and beautiful in its simplicity. I adored every minute. I’m wistful for that brief stretch already, in fact. I also wish you’d been there — you would’ve loved it. No, really. It was absolutely, infinitely lovely through and through.

[Sally's jam, June 2009.]

It started, as the very best weekends do, with a sunny ferry to Marin that churned through a bay flocked with sailboats white and tense against all that afternoon dazzle. I was picked up and whisked over Mt. Tam and down by Stinson, sunny and bright the whole way — a much-appreciated experience as I’m still getting used to this whole sun concept after those few weeks of persistent fog. There was a g&t in the living room and pesto and salad for dinner, lights out by 10.30. I will admit that’s pretty much one of my favorite ways to spend a Friday.

Saturday morning I woke up early to sun, flinging open the curtains and resting my elbows on the sill the better to see the water shimmering out in front of me. I had coffee and (whole-wheat walnut) toast spread well with butter and homemade rhubarb jam, a bit of Wimbledon-watching, and poking at the dog with my feet. Later we drove out past Tomales Bay before 9 a.m.,the water unrippled and calm as a sheet of glass, through the fields almost to Drake’s Beach. It was hot and still and clear — a perfect day. That night I cooked dinner and we sat long around the table to finish with slices of plum pound cake for dessert.

Sunday was more of the same, although it was switched up a little with drinking coffee from Toby’s in town and then an incident where I lay on the green couch for at least two hours reading the New York Times Sunday paper (and yes, I had another cup of coffee and no, I never lay around for two hours like that, especially when it’s nice out. It was marvelous. I may have to try it again some time.).

[Oysters, Pt. Reyes, June 2009.]

The other thing about my weekend was that I ate an oyster.

(I’ll just let that sentence hang out there a little bit with no comment.)

No wait: I ate an oyster this weekend! Me! Not only am I a vegetarian but I’ve never liked seafood even! Did I lose my mind for a minute there? Tempted by des fruits du mer? Wanted to try something new (I’d never had an oyster before, a near-travesty for a native Californian)? Enticed by that briny, salty odor so indicative to things pulled from the Pacific? Unable to resist the lure of the barbecue? Hit with heat exhaustion?

Well it’s a long story, how I came to eat that oyster. It includes unforeseen circumstances involving an early morning wake-up to sun and birds whistling across the trees, lots of tea, a 4-mile hike through a cow field out to an empty beach, white pelicans, water-blasting said crustaceans, a beer at noon — anyway, I tried one. I had to. I debated sharing this because it was a bit strange (not to mention out of character) for me — I haven’t consumed meat or fish in twelve years and yes I’m feeling the tiniest bit guilty about said consumption — but sometimes things happen, right?

I didn’t like it, though. My dad says oysters are an acquired taste and maybe that’s true; at any rate it was too salty (but not in that good feta-cheese way) and I had to chew the darn thing. I pretty much horrified myself that I even put it in my mouth and I doubt I ever will again.

I think I’ll blame the beer.

[Near Drake's, June 2009.]

In June the light is beautiful, soft and smoky in the sunlight. Dogs patter all over and maybe (though not on this weekend) there will be a fire in the fire place. There are drinks on the deck as the sun slips down over the ridge, night falling cool and still. The sky is like velvet and the stars fade in if it’s not too foggy. Mornings by the sea the water can be that deep, impossible blue that happens sometimes when it’s hot; the trees droop and drop and the grass stirs slightly. The air smells like bay leaves and salt and damp earth pressed together, sometimes laced with a mild breeze, and you have to just thank the great universe for places like this.

West Marin has my heart, part and parcel. This is not a new revelation but still it bears repeating every so often. Driving to the ferry this early morning the mist was rising off the fields and the light almost could break your heart it was so clear and pure. I wish so I could live there, truly. One day?

Well, back here in the real world there are Monday nights of roasted cauliflower, beet and cucumber salad, a few tiny baked potatoes, and the first corn of summer melting and sweet — and really, these are very nice nights when you think about it. After a few days of gorgeously hot weather the wind is tossing around the branches outside my window as a reminder that Yeah, it may be nearly July but this is San Francisco, lady, and don’t you dare forget it but for once I don’t much mind.

