[Near Golden Gate Park, February 2012.]

I like to think that the best part of traveling is coming home, especially when you like home as much as I do. Late Tuesday afternoon as the plane began its slow descent into San Francisco and I saw the brown/greenish hills of California for the first time in 10 days I let out my breath in a little rush. Home – my home – is beloved and my favorite place to be.

Though – don’t get me wrong here – I do love to travel. Oh yes indeed I do. It’s just that there’s nothing quite like one’s own cozy bed and one’s own kitchen shelves stacked with quinoa and udon noodles and the friendly organic market up the street you’ve been frequenting for nearly 6 years and your books and your stove, tiny and lopsided as it may be, and your favorite yoga studio and all else.

But, yeah, Costa Rica was pretty lovely.

[On the beach, Pacific side, Costa Rica, February 2012.]

I won’t lie: there was a lot time on the beach. A lot. There was also sun and sun and swimming and more swimming and kayaking and snorkeling and seeing dolphins and hanging out with little girls and speaking French and swimming some more and missing eating quinoa, like, for real. Rarely have I ever been so happy to come home to cook.

(Lest I overload with photos of my vacation – how rude! – I posted far too many to flickr if you want to peruse. Suffice to say it’s a deeply beautiful country and I hope to go back.)

Mostly I ate pinto gallo – black beans with a smattering of vegetables and white rice – and occasionally a pizza, many salads, and sometimes pasta. One night we did cook, for we stayed with friends in Samara and insisted on making dinner for them because that’s what you do when you stay with people: a vegetable couscous with chickpeas (I was sous-chef on this one) with tinned sardines on the side, a cucumber-avocado salad, and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Certain countries are easier for the vegetarian traveler than others, and while there was plentiful rice and/or beans, I got a wee bit weary of it and my body started crying out for fresh vegetables and whole grains and all my favorite little comfort foods. The first day back I promptly made a big pot of cauliflower-leek soup and quinoa with fried tofu, spinach, caramelized red onions, shiitake mushrooms, and ginger dressing. It was exactly what I wanted.

But – and this reveals the deep, dark depths of my insanity re cooking, which is quite similar to my deep, dark insanity re running – after about 3 days out of the kitchen I found myself missing it. Not like I wanted to cook a four-course dinner (although come to think of it it’s been awhile since I’ve done that and maybe I’d start first with a creamy celeriac soup and then a very light and small fennel salad with citrus dressing, followed by a lemony roasted chicken and roasted root vegetables and fluffy couscous with a lemon bundt cake to finish and — what??), but more like I wanted to go to the grocery store and see what was about. I carted packets of oatmeal with me in my pack and was happy to eat those along with cups of delicious and strong Costa Rican coffee on a few mornings, but I wanted more.

I wrote about my penchant for cooking whilst traveling when I was in Iceland 6 years ago – talk about a country (or at least Reykjavik) that is amenable to the vegetarian – and it still holds. I don’t feel like I’m really visiting a place unless I can get into a kitchen, either at the place I’m staying or at a friend’s house. There’s really something about being in another country for a short time but acting for that brief period as though you live there. I always get a secret thrill when I’m able to move through a supermarket, quietly filling my basket with products I couldn’t get at home, carefully counting out my local currency, and making a successful purchase — all without coming across as a gauche tourist. In Reykjavik, I was pleased and delighted to be able to buy tofu in the “Bonus” supermarket; in Norway there was a strange abundance of broccoli and wheat flours in the bigger markets; in Greece, there were two kinds of oregano potato chips from which to choose, and I tried them both; in Samara we found tomato paste and slightly withered vegetables and amazing avocados and olive oil and enough couscous to make a hearty meal. Going to my local Safeway the other day to buy orange juice, after the memory of my more exotic grocery shopping sprees, was somewhat deflating; life is back to normal, then.

I suppose a reason I love to cook when I’m traveling anywhere for any reasonable length of time, is because it makes me feel as though I’m a part of the place just for the while that I’m there. (Also not to be discounted: the money saved by not going out to eat.) If Greece to me is roast chicken and vegetables and feta salads shared with the best company, London is roasted potatoes and chickpeas with spinach (and curry flavor potato chips) and brie-and-butter sandwhiches, Maine is flourless baking (see also my NPR story re same), and Costa Rica is rice and beans and cookies baked in a gas oven on a 90-degree night to eat outside on the table swatting away mosquitoes.

So yes, ’tis very nice to be home again and I’m ever so glad to be cooking regularly again. And so hopefully there will more documentation of such here very soon.

