Laurel and Hardy-har-har

It’s my favorite herb, and I grow it in a pot on the patio: Greek bay laurel.
Would I give up my parsley, oregano, marjoram, chives, mint and rosemary for laurel? You bet. I think fresh laurel leaves combine all the lovely green flavors of those herbs, and then some.
Kalyn at Kalyn’s Kitchen has been urging food bloggers to talk about herbs for Weekend Herb Blogging for One Whole Year now, and happy anniversary, WHB. You can read a wonderful review of the past year’s WHB over at Kalyn’s this week, and the grand finale — in which we submit our favorite herb for the first birthday party — takes place Sunday.
So why laurel? Personal quirks, I guess. It grows easily for me. I’ve already said I love the flavor, which blossoms in stewing liquids; my favorite things to cook are soups and stews. There’s a lot of leaves on my tiny tree (not “bush”) so I can go a little overboard if I want to and never actually quite overdo it. Finally, laurel has been used historically as a clever savory touch in sweet foods, and there’s nothing I like better than adding a savory touch to sweet foods.
So chez Cookiecrumb, the laurel is victorious, and Bean Sprout gets to wear the wreath.
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Now I’d just like to piggyback an idea onto this post. I do have a lot of laurel leaves; enough to share a few now and then without stripping the plant bare. I also have generous amounts of other herbs and the like, and I know some of you do too.
I’m proposing that whenever one of us feels a little glut in the garden or pantry, we offer to see if anyone out there wants a little sample. Nothing huge; just enough to fit in a first-class envelope. A few leaves. A teensy bag of seeds or peppercorns. Some exotic salt. Anybody out there smoking their own paprika? Make extra. Like that.
I suggest that we give this impromptu project the name Share Package, and tag our posts with a Technorati Share Post tag. Then, whenever somebody wants to go snoop at Technorati and see if there have been any recent posts with the Share Package tag, they can see what’s being offered and put in a request (but remember, “offer good while supplies last”).
This is a low-key, low-tech launch of an idea that might just die on the vine. I don’t know. I’m not about to set up a clearinghouse that needs an administrator. Just consider it a random act of kindness and take it from there if you wish. (Although I do have a sekrit blog pal who just might have a far geekier approach to getting this thing BIG. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Especially the nudge part, Mrs. — oh, yeah, right. Sekrit. We’ll let you know.)
So for now. I have some nice, shiny Greek laurel leaves. I’d love to send out, oh, five or so leaves to, oh, ten or so people. (I don’t want to go broke being generous.) Any takers? You can find my e-mail address by clicking the cryptic phrase underneath my profile.
Let’s see what happens.

PS: If you decide to participate, remember that “Share Package” needs to be treated as one word, by typing Share+Package, when you convert it to a tag.


Technorati tag: Share Package

Terrifying

Bush waterboards Constitution.

Food Is the New Sex

Everybody's talking about food, even those who aren't necessarily food-talker-abouters. The SF Chronicle's culture/politics/granddaughter/cat columnist, Jon Carroll, today weighs in with his thoughts on food.

Food is the new black. Food is the new politics. Food is the new religion. Food is the subject of all conversation, the cynosure of all eyes. It's all about the food. Sex? It's over. Food: That's the topic that drives all humans mad.

You can read the rest here.
But his lead paragraph reminds me of an illustrated quip my dad sent me today, just by coincidence:

Never Mind What I Said About Fall

It's still summer in Northern California.
Cranky and I sat at a wooden picnic table today underneath the fringes of what we call around here the "marine layer" — a summertime phenomenon of coastal fog that laps against the shore and threatens to blot out a good tomato-growing season for many southern Marin residents. That's why, when we lived in Mill Valley, I kept all my pots of tomatoes on wheeled platforms: so we could chase the precious sun across the deck all day long, on those days that decided not to be foggy. Foggy days — heh — they usually tended to be windy too, and on those days, we had to upright the potted plants that were constantly blown over.
In Sausalito, where we had lunch today, the fog encroached over the coastal hills almost all the way to the bay, but we lucked out and had a sunny repast. A little windy. Sweatshirt required.
Cranky kept turning his face skyward (when he wasn't turning it bayward) and crooning, "This is just like being on Nantucket! I feel like I'm still on vacation!"
I said, "No, this is Sausalito. People come HERE to be on vacation."
What a beautiful place to live.
I'll get around to fall in a little while. Right now, allow me some picnicking.