I had my weekend, you see, and it was just lovely.

p.s.: Me and the oyster? Let’s just keep it between us.

What’s in the Fridge Pasta

In the spirit of Kim O’Donnel’s Eating Down the Fridge challenge on her great Washington Post blog A Mighty Appetite, this is a loose recipe that uses up whatever veggies are kicking around the fridge and a variation of which I always seem to end up making when I’m visiting my friends and I’m rummaging through the shelves for produce. I used linguine pasta on Saturday night but again, any pasta you have in the pantry will work just fine.

1 onion, chopped
or 3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 red pepper, de-seeded and chopped
mushrooms, sliced
chopped spinach
zucchini or yellow squash, sliced
dried basil and/or oregano
salt and pepper
red wine
olive oil

Cook the pasta. Meanwhile, saute the vegetables in the olive oil, beginning with the onion or garlic. Add the mushrooms. Add the red wine. Add the squash and red pepper and cook for about 10 minutes until soft. Add a bit of cooking water, more red wine if you like, the herbs, and salt and pepper.

Drain the pasta and put in a large bowl. Add the vegetables, a bit more olive oil if necessary, and toss well to combine.

And I did.

As I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes I turned on the oven and consulted the cookbook — the butter (so much of it!) was soft and pliant because I’d remembered to leave it out overnight (both in preparation as as a little spurring-along — if the butter was ready I’d really have to get up and use it, no excuses). I whirled it with sugar and eggs to the irritation of my neighbor (really, though, it was only for a few minutes), sifted flour and baking powder, measured out vanilla. I sliced the fruit given me by a generous friend and arranged them not-so-neatly. My apartment filled up with the scent of baking: melted butter, sweet plums, cornmeal. I drank my tea and wished the fog away. Friday.

An hour later, another scene which will live only in imagination because it could not be photographed:

Me, on the Geary bus desperately in need of coffee and running late, lugging still steaming-hot baked goods in to my office. (I have to wonder what what the other commuters thought of my battered paper bag that smelled like it’d just come from a bakery.) Luckily all — including myself — arrived relatively unscathed.

[Pesto made from the market, June 2009.]

Last night, my apartment, around 8 p.m.

Summer, I think, means pesto. Oh sure it also means heirloom tomatoes and stone fruit, blueberries small and sweet, crisp lettuce and tiny cucumbers. It means rumors of a heat wave descending on the Bay Area and wistful thoughts of vacation and soft-serve ice cream and more baseball games.

Still, summer is pesto, at least to me. It’s mostly basil pesto, though of course there are so many other options including but not limited to swapping radicchio for the greens to create sharp and spicy spread for toast or using walnuts instead of pine nuts. But that classic paste of garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, a bit of salt and lemon juice (which I’ve just learned is crucial), parmesan, and basil somehow sums up an entire season’s-worth of meals.

At the Saturday market I had picked up two bunches of basil and so made pesto earlier this week — perfect fare for dinner with an old friend last night. While he very properly poured the wine (showing me the label with a flourish), I put together a small salad (just some greens, chopped cucumber, curls of carrots, half of an avocado, roasted beets for me) and boiled water for spaghetti (I like spaghetti for pesto best; angel hair will do in a pinch). I tossed the pesto with the pasta slippery and perfect, and we ate and talked and sipped wine and it was simply marvelous.

[Dinner, May 2009.]

In the car, somewhere near Sonoma, a few weeks ago.

Look at these green beans! I said to the friend crammed next to me in the back seat after an afternoon of wine tasting and sun. I showed her the image on my camera, because I do things like that. Aren’t they so … sexy?

Now, I don’t know if that was exactly the right word to describe them but man did they clean up nice for their close-up. The taste lived up to the expectation, too (bright, snapping, clean). I know I’ve mentioned this before, but my guy at my market has seriously some of the most beautiful and perfect produce going and I await Saturday mornings with even more eagerness because of him.