Other things on my mind this blue and breezy Friday in San Francisco
- I’d like to try a sazerac sometime soon
- How having a little jar of homemade dressing in the fridge makes me much more likely to make a salad upon which to drizzle it (current favorite: a sesame-soy-ginger-garlic dressing paired with a green salad full of chopped brussels sprouts and carrots)
- Crossing fingers the vegan chocolate cake I just baked, via Joy the Baker, that’s a bit different from my usual works out as it’s for a small birthday dinner tomorrow night
- How I’m so glad to have discovered a new favorite yoga class, offered twice a week, that feels like a hidden treasure of sorts
- It’s spring. Or summer. Or I guess still February and we’re not having a winter this year.
- Marinating tofu even just in soy sauce even just for 10 minutes before frying it is so key. Forgot about that for awhile.
- It’s the weekend. Let’s make it count.

[Breakfast, January 2012.]

The tide has turned a little: it rained in the night and I woke up intermittently to hear the screen rattling in the frame as the wind tried to push its way into the bedroom. I dreamed strange dreams of the ocean and a wide, flat lake and turned over and turned over and turned over again … We leave for vacation in four days and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t counting the hours, at least virtually. The rain, plus vacation soon, has semi put me back to rights this week, and I am grateful.

The weekend was spent in Sebastopol, which felt like a vacation of sorts even though I worked a bit (cooking and photographing for an article, plus an enormous pot of cauliflower-leek soup). Saturday especially: for a warm, lazy, almost-hour we drank americanos at Hardcore Espresso and listened to funky Greek (I think) music and people and dog-watched and stretched out and felt the sun good and strong on bare arms. Then a swim and lunch at Gypsy Cafe, the replacement for the old Pine Cone diner and to which I was initially resistant because I like tradition and Main Street has changed so much as it is. But I’ve come around. It’s good. My first visit there I had a plate of sauteed chard, roasted tomatoes, poached eggs and toast, and this time we each had burgers (veggie for me) and sweet potato fries and I stole illicit sips of my husband’s beer when he wasn’t paying attention. Then a cinnamon cookie from next door, and a cup of coffee I didn’t really drink. REI, futiley, for a swimsuit. Another swim on Sunday afternoon.

I am pushing through the week. A yoga class tonight, hopefully, and chocolate cake for a mid-morning snack. I brought my lunch to work, which is leftovers – polenta with stir-fried red cabbage, onion, garlic and white beans – but of course all I want it something else though that want is non-specific. Maybe a bowl of fried brown rice? With cheddar?

In Maine we talked a lot about cooking, specifically finding motivation other than appetite to cook dinners night after night (and we all like to cook). They have it worse than me because they get up so much earlier – 5 a.m. a lot of the mornings – that by 5 p.m. sleepiness has settled in for the long haul and the thought of making dinner is probably the last thing they want to deal with. Except they do, of course, as most of us must no matter what time we get up, and so we discussed ways to circumvent the boredom of repetition (me: how much quinoa can I really consume in during the course of one week?) and also not spend three hours making a meal. Things like crockpots are employed to make beans from scratch (I am tempted, and still have some post-wedding Sur la Table gift certificates to use) or soup, a big pot of rice can be used in various ways throughout the week, sometimes beans on toast is just fine.

One thing they cook a lot of it is vegetable fried rice, because if you have leftover rice you can make it into another dinner. In fact, you might specifically cook a lot of rice so as to have leftovers for future meals. I am more the brown rice risotto type but one morning I woke up and as I brewed my cup of tea I decided to try it out for breakfast, though without vegetables because it was 9 o’clock and I wasn’t quite ready for the daily influx of greens. So I heated some olive oil in a frying pan, cracked in an egg and scrambled-cooked it, then added some leftover short grain brown rice and grated sharp cheddar cheese and black pepper and cooked it until the rice was warm and the cheese was melted. It hit the spot. I am now hooked.

Next time I plan to add whatever vegetables I have around to the mix: I probably will start with a chopped red or yellow onion, maybe some garlic, peas, spinach, a red pepper? The key I think is to scramble the eggs very lightly first, or at least to start them so when you add the rice the eggs are already cooked a bit; to add egg to rice coats the rice and is gloppy and sort of gross (in my opinion). You want those eggy scrambled bits to commingle with the rice (brown for me, and not basmati I don’t think). A garnish of scallions I bet would be delicious, and using Parmesan cheese too or instead of cheddar (I do sincerely love cheddar), and if you’re feeling decadent starting off with butter instead of olive oil would be nice. And make as many eggs as you’re hungry for – dinner may call for 2 per person. Plus if you switch up the vegetables incorporated each time it makes a nearly-new dish.