A Big, Tasty Pot of Rummage

The image of that paella-to-be just wouldn't get out of my head.
On top of that, we had a sack of fresh peppers my dad had grown, and they needed using.
Two more incentives: A little freezer spelunking. It's always good to clean out and eat up old frozen food now and then, and there was a Spanish-style chorizo ready to go.
Plus, I had been berating myself for buying kitchen equipment and then not using it much. That pretty little paella pan we bought last winter has only seen the oven once before.
Well, it all added up. We had everything else on hand — rice, chicken stock, olives, garlic, onions, olive oil, oven-dried tomatoes, herbs from the garden, some funny fake saffron (don't ask) — and who cares if there's no shrimp or chicken. Oh, wait. I think there was some chicken in the freezer... Too late.
À la minute, baby.

Dyin' Gasp Dining

We have vowed to eat the dwindling summer crops for at least the next week, maybe the whole next month.
There's a glut of tomatoes at the market, and cucumbers are still doing well. The onions are from my dad's garden (delightfully mild, but with a still-discernable onion kick).
Voilà, panzanella. It's kind of like a big, unstirred gazpacho that you eat with a fork.
I died. I gasped.
I survived.
It was good.

Don't Make Me Open This Bag of Whup-ass

The first time I saw an ad for this bizarrely huge, scrunched leather bag, I admit I felt an unfamiliar luxe lust. I don't shop for this kinda stuff, ever. Prada is nada, say I.
But there was this unusually large, puffy bag, a new shape for fall, and oddly, I wanted it.
There was no real risk involved, of course. I figured it would probably cost $4,000, and I also figured I'd never be able to find one retail. I know how much some designers hate to see their clothing on soccer WAGs, even if said soccer WAGs can afford to PAY for the damn things. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not a soccer wife or girlfriend, and it's a safe bet I'd never be in a store where that kind of monetary damage might occur. And even if I was, that particular scrunchy bag would have long since been designated for someone far less proletarian than I. If they're even shipping that particular scrunchy bag to California.
So I began to wean myself from the desire.
When the Cathy comic strip started making fun of fall's new gargantuan purses, though, I felt much better. It's already a joke? Hey, maybe I just saved some mental money.


Then today's New Yorker arrived.
Whew.
Totally safe.
I don't have to want it anymore.

Over, Under, Sideways, Down

I loved the movie "Sideways." Enough to rent it a second time a couple of months ago and watch it again. It made me feel as if I'd personally gone on a trip to the central coast of California and plunged into its terroir.
That's another thing I love: the central coast of California.
Well, the central coast of California just happened to be on my itinerary last week when Cranky and I drove down 101 on our way to visit my parents.
Cranky especially wanted to take a sideways side trip to the little town of Los Olivos. In the movie, the two pathetic guys wine and dine a pair of lovely women at a candle-lit little restaurant in Los Olivos, and Cranky had a hankering to see if he could discover, and maybe re-create, that dream.
[Insert cartoon image of 16-ton weight falling.]
Los Olivos is horrible!
It's a "cute" town. Tourist town. Art galleries. Wine boutiques. Art galleries. Wine boutiques. A welded, rusted, metal goat or something. For sale.
Oh, and restaurants. With cruddy menus.
People! You're in an agriculturally rich, gastronomically informed part of the world, and the best you can come up with is Steak Diane?
OK, my bad (or Cranky's bad). We should know better than to try to capture a bit of fantasy. It's like the saps who yearn to bask in the romantic Tuscan sun, because of a best-selling piece of crappy pulp non-fiction they read one summer on an airplane (one of the only books for sale in the airport store). And then when they get to Italy, Tuscany is full of gawking American tourists all wearing cameras and in search of a palazzo and a hunky man.
Caveat: Not me. Also, according to my pal Monkey Gland, Tuscany (which he had previously dismissed as "Chianti-shire") can indeed be a wonderful surprise.
However. Cranky and I managed to find real food. He used his unfailing radar technique to pull a decent bakery out of a phone book, fergodsake. In Atascadero. Freshly baked baguettes, ciabatta, rustic loaves (all buzzwords, I know, but hey: Atascadero).
In San Luis Obispo we ceded snobbery and went straight for the local, historic meats. SLO is close to Santa Maria, where Santa Maria barbecue was invented (seasoned tri-tip, grilled over oak and sliced onto bread with sauce). It was good.
You just gotta move away from the Hollywood lights and sample the authenticity.
You gotta think sideways — or maybe that's right-side up.