So do this: buy a bunch of the prettiest, greenest French green beans at the farmers’ market. Trim the ends (note: this is not absolutely necessary but even though it’s a bit more work I find I prefer to remove them) and melt a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan. Toss in the beans and a sprinkling of sea salt and cook quickly — you want them to cook, of course, but you want to retain their integrity (i.e. not get too soft). I ate my helping greedily along with a baked potato and wished for more.

I don’t usually cook with too much butter — baking, yes, almost always though there are exceptions — but in my regular meals I go first for the olive oil or vegetable broth. For some, reason — maybe because it was chilly? — I just really felt like these little guys needed something to smarten them up and thus doused them in Clover salted butter, melted until almost brown and foaming.

Oh, it was so right.

Later I wrote my friend, It’s OK that I’m sauteing some skinny, spindly green beans *in butter* as part of my dinner because I ran so much yesterday, right? Right?! Oh sigh. But I really think they are too perfect to not be treated to some butter and sea salt.

and received as a reply: You’ll probably kill me for asking (so I’ll whisper it): (what is wrong with cooking green beans in butter again? I forgot.)

Well, rather. Silly me. (I knew it too, but a bit of validation is never under appreciated. However — after I work my way through those previously mentioned cakes I think I’ll be logging a few extra miles in the park next week.) I have a feeling I’ll be eating these green beans, along with big plates of pesto and slices of sweet heirloom tomatoes, all summer long.

It’s only right, really.

[Eggs with feta, spinach, and shiitake mushrooms.]

(the song sings itself*, all sparkle and white-gold light.)

True summer slipped in the door Saturday night, somewhere among the clean-scrubbed pots draining by the sink and the vegan gingersnaps cooling on my wooden pull-out cutting board. But even if I barely acknowledged that it was the longest day of the year — glancing out the window just before 9 I realized with a little jolt it was the Solstice — my farmers’ market had reminded me that morning in baskets of blueberries, cherries spilling over the sides of their little containers, piles of the first peaches and nectarines, sweet, perfect plums, flats of strawberries.

The weather even cooperated for once — sunny, breezy, smelling of the sea and promise. Summer, just for now, just for here. I won’t ask how long it will stay.

Unfortunately, though, all days like these make me want to do is go to the beach. Or swimming in the Russian River a bit up north (Healdsburg or so) at this little beach I know where you can get soft-serve ice cream at the snack bar and families get together on the lawn for Sunday barbecues and you can swim out far enough to find the shade in the water. Or maybe a canoe trip? Or a hike somewhere not in the city — the California summer brown hills at your back and a bay to your right and maybe, if you’re really lucky, a whale or two in the ocean. Or just a cold beer on a deck somewhere. I am greedy for all of summer’s delights, it’s true, but I know all this will trickle in over the next few months if I am patient.

Oh, summer! So sighed-over and long anticipated! What shall you bring to us this year? How many fistfuls of gorgeous tomatoes and tiny yellow plums will I be lucky enough to enjoy? Will there be many glorious sunsets over the ocean, the kind where you hold your breath they’re so beautiful, all golden light and flame dropping beneath the rim of the world? Will the stars blink and fall in August, the way they do sometimes when all the fog has burned off and night settles thick and hot over the trees? And perhaps most important: what shall I bake with all the stone fruit soon to droop and drop ripely from those branches?

To ease into it strawberries, of course, which to me are both spring and then real summer. Strawberries are late afternoons in the backyard with my brother, the sun burning down on the tops of our heads as we bent over the strawberry plants in the garden, the little black dog from up the street keeping us company. Strawberries are jam and ice cream and frozen popsicles and treating yourself to handfuls just because. I am eating some pretty berries right now, in fact, to ease myself into my very favorite time of year.

It will all be so delicious.

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun’s brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can’t hear

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.

- Mary Oliver

*with thanks to William Carlos Williams

Last summer I ate a lot of chard for various reasons — mostly because it’s so damned good you’d be crazy not to but also because it helped smooth out my finicky stomach during a rough patch (break-ups, even if necessary, are usually never easy) when I didn’t feel like eating much of anything at all. These days I still eat a lot of my favorite leafy green but I’m happy to say it’s a more cheerful consumption-of; chard and I, well, I think we’re set for life for better or worse, through thick and thin, until death (or the end of the growing season) do us part and etc.