Today is grey and dreary but I can’t say I mind the rain for once; it’s possible a person can get tired of sun day after day. At least, we tire of repetition. Which is to say that the addition of fried brown rice to my dinner repertoire, while indeed a slight repetition of sorts, will serve as a welcome change to the polenta, the quinoa stew, the roasted sweet potatoes with black beans, the grinding task of coming up with something nourishing + wholesome + healthy + delicious every night. Not that I don’t love to cook. But you know …

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[San Francisco this morning, February 2012.]

Today: the sky a sweet, deep blue, warm for February. I am eating an orange. Trying to write an article. I just got ‘adjusted’ and now my right ankle is buzzing away not unpleasantly (I hope this means healing is occurring) and in a few hours will take the bus north across the bay to Sonoma County. I am exhaling. Sort of.

Lately I’m looking for inspiration wherever I can find it — in a new book, in a slew of flourless baking recipes, in my green tea leaves (swear), in cookbooks, in my memories of the clouds in Maine — and while it can be slow going sometimes it’s there if I just look around. Truth is, I’ve been feeling a bit bogged down with the day job and the endless routine of it all, leaving me feeling quite flat. There have been more nights than I should admit when all we’ve had for dinner is leftover (cabbage-chard-white bean) soup and grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, or vegetarian ‘sausages’ (and, ahem, chicken-portabello sausages), roasted fingerling potatoes, and a salad. Good, nourishing stuff sure, but not necessarily fodder for dreamy food writing (or blog posts).

Still, despite my slight winter malaise, I am mostly always cooking even if I’m not always writing about it. I did just bang out two pieces for NPR, publication TBD, which jostled me out of my rut a little even though it’s kept me quieter here, and last Saturday cooked for a laid-back dinner party after a long, lazy afternoon at the beach. Come to think of it, that afternoon really did wonders for my mental outlook despite my blasted achilles tendon: a good catch-up with old friends, lots of photography talk (if Emily is my cooking soul mate Randy is surely the photo equivalent), a pint at the Station House, a black lab to play with, and dinner to make. It wasn’t fancy – my dinners so rarely are these days – but it was good.

[Kehoe Beach, February 2012.]

[Also good was Saturday's weather. I mean, look at that beach! The weather out here right now is insane, in a good way.]

I roasted a chicken with lemon and onions and tomatoes and made a big pot of mashed potatoes (with buttermilk, and lots of butter), a salad, a chocolate cake, and a chard gratin. Oh, have I not mentioned this chard gratin before? A travesty. This was a product of poring over cookbooks in Maine a few weeks ago, specifically Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food. As the title suggests, most of the recipes contained therein are incredibly simple (yet incredibly good), sometimes to the point where you’re like … this is a recipe? I’m just roasting a butternut squash and pureeing it with some broth and calling it ‘soup.’ No matter; I look at recipes more as inspiration points anyway, and I certainly got inspired by that gratin.

As you may or may not know (but really how could you not?) I love chard. Love it. I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but, oh, there’s something about it. Nice and (naturally) salty with fluffy leaves and pretty white or red-and-yellow stems, it cooks beautifully in soups and stews, just on the stove with some garlic to pile on top of polenta, in my mom’s amazing pesto-potato lasagna, etc. etc. Yet a chard gratin I’d never tried and so it was an obvious choice. In Maine we used 1 bunch chard and 2 bunches of kale and I’d do that again; last weekend I used 3 bunches of chard and it was, as my octogenarian friend Josie might say, utterly divine.

I don’t have a photo because, well, I was cooking all that stuff I mentioned above. I’m planning to make it again next week for a small dinner party (which, err, may be nearly the same menu repeated – our secret), but I hate to wait that long to share the recipe because it’s the sort of thing you could make this weekend for your own dinner party or just because. It takes about 15 minutes of active work and then another half-hour in the oven which to me seems a small, and fair, price to pay for the result. One of the best parts about this recipe is that it’s easily doubled, probably tripled, too, and you can fool around with using different kinds of cheese, or bread crumbs, or greens, or whatever. (I’ve already made some adjustments such as eliminating the butter.) Get, you know, inspired with it. I know I will.

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[Winter beach, January 2012.]

