Soufflé Days

It’s finally light again when we walk to dinner. I’ve contemplated not wearing a winter jacket for a couple of days in a row. The grassy expanse of the Battlefield stretches before me while I stretch, my run highlighted by low sunlight and a delicate breeze. The birds have started chirping again. At the risk of having spoken too soon, spring has finally arrived, calm in its early beginnings but bringing with it a cheerful liveliness, a feeling that, at last, the dregs of winter are over. I’ve started dreaming of beaches and salty oceans, of tearing crabs apart, fingers drenched in butter and feet still sandy, of dining on outside patios in the twilight, of citrus-specked drinks with straws.

Meanwhile, there’s still quite a bit of work ahead of me — and some cold, winter adventures as well. My summer activities have been limited to browsing recipe journals, dining slideshows, and travel articles. First there was a grapefruit curd inspired by a trip to Morocco on 101Cookbooks, and then there were whole fried mullet in the NYTimes Athens slideshow. And then the desire for a jar of lemon curd all to myself, to be standing in a kitchen full of windows, to be eating my mother’s strawberry shortcake. It’s around this time that I really start missing the busy morning markets and the fresh produce — the happiness of the farmers’ market finally coming back to life after endless weeks of pears and apples.

The last time I was home, my mother picked up a jar of guava curd for me. It was sweet and bright, yet surprisingly mild. I spread it between two layers of tender shards of shortbread dough, resisting the urge to press the grated shards into each other, which resulted in a soft, delicate crumb and a subtly tropical jammy center.

A couple of days ago, I bought a ginger pecan tart from a bakery at the Chelsea Market, which was a racket of food and dishware shops, bakeries and take-aways, and exposed-plumping industrial ceilings. The tart melded two of my favorite desserts in one, something I had never considered before. It had a cake-like gingerbread layer, topped with a thin layer of gooey pie filling and lots of nuts, and it was delicious for breakfast.

In other news, I have finished exams, spent the last few days in New York City, seen the Statue of Liberty for the first time, eaten moules frites and an incredible salmon avocado tartare, seen the Rangers and the Jets play, and now there’s only about three days before we’re piling into the car and driving to Montreal. Finally having a real vacation from school has been a relief as I was beginning to go a bit stir-crazy sitting around on campus, in front of my computer for two weeks straight. I’ll be back soon with some real kind of post, but for now, I think I need Microsoft Word and I need to go on a break.

Two days ago we were driving down the winding coastline, swinging around the curves in the road and pulling over to stand at the brink of the waves, the salty water, with the dusty sand between our toes. Yesterday, fives lanes of car lights shone in each direction in the dark on the drive to the airport. Before I know it, my plane will be landing in New York. And I’m not sure I’m really ready.

The other day, I gave a talk on food writing and local eating at my old high school. To prepare for it, I scrolled way back in the blog, looking at entries I had written a year ago, and then even some beyond that. It’s bizarre reading your own writing with a year or two in between you and it, it comes close to reading the writing of a stranger, except you have a creepy feeling that that person knows who you are, or rather, that you know that stranger inside and out. Around this time last year, I was finally coming home from Europe, with absolutely zero idea as to what I would be doing for the next few months. I was lost, terrified and very, very stressed, close to throwing it all in and becoming a ski bum except that it was too late in the season to be on the job-hunt. It seemed almost too late to start any kind of search.

Some people wander easily, it’s simply their nature. Other people struggle with order their entire lives. I like to think I come down somewhere in the middle, riding in the back of the car along the highway, my iPod on, staring out at the ocean, but my mind lost in its own thoughts, plotting, planning the path ahead.

I arrived in New York yesterday evening after a flight of sleep and unrest and with a sense of dread for the weeks ahead. A day later, several pieces I had been stressing about seem to finally be falling in place. I remember leaving here a couple of weeks ago high-strung, upset and desperate for a way out. But coming back, it’s calmer, easier to face the problems for what they were. And also harder to accept that my surroundings are not this anymore:

We never get much of a traditional Christmas around here. I’ve been running in shorts all week and this year there’s not even enough snow in the mountains to go skiing. So the parts we do have, we tend to do to extremes. We have five kinds of Christmas cookies (including one double batch). We got a tree that’s a foot taller than usual this year.

We made a lemon-themed bûche de noël instead of our usual gingerbread house; lemon sponge cake, rolled and filled with lemon curd, topped with torched meringue with lemon cookie elephants walking along the sides. Told you things were a bit alternative — the elephant cookie cutters have been in the family since before I started doing most of the baking. We also have a collection of flying dinosaurs, but that’s a story for later.

Tonight we’re cooking up seven kinds of fish, a tradition we’re apparently stealing from the Italians. This morning, we took the local grocery in full family-force and the intake includes salmon, tuna, whole crabs and crabmeat, scallops, prawns and mussels (we may be cheating and counting crab twice). Because of the Spare the Air alerts, we’ll be baking instead of our usual BBQing and we won’t be having a fire in the fireplace tonight. But I’m excited to recreate the stuffed mussels I had in Italy and to pan-fry potato latkes and crab cakes. Again with the mismatched traditions.

Even without the white Christmas, the air smells distinctly like Christmas. A run around our hill brings the slow setting of the sun as it settles into the misty, pastel sky. As it gets darker, the outlines of houses covered in lights start to appear up and down the hill on either side, and families wrap up their early evening walks, kids get carried home. Maybe we’ll drive out looking at the lights tonight after dinner. Maybe we’ll even convince Dad to let us play Christmas carols on the drive.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I woke up yesterday morning on the other side of the continent. That’s a dramatic way of saying that I am home in San Francisco for the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you had a wonderful (and delicious) holiday!