These days I also eat a lot of feta. I can blame this on my Greeks in upstate, an enduring love affair with my grandfather’s country, or just simply — again — because it’s so damned good I’d be a fool not to indulge myself. Lately, and inspired by my best friend’s diner-owning friend of Greek ancestry, I’ve been scattering feta liberally in scrambled eggs, sometimes along with a tomato roughly sliced and dumped into the pan at the last minute or with a bit of wilted spinach, most times seasoned well with dried rosemary and oregano. I’ve been crumbling it into couscous salads and piling slices atop fresh bread drizzled with olive oil.

So a dish that combines two of my very favorite things — and while we’re at it we might as throw pine nuts as a favorite into the mix, too — is pretty much my idea of perfection. That it comes together in about 15 minutes is an added bonus.

The inspiration for this bit of pasta perfection came when an old friend was visiting me in March. We were bowling around the back roads of West Marin with me at the wheel in one of the few times a year I actually get to drive (I don’t have a car so I’m limited to special occasions). I think we’d just come back from Keyho Beach where the fog had blown in and the earlier sun on the Limantour dunes was unfortunately just a distant memory. There, we’d stuffed ourselves on cheese-and-avocado sandwiches, apples, and banana bread while talking about the things girls do when they haven’t seen each other in over a year (love, food, work, siblings, where to go on a summer trip).

Rather unsurprisingly, though we’d eaten that big lunch, we were hungry again and started talking about where we’d go for dinner (the Station House Cafe, of course, for plates of polenta and grilled oysters). The conversation turned to quick and easy meals we’d thrown together recently and how she’ll often arrive home after to work to find her boyfriend firmly ensconced in the kitchen and dinner nearly done (lucky, lucky girl she. Also please note: I’m on the lookout for an able and willing sous-chef but I’d be quite content with someone who cooks me dinner on a regular basis, dog not required but certainly welcome. Ahem.).

Anyway, we were hungry. And when girls get to being hungry — especially if they like to cook — they talk (and talk) about food.

As I drove past the cow fields and back toward Inverness the sun drifted out from the fog — a coincidence, perhaps, but I’d rather think not because it was just about then she described a penne pasta with pine nuts, chard, lemon, and feta she’d come up with one weekday eve. My ears attuned to those beloved words feta and chard, I exclaimed excitedly that I had a bunch of chard and a bit of feta as well as a box of whole wheat penne at home — how fortuitous. Was it Fate? Or just random babble and good luck?

Well, no matter. After we returned to the city the following afternoon and she went to her hotel for the night — a work conference had brought her to San Francisco from New York (hi, E! Please move here! You know you want to!) — I got to feeling a little melancholy as sometimes happens on a Sunday when I’ve been out of town. Then I remembered our conversation and pulled the feta from the fridge, washed and chopped the chard quickly, and toasted a handful of pine nuts. I left out the lemon just because I didn’t feel like tossing it in there, but oh man. That was some good stuff.

This has in fact become one of my favorite meals (and I’ve made it twice for my parents and then for my girlfriends last weekend so you know I really like it) — it’s hearty, simple, and absolutely delicious. I think the best part about it for me is that the feta, added right at the end, slightly melts into the pasta, salting it perfectly and adding just a bit of creaminess which is then countered by the satisfying crunch of the pine nuts.

I swear I could eat this almost every night. Lucky me that my farmers’ market is covered with swathes of beautiful green chard — the best I’ve ever tasted, really — and I can indulge in my favorite things as often as I’d like.

It’s a good life.

Penne with Chard, Feta and Pine Nuts

You could make this vegan — really, it would probably taste quite good even without the cheese, though I’d then add more herbs to flavor it up a bit more. But for me the best part about this (well, besides the chard) is the feta, and I would advise not leaving it out unless absolutely necessary.