In Maine, where my toes are chillier than usual and the clouds seem tangible (and puffy) enough to hold in your hands. The clouds here are different than anywhere else I’ve seen them: arranged across the horizon in great billows rather than wisps. The sky this week, clear for the most part, has been the purest, brightest blue, turning the river across the street into shifting shades of indigo and then grey when a storm comes on. I took a walk-run yesterday morning to the end of the street and back; the ice in the river whispered past creakily on its way out to the coast as I tucked my hands deeper into my pockets. The landscape is so different from what I’m accustomed to, but there is that same wildness, that same edge-of-the-land stillness I so love about California. If not for my truest love for the West I think I could see myself living here (well … maybe. There’s that whole deep-freeze thing.).

But: Maine. It snowed in the night and we woke today to sun pouring through the windows of the upstairs rooms; utterly gorgeous. A bluebird day* for real and especially special because I’ll never see one of those in San Francisco. We went for a swim at the Y (Kurt played basketball) and coffee in town and will cook and bake later — Emily, delicious appetizers and bread and drinks and icecream; Kurt the main meal; me a chocolate-hazelnut torte — a bit for my last night. I am leaving tomorrow and I … don’t … want … to go, though I miss my husband and it will be good to come home to rain and the 49ers game and my little comfortable things around me and not only in a suitcase.

We’ve eaten well this week as I predicted: sweet potato enchiladas with homemade enchilada sauce, the best marinated and fried tofu and roasted cauliflower and carrots and some sort of scrumptious miso? dressing I must get the recipe for, beans from scratch and brown rice, mushroom risotto and an addictive brussels sprouts salad with grapefruit dressing, a decadent dinner at Trattoria Athena where we drank a bottle of the wine we so loved in Greece lo these many summers ago and I ate a piece of tiramisu that, yes, was probably the best I’ve ever had. And I’ve been inspired, as I knew I would with new cookery ideas, the impetus to step outside my comfort zone a little bit, to delve back into cookbooks more particularly to make such things as an easy and astonishingly delicious chard-kale gratin that tastes perfect alongside a fluffy pile of buttermilk-mashed potatoes or even a quick saute of garlic and chickpeas and greens …

[Along the Kennebec, January 2012.]

I like to do that choose-a-word-have-it-be-your-year’s-intention thing each year if I can. Sometimes it’s easier than others. Last year’s word was ‘peace’ but after getting engaged in February and planning a wedding in seven months there wasn’t a lot of ‘peace’ of mind for awhile. (Though, if I’m honest, there was peace in other areas; so, win some, lose some I guess.) Now it’s well in 2012 and around the first, when I decided to attempt to find a word, I couldn’t land on one. None felt right, nothing fit. Maybe 2012 will be the Year of No-Intention-Word, I thought, but still … I hoped something would come to me.

And then today! it did. From this old, lovely house in Bath where I type this, my toes just slightly on the side of freezing even wool socks, Fotis the grey-and-white cat asleep in a pile on the bed behind me, the San Francisco classical station streaming over the Internet to keep me company whilst I work, my hands warm in fingerless gloves, and a cup of tea steaming to my immediate left, I have found at last my word: make. It makes so much sense.

‘Make’ surely could’ve been last year’s word but I shall consciously apply it to this year instead. Always I am making: food, cookies, little cards, plans. But this will apply too to new friendships; books; others things I can’t think of at this moment but which probably are mostly food-related (of course). Like: make new dishes. Open up the cookbooks more. I can broaden my scope every night, make dinner less of a chore and more of a learning experience and then hopefully new things (dishes, ideas, a more cheerful attitude) will come out of that if nothing else. That gratin I made on Sunday in a riff from Alice Waters (‘The Art of Simple Food’) was so good and easy – why don’t I ever even open that one too much? I forget to make the time (get it?) to do that. I must make sure to open my mind up a bit more in casting about for new recipes. Cookbooks, even if I never strictly follow the recipe, serve to jumpstart the creative process for me. Remember this. And other things.

And then there is this, which I may just adopt for my 2012 motto: You have your whole life ahead of you. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn’t forget it. — Bill Bryson

(I love that.)

There also are almond butter cookies.

[Almond butter - + other stuff - cookies, January 2012.]

Thanks to Emily I’ve delved into the world of flourless baking and am finding it a new challenge and a pleasure. I’ve come up with a pretty decent recipe for gluten-free brownies as well as a decadent chocolate cake and ginger cookies, and am realizing there are many treats out there that are naturally flour-free (pots de creme, custards, rice puddings, milk chocolate puddings and the like). But the best, the best, recipe I’ve encountered and then developed a bit is for flourless peanut butter cookies.