Falling

Everybody's talking about it. Fall.
It's almost here, but of course, it's already here. Football. School. The new TV shows. That damn, perplexing pumpkin sun: hot one minute, ghostly the next.
I'm emotionally labile right about now, not only because I recently surged through a brain-busting bout of depression, but because this time of year — the changing of seasons — always does a number on me.
I love summer and really hate to see it go.
Summer 2006 was mean to me, though. A horrendous heat wave I think I'm still recovering from. That darned slide off the happy cliff. A regretable absence from the kitchen. The cruel death of my sole tomato plant.
So I decided to embrace fall. It's coming anyway; might as well jump in.
I'm looking at recipes for deep, earthy foods. Squash, the tail end of tomatoes, braises, even baked goods. I don't bake! But I might.
It's a delicious time of contradictions.
Read Shuna's compelling ode to Autumn here. She tells it much better.

Olive to Love Ya, Baby

Driving back up through Central California, we stopped in Paso Robles merely to buy a bottle of wine for a picnic in the local vineyards. Our last visit there had not been so happy. We were looking for love. We got it.
Turned out it was the weekend of "Paso Robles: Taste of Downtown," where local restaurants and food purveyors peddled samples of their wares in the beautiful town square — which just a few years ago had been the sad center of an earthquake's deadly devastation.
There used to be an olive store, but it had been so badly damaged, the place where it stood was now just a parking lot.
Not to despair. The store has moved, and is thriving.
But back to that town square. It was too early to eat, the chefs still fiddling with their comestibles. And that's when I saw the perfect picture.
It included olives! Not sure if they were local, but what a dish that guy was cranking up. "Paella!" said the exuberant chef, and — groan... Sadly, not ready yet.
Cranky and I did manage to buy our own jar of local olives and a pretty bottle of local olive oil, however. At the new location of the olive store.

It's Hard to be Original

Having learned to cook from my mother, it felt a little like bringing coals to Newcastle. Cranky and I had packed three partially prepared meals to freeze and lug down south in a cooler, with the intention of finishing up some quick dinners in my mom and dad's kitchen (which doesn't get used much these days).
I really sweated. Was I being impertinent? Would we offend my folks by splattering up their nice, clean kitchen? Would this food even survive the road trip and become anything presentable, much less edible?
Well, I think we did the right thing. The sausages rewarmed nicely and made good sandwiches. The grilled steak turned into a yummy beef stroganoff (with the help of the paprika that we remembered to pack). Luckily we had been taught by a butcher how to freeze cooked pork tenderloin: slice it first.
The tender little pork slices got the gentlest warming in the microwave and were delicious with a drizzle of what I thought was a rather daring, modern relish: blueberries with cabernet vinegar and (here's the brilliant part, according to me, who thought it up) black pepper.
While we were visiting, I happened to pick up a copy of this month's Sunset magazine. I appreciated its redesign (I don't look at Sunset often, but I think the return to the retro logo is recent.) I appreciated the work of the magazine's young new editor. I noticed all the old-school writers and editors seemed to have moved on, taking their frumpy Home-Ec sensibilities with them. But it was still dear, century-old Sunset: predictable and safe.
And then I noticed the recipe for Blueberries in black-pepper Syrah Syrup.
Sigh.
Anyway, mom and dad thought it was good.