Note: Sometimes I play fast and loose with the quantities depending on how many people are eating and how much cheese (or onion or or or) I have on hand. Whatever the proportions, however, it’s always perfect.

penne
1 bunch rainbow chard, washed, rolled, and chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 cup crumbled feta
1/2 cup pine nuts
4 Tb. olive oil
1/2 cup tomato sauce, crushed tomatoes, or 2 small tomatoes coarsely chopped
salt and pepper
1 tsp. dried oregano (or 2 Tb. fresh)

Cook the pasta. Meanwhile, in a large frying pan over medium heat, toast the pine nuts. Stir or shake the pan frequently to make sure they don’t burn — watch carefully for about 5 minutes. Put in a bowl and set aside.

Return the pan to medium heat and sautee the onion in the olive oil, adding more if necessary. Cook the onion for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the chard and a spoonful or two of the pasta water and cook until chard is wilted and tender. Add the tomatoes or tomato sauce, the herbs, and salt and pepper to taste.

Add the feta and a bit more pasta water, stirring well to incorporate the flavors and create a thick sauce. The feta just be a little melted. Remove from heat and stir in the pine nuts.

[Drake's Beach, March 2009.]

[In the backyard, June 2008.]

[A baleful cow on the Olema Ridge trail, May 2009.]

Craisglist is many things to many people — classified ads, a place to find a language partner or track down that person with whom you made eyes on the bus, volunteer opportunities — and it’s always been very good to me. I’ve gotten a few jobs, even a freelance gig or two, and the sweetest, most light-filled apartment in which I’ve ever lived. But I think the best thing craigslist has ever given me is my book group.

Oh, my book group. It’s hard to believe we’ve known each other for three years now — and that we were all strangers before this funny thing that is the Internet connected us. Sometimes things happen and you feel like they worked out for the best and thus are grateful and sometimes they happen inexplicably well, almost as if they were meant to be, and those are the very best times of all. Pretty much in those instances you just have to take a deep breath and don’t ask too many questions; it’s too good, you see, to over analyze.

[At Kunde, June 2009.]

My little book group falls into this latter category. When we met up at a cafe in Hayes Valley lo those many years ago we were all taking a chance: What if we don’t like each other? I’m sure many of us were thinking. Hey, I don’t even know these people! It was like one big blind date. It may have even been awkward (I can’t exactly remember now, because I was in a haze of jetlag and the one beer I had probably put me over the edge). But when I arrived late to our first ‘official’ meeting — work had been excruciating — and my new friend immediately poured me a large glass of wine (You need it, she said) I knew I was exactly where I belonged.

[Champagne at Gloria Ferrer, June 2009.]

One of the nicest things — and there are so many — about this group is that we all have eclectic tastes in books. This of course makes for interesting reading: I’ve read books I might never have heard of otherwise and even if I haven’t loved each one it’s always good to try something new. We do seem to have a penchant for memoir (”Dry,” by Augusten Burroughs, was last month’s selection and which I highly recommend) and the occasional light reading slips in every so often (not a bad thing, though “He’s Just not that Into You” maybe wasn’t liked so awfully well) to mix things up. Next month we’re reading Jon Krakauer’s excellent “Under the Banner of Heaven” — so you see what I mean about ‘eclectic taste.’

[In the vineyard, Kunde, June 2009.]

Another nice thing is that we all like to hang out and drink wine and eat good food and not only when we meet for our monthly book-chats (’book group’, you see, is just two words stuck next to each other by now — it’s really so much more). So in part because of this we decided to celebrate three years going with a weekend in Sonoma County — what better place? Unfortunately the whole gang couldn’t come along (and they were missed!) but the five of us who made it definitely drank enough wine and ate enough cheese to compensate for their absence. Really all we wanted to do was to cook a bit, sleep in a bit, wine-taste a bit, and relax — truly the only way to spend a weekend out of town.

And so we did all of these things.

[Sonoma County, June 2009.]

I grew up in Sonoma County so I’m biased I know. Oh, I love Marin too (though I must admit I’m partial mostly to its western environs) with its tucked-away beaches and wide expanses of grass overlooking Tomales Bay, but the air where I’m from is different. It’s fresher somehow than in the city, touched less with sea-breeze because it’s a little further inland and so you get more of the smell of fields and earth (and the occasional whiff from the cows). Napa is crammed with lots of good wineries and pretty views but if I had to choose I’d go to the aptly named “Valley of the Moon,” waving to Jack London State Park along the way.