What to say? These cookies are absolutely addictive. I made a batch a week ago and brought them on the plane with me, restraining myself from devouring them all. Of course, once here, they didn’t last long and so I made another round yesterday with special tweaks that I think made it the best version so far (and which I’m saving for an article, but I promise it’s worth the wait). I just devoured one, in fact, with my lunch. I will make some again very soon to send East to my grandma for her birthday, to make it special (OK, will stop now). From a spare ingredient list — 1 egg, almond butter, sugar, baking soda — comes a thing of beauty: chewy yet light at the same time, not-too-sweet, rich with nut nutter … these cookies are all good. Every single bite.

As is Maine, and my time here. I am so loathe to go but know real life beckons with its own particular goodness … back soon, for sure.

*Bluebird day: The most gorgeous day imaginable. A bluebird day is a bright, sunny day after a fresh snowfall the night before.

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Tomorrow I go to Maine to visit Kurt and Emily, she of the biscotti pictured above and the delicious fresh-ginger ginger cookies sent for the holidays (no photo but trust me on this one). The last time I saw them in Maine was June 2010 for their wedding, and the last time I saw them in California was this past fall for my wedding, so, y’know, it’ll be nice to just hang around and talk about other things like … I don’t know … food.

Actually, we’ll probably talk about food most of the time. And the rest of the time we’ll be cooking it. I always learn something new when I cook with them — Kurt got me into red cabbage one February, and I feel foolish I’d never really tried it before I love it so much now — and I always leave filled with inspiration or at least a new way of looking at things. I forget that cooking with the right people is one of my favorite past-times. Too often I am solitary in the kitchen – or with a sous-chef to chop the garlic – gulping down water after a run and throwing the quinoa on to boil before jumping the shower. Vegetables are stir-fried quickly, a glass of wine is poured while the silverware is assembled, and dinner is served. We – or, to be honest, me – often see food as fuel around here, which it is, no doubt about it. I can be a terribly utilitarian cook. But given the opportunity I also like to slow it down and talk and experiment along the way.

So when I say I am very much looking forward to my week in New England that would probably be a bit of an understatement. I cannot wait, in fact. My bag is mostly packed, my books decided upon, my ipod fully charged. I’m looking forward to frigid mornings, the deep blue of the river across the street to accompany me on my walks, a new cat to meet and snuggle with, early bedtimes, an exhale into the quiet and peace that I always find there. There isn’t much planned other than to hang out (I hope this will help my poor legs to rest and relax themselves after all the prodding they’ve endured lately (chiropractors are fantastic but, ouch)) and, yes, to cook. Maybe some ice skating, too, if I’m lucky.

I hope to write a bit from there; New England has a special hold on my heart and it’s been far too long since I’ve made my way ‘cross country. But before I set off to Boston in the morning I wanted to leave a recipe for a soup I made the other night. I meant to write about it more poetically but I just got back from a swim and my mind, like my muscles, is all loose and warm and not so good for prettily stringing words together. But I will tell you that it was the exact thing I needed last night after an amazing, hard(ish) yoga class stretched my hamstrings to their edge and all I wanted after was shower, vegetables, sleep.

I started making a chard and white bean soup this fall with the last of the tomatoes, and I’ve moved on into winter with a variation of such but with the main ingredient being cabbage. My husband jokes that cabbage has replaced cauliflower as my favorite vegetable lately – and indeed they are of the same family – but I scoff at that. Cauliflower and I are tried and true, forever and ever amen. Still, I do love my cabbage. I’ve been stir-frying heads of green cabbage from Richard, who grows gorgeous things at Firme Farms, with a chopped yellow onion and lots of garlic and white beans plus some thyme or basil (dried) if I feel like it. Then I make a pot of polenta and pile it all on top and it is just! the perfect winter meal. (And come to think of it, perhaps inspired by my brother). The soup is very similar, but with more vegetables and in soup-like form; there’s onion, garlic, carrots, celery, white beans, cabbage, and a little chard, too. It’s nourishing and healthy and brothy and salty and full of good vegetables and damn, if I hadn’t eaten the last bowl for lunch I’d be slurping up some right now …

This means, of course, that I must make it for my Mainers when I see them. What kind of guest would I be if I didn’t cook dinner a few times? The rest of it hopefully we’ll cook together, with that brilliant view of the sunset outside the kitchen window to keep us company.

Catch you on the east side.

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