Meat Cookies and Other Mis-steaks

It seems like Cranky and I packed in an entire summer's worth of grilling yesterday.
We are headed off for a visit with my parents, and thought it made sense to pre-cook some vittles to bring along for the ride. We figured, hey, since we're firing up the Smokey Joe, let's really make good use of those stinky charcoal briquettes (and yes, Biggles, stinky because they were doused with starter fluid, but honest, we think we got the chemical smell to burn off before we waved the first slab of protein in their direction... which is not to say that stuff didn't smell bad — at first).
Now, speaking of smells. Well, wait, let me backtrack. Last month I wrote about my Strange Pickles, of which I think the most successful was the cherries soaked in sage-mint vodka, vinegar and lavender. I know there were other flavors in that brine, but it wasn't until I decided to recycle a little of it as a marinade for pork tenderloins that I remembered the vanilla (because, d'oh, there were little pieces of vanilla pod drifting around the bottom of the jar).
OK, so the meat bathed in the brine for two whole days, absorbing yummy flavors and waiting for Cranky and me to finally fire up Smokey Joe. Which we finally did. And when the chemical aroma finally departed from the atmosphere, the meat met the flame — and suddenly it smelled like we were in a bakery!
Unbelievable.
So that's what makes cookies smell like cookies. Cooked vanilla.
It was actually a nice flavor for meat, though possibly in lower doses next time.
But we couldn't stop fooling with flavors there, not as long as we had other strange flavors on hand. (My relationship with food has been a tad wobbly lately. Perhaps I'm instinctively trying to jump-start things with potent sensations.) So, when the tenderloins were tender, we sliced them and served the meat with little dabs of sour plum jam. It was just jim-jam dandy. Meat cookies.
As for the rest of the grilling: I am so off my game. I overcooked the sausages and tried to pull the New York steak off while it was still raw.
No way on earth would I want to serve that kind of meat-abuse to my luncheon guest the next day, because... Well, because! That must be why I decided to buy untried, un-tasted tamales from a vendor at the market this morning that turned out to be simply awful and serve them to this fantastic guy who I forgot actually has his own tamale lady who comes by his house and...
I am so off my game.
Perhaps I need a vacation. See you in a few days.

On Food and Mood

What does a food blogger blog about when she’s lost interest in food?
Oh, I’m still interested in food, theoretically. And I know that I will soon be interested in food again: sensually, viscerally, actively, shoppingly, choppingly, steamingly, slurpingly.
Did I just write that torrid sentence? Damn. I miss those sensations of desire.
See, I’ve been slogging through a funk of depression for the past few weeks. Depression robs you of desire. It robs you of a whole lot more, but I’m a food blogger, so I want to talk about being robbed of my appetite.
If you look back over some of my recent posts, in fact, you’ll see I’ve largely been faking it about food anyway.
The only relationship I have with food these days, other than my habitual lunge for the food section every Wednesday and visiting my delicious blog friends online more often than I should admit, is nourishing myself.
And, to be honest, I’m not nourishing myself; I’m letting Cranky do it. He will do whatever it takes. He’ll spoon a little yogurt into me, warm up a bowl of unthreatening soup, tempt me with buttered rice. He knows me well enough that the other day he brought me some cole slaw, because he thought I might be ready for vegetables… and I managed to eat quite a bit of it. That’s a lot of texture, when just a few days earlier, even cottage cheese was too bumpy to put in my mouth.
Am I allowed to admit this? Have I broken a rule, a wall, a pact? Can we peek out from behind our shiny photos of lustrous roasts and come-hither cheesecake to show our honest shortcomings now and then?
This is me, at the moment. And it’s a torment, because for me, eating and blogging are inextricably entwined. If I’m not eating, what can I write about?
That’s why I decided to write about not eating.
When I say “not eating,” you should know that, of course, I am “eating.” But it’s a dull, reluctant parody of eating. “Receiving sustenance” might be a better term. Forced, dry chewing of balky, bulky mouthfuls; quick “gulp-fast-before-you-notice” swallows. Get the calories in. The fiber. The protein. Dutiful alimentation — it’s about as sexy as a dietician’s checklist.
I thanked Cranky yesterday for his “foie gras ministrations,” and by that, I certainly don’t mean he was plying me with goose liver. Picture me as the goose.
However, I am OK. This is not a cry for sympathy or advice. I have been through this before and I know that therapy/meds really do work.
Already I am improving. I just ate a massive, drippy, oily, salty, juicy plate of sliced tomatoes (bumpy cheese too), and every bite pulled me toward the sensations of desire I’ve been missing.
I am hungry for hunger; that’s a good sign.

Upbeat ending: I wrote the above post quite a few days ago, and I’m pleased to report that now my appetite is back. I thought it was an important topic, though, so I decided to publish it anyway, maybe get some conversation going. I’m still not banging around in the kitchen as much as I’d like, but it's nice to be able to say that I’M HAPPY AND I EAT. Whew. Slurp, smack, snarf.

Weekend Burka Blogging

Bean Sprout is so happy to join us on excursions, he literally jumps into his bag all by himself.
The bag is open on top, and can be flapped shut if we need to conceal him. Both ends have vents, and when he's tired of being cute and flirty, he can just snuggle down and breathe through his "windows."
It's a lot funner than it sounds. We've scoped out the pooch-friendly venues, and he loves making friends. He has his portable water and kibbles.

Meh. I'm too tired to try to twist this into a "Bush's Failed Foreign Policy" post.
Feel free to improvise.