(So, lucky me.)

It was a lovely weekend, sun-filled and sparkling. At Gloria Ferrer — reached at last after careening around the back roads not lost necessarily just not exactly finding it for awhile — we sat in the sun sipping champagne and devouring cheese and hazelnut-cranberry crackers and the appropriately named “Dirty Martini Dip.” We looked over the brown hills and talked of weddings and sustainably grown food and baked goods and wine and maybe even a book or two, the breeze warm and sweet against bare arms. It was so nice to be outside we skipped the tour and ordered another bottle instead: definitely the right choice.

Back home there was lots of cooking of course: breakfasts of scrambled eggs with fresh herbs and feta, french toast made from the bits of leftover baguette, roasted potatoes drizzled with olive oil and rosemary, blueberry-buttermilk cake, a decadent fruit salad, lots of coffee. We ate every meal in the backyard, listening to the birds and cajoling the neighbor’s cats to visit.

Saturday night we landed up ’round 6:30 starving and in need of more wine so we all just set to it in the kitchen. I love that my parents’ kitchen — all granite counters and room to breathe — is large enough to do that; in my apartment kitchen two feels like a crowd (unless, of course, you’re close) and I usually end up doing most of the cooking myself just because it’s easier. But there’s something inexplicably sweet about cooking with others, especially when they’re such good cooks and love food as much as you do.

While I swirled chard (that I didn’t have to chop — fantastique!) with red onion and feta someone opened a bottle of wine, someone else sliced bread and plated up the cheese, somehow the table was set without my noticing, and it all came together in a flash.

We ate

cheeses and hummus, with bread
big green salad with home made bread crumbs
penne with chard, feta, and toasted pine nuts

which was simple and satisfying and just right.

[Dinner, June 2009.]

Oh, delicious weekends! Why-ever must you pass so quickly? I’m left this morning wondering where my breakfast mimosa has hidden itself and cursing the infernal fog that once again has blanketed San Francisco. I’m already homesick for those few days and would like some more very soon, thank you.

I’m also missing a slice of the cake I baked — a riff on the berry-buttermilk cake published in last month’s Gourmet and which my friend took home the last slices of. It’s a perfect breakfast nibble, laced with buttermilk and rife with berries but not overly sweet. I would argue it’s best enjoyed outside in the sun with friends but you could also, say, make it for Father’s Day brunch or pack it up and take it with you to work for a mid-morning snack or or or. Pretty much it’s quintessential summer in a baked good and makes me think of early mornings hiking out along a sea-trail or a lazy afternoon canoeing on the Russian River, trailing fingers and toes in the warm water.

Well, it’s very good at any rate. I think I might have to bake another this weekend to herald the true start to summer — sun not required (but, please, so appreciated).

Blueberry Buttermilk Cake, adapted from Gourmet, June 2009
The original recipe calls for raspberries but I substituted blueberries because I didn’t have any … next time.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
1 cup fresh raspberries (about 5 oz)

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat butter and 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then beat in vanilla. Add egg and beat well.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined.

Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter raspberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 Tbsp sugar.

Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.

Sometimes I forget that I like sweets. I honestly do. This may seem an odd statement from someone who bakes as much as I do — a travesty, really — but I swear days will go by when I won’t have as much as a cookie crumb. Pints of ice cream can languish in the freezer for a month or more (unless my brother comes to visit) until I dig them out from under the freezer burn and toss them half-empty into the trash (terrible, I know). I do indeed bake often for friends, loved ones, and office-mates but for myself? Not so much. I’m usually the girl reaching first for the potato chips.

But yesterday — oh, yesterday. I woke up fairly early for a Sunday and skipped yoga in favor of reading the the paper and drinking tea. I put on a few loads of laundry. I felt the ocean breeze come in through the screen sweet and clean, and so laced up my running shoes and ran and ran until I’d run 8 miles in a slow meander through a sun-filled Golden Gate Park. It was marvelous.

Predictably I turned up home again sweaty and starving. I stuffed myself on leftovers (lentils with feta, if you must know) which didn’t really fill me up all the way so I also had a plate of blue corn chips and avocado topped with melted cheese and a tiny bit of sour cream. I drank a lot of water and sat in the park for a good half-hour until the wind pushed me back inside. I simmered vegetables for a vegetable soup and started mentally preparing for the week ahead.

Then I made milk chocolate pudding.

I’ve written about this pudding before and I make it every so often as a little treat for myself. It’s just for me, you see, because it’s not the sort of thing you can really pack up and bring in to work to share (though believe me, I would if I weren’t so absolutely addicted to the stuff I want it all to myself). And after running all those miles I figured I deserved a special something — needed it, really.

All you do is whisk cocoa powder, corn starch, a bit of sugar, milk, heavy cream, and milk chocolate together until it’s thick and bubbling. Then you stick in the fridge for a few hours, meanwhile whipping some cream, until it’s cold and fudgy and impossibly rich. If you have some strawberries from the farmers’ market those probably would taste quite divine strewn across the top, you know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

This is not particularly healthful. It’s not low-fat. Heck, it’s not even difficult to put together. But it’s also one of the most delicious, decadent ways to end an unexpectedly sunny Sunday — with plenty of leftovers for the grey Monday that’s sure to follow (and this morning did unfortunately dawn once again fog-filled and austere) — I can think of.

After dinner I ate my little dish of chocolate piled high with whipped cream while sitting in my comfy blue chair by the window so I could look at the moon (did you see the moon last night? It was so fat and full, shining out like a mad yellow beacon over Alamo Square Park.). I scraped my spoon very industriously against the glass to get all the last bits of chocolate and I’ll admit it: I may have gone back for seconds, thus negating all the good calories burned from my earlier run.

But sometimes I think that’s OK.

For a long time I cooked for two. I cooked for two because I enjoyed it and because that’s how my situation was and also have you heard? I really, really, really like to cook for others. I love the entire act of it, from planning even the simplest Sunday meal of tomatoes simmered soft and slow with white beans, roasted potatoes, and green beans from the market, to actually cooking it to then sitting down together. It’s the little ceremonies, you see. Food so often is meant to be shared.

Yet there’s also something infinitely special about cooking just for yourself. What would I really like tonight? I asked myself yesterday afternoon while looking at the vegetables crammed into the vegetable drawer. What would make me — just me! — happy to eat later? This may initially be a strange concept for those of us who are used to thinking of others first but trust me, once you start doing it you won’t be disappointed. It may even lead to nights of roasted cauliflower and bread spread with good cheese, homemade ravioli and garlicky tomato sauce you devour so quickly it’s good you don’t have worry about saving a lick for anyone else, or a sweet potato baked until caramelized and bubbling topped with a bit of black beans and salsa because that sounded good on the bus ride home — and these are quite fantastic nights, all told.

It’s actually not a bad life at all. In fact, it can get a little addicting. Me me me! I think now. I shall treat myself to as much feta as I can stand because I can! Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever be convinced to share again (oh, I know I will, especially if chard is involved). Of course I do and will still have dinner parties and cook for friends and and and, but this cooking for me just because? Right now it’s kind of nice, is all.

Last night, for example, was a perfect illustration. I was wishing for a bit of sweetness to end what really had been a very sweet, if simple, day and baking for once didn’t appeal. So instead I made a delicious and nourishing soup to soothe my muscles and contrary stomach (long runs sometimes do that to me), which was exactly right. And I filled up my apartment with the delicious scent of cream and melted chocolate and it was just the thing I wanted, even if I didn’t know it at first — oh, just because.

Milk Chocolate Pudding, adapted from Gourmet, February 2007

2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 oz. fine-quality milk chocolate, chopped (or whatever you have in the pantry)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk together sugar, cornstarch, cocoa powder and a pinch of salt in a heavy saucepan, then whisk in milk and cream. Bring to a boil over moderately high heat, whisking constantly, then boil, whisking, 2 minutes (mixture should be thick). Remove from heat. Whisk in chocolate and vanilla until smooth.

Transfer to a bowl and chill at least 2 hours, until cold (surface may be covered with wax paper or plastic wrap to prevent skin from forming). Can be chilled, covered, up to 3 days.

Serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream.