Too busy. Too many responsibilities. Too exhausted. Too {whatever}.
Saying no is easier than saying yes, nearly always.
No opens your time, freeing you to do just about anything: closet-cleaning! sock-mending! pie-baking! bath-taking!
Yes creates obligation -- to act, to participate, to expend effort one way or the other.
No is freedom.
Yes is commitment.
I'm really good at saying no.
Watch this:
No, thanks. I'd love to, but I can't. Sounds like an incredible opportunity! Sadly, I have to decline because of t, u, v, w, x, y, and also z.
...
I said yes.
And on Sunday, I leave for Israel.
When the Ministry of Tourism for the State of Israel invites you to learn about its country's food first-hand, you don't say no. You don't opt for closet-cleaning, sock-mending, pie-baking, or bath-taking. You pack your bag, you grab your passport, you mail your ballot, and you say the only thing an American Jew who has never been to Israel and who writes about food for a living says to such an invitation.
That's the first thing I noticed. One sparkly blue, one goldish, one pink, and so on. She wore frayed jeans and cowboy boots. She had rings on her thumbs. But I noticed her nails first.
Then I saw her phone.
It sat on her purse, shoved under the seat in front of her. When we reached elevation, she bent over to fetch it. This teenage girl, right across from me, in seat 10B, now clutched her phone.
What I'd noticed before, while the phone lay beyond reach, now became clear. Her phone was wrapped with a thick band of masking tape emblazoned with these words:
HEALTHY {gym, food, don't bite nails}
It was a private note, in public view, penned in thick Sharpie. A reminder to hold herself accountable. A teen girl's checklist, and aspirations, in 6 words flat.
I didn't know this girl, this fellow passenger on a short-haul flight. But she moved me. With her long hair, her stylish clothes, her painted nails, her pretty face, this teenager -- maybe 16? 17 years old? -- moved me with her imperfection, and her desire for betterment.
I wanted to talk to her.
To tell her she was doing a good job.
That her nails looked great, and long.
That her body looked fit, and strong.
That she was doing everything right.
But then I'd add one thing. Just a small tip. That despite her hard work, and her determination, and her goals, and her masking tape, she could still, on occasion, indulge -- if she felt like it.
A cookie's okay, every now and then.
Just make it a good one.
...
Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies with currants, allspice, and fleur de sel
You'll see Tollhouse's influence here. That said, I've doused these cookies with allspice, speckled them with currants, reduced the sugars, and blended in oats. Because I needed a ton of cookies for a potluck and various gifts, this recipe yields a lot. Please make the full quantity of batter, and freeze most in balls after scooping, or else cut the recipe in half. Just don't forgo the fleur de sel on top.
Makes 110 cookies
2 cups (dried) currants 3 cups all-purpose flour 1-3/4 cups old fashioned rolled oats, pulsed a few times in a food processor (do not turn to flour) 5 teaspoons ground allspice (I used Jamaican) 2 teaspoons baking soda 1-1/2 teaspoons sea salt 1 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 cup granulated sugar 1-1/4 cups brown sugar 2-1/2 teaspoons vanilla 4 eggs, at room temperature 3 cups semi-sweet morsels Fleur de sel, for sprinkling
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line several rimmed baking sheets with parchment or silicone liners.
Bring a kettle of water to a boil.
Place the currants in a small bowl. Cover with boiling water. Let stand while you prepare the batter.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, oats, allspice, baking soda, and sea salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, two sugars, and vanilla until creamy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated.
With the mixer on low speed, beat in the flour/oat mixture in three additions. Remove the mixing bowl from its apparatus.
Drain the currants and pat dry with paper towels. Fold the currants and chocolate chips into the batter, sweeping the bottom of the mixing bowl to ensure you've incorporated any floury bits.
Using a 1-1/2 inch scoop, divide the batter among the prepared baking sheets. (Bake as many as you want. Freeze the remaining scooped, unbaked dough until hard. Then transfer to a freezer-safe bag and keep frozen until ready to bake.)
Bake in the upper two thirds of the oven (not on the bottom rack!) for about 12 minutes, until golden brown, reversing the baking sheets halfway through. Sprinkle with fleur de sel while still warm.
I think about magic carpets, and where they'd take me. I'd cross borders, for sure, and boundaries. I'd move from my comfort zone to my uncomfort zone. I'd go far.
To places that shock my system, with vistas so wide I could see peace, and eternity. Where people speak way too fast, in tongues I can't understand. I want to hear them chant.
Then they'll smile, and I'll smile back, and we'll all go eat eggplant.
Because in this vision, there's always eggplant. It's just there, on a cloth-covered table, a table so low it floats on the floor. There's eggplant with garlic, eggplant with yogurt, eggplant with pomegranate molasses and honey and sumac. There's other stuff, too -- a curvy pewter teapot, a cavernous bowl filled with bright, green pistachios.
Try one. They're warm.
Look out the window. The light's different here. It's pale orange, like a cantaloupe wrapped in gauze. Melon-light that makes the streets glow, that makes faces kind.
Close your eyes. Can you see it all? Are you with me?
Escape the black and white.
Move towards the color.
Grab your carpet.
Let's fly.
...
Recipe for Eggplant with Coconut, Mint, and Pistachio
Eat these little disks like soft tacos. Just fold them gently and pop them in your mouth, one by one by one. If you have a mandoline, it makes slicing the eggplant into neat, thin slices very easy. If you don't have a mandoline, please don't sweat it. It hardly makes a difference.
Serves 8 (ish), with some coconut mint topping left over (store airtight)
1 globe eggplant of fairly uniform thickness, unpeeled, sliced between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick 2-1/2 tablespoons olive oil Salt and pepper 1 cup (unsweetened) desiccated coconut 1/2 cup unsalted pistachios 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line 2 to 3 baking sheets with parchment or a silicone liner.
Drizzle the eggplant slices evenly on both sides with the olive oil, rubbing in with your fingers. Season with salt and pepper. Arrange in a single layer on your lined baking sheets. Bake for 10 minutes, or until nearly cooked through.
Meanwhile, make the topping. In a food processor, combine the coconut, pistachios, cardamom, mint, and a scant 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper. Pulse about 10 times, or until finely ground.
Drop the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Flip the eggplant slices (if you feel like it) and sprinkle evenly with the topping. Return to the oven for 5 minutes, or until the topping is lightly golden. Serve.
We will be serving a complete, 5 course meal from Ripe, followed by a potluck dessert buffet.
We will drink festive libations. Talk about fruit. Commune with vegetables. Discuss life. Get to know each other. Share stories while we share a meal. Then I will do a reading and sign some books with the neatest handwriting I can muster. But please: make sure I don't drink more than one glass of wine. I am a Notorious Lightweight. Note the capital N and capital L. Now imagine them highlighted. And in 34 point.
Many thanks to my friend Kim Burnell, hostess for the evening. She's the owner of a home with what I understand to be a stunning edible garden in Orange County, California. And she's generously opening her garden for this special event on Saturday, July 21.
If you live in the LA / Orange County area, or know folks who do, please pass along this invitation. While anyone may attend, you get first dibs. Bring a friend, or three.
And if you don't live in Southern California, but you do like the idea of hosting a Ripe party sometime in the future, please let me know. I'm game to exploring similar parties in other cities.
I wake to the sound of Anita's laughter, and a pair of white slippers outside the guestroom door.
But, wait. Let me back up.
This past weekend, I was invited to Seattle's Book Larder, where my friend Dana is the Culinary Director. I was thrilled, as I'd heard such good things about this charming new shop, with its bright blue walls and its cookbooks galore. When I arrive, I want to live here, set up house in the store, and never leave.
But I'm not here to live; I'm here to speak. And I start to doubt. Who will come to this signing? Will five people? Will ten?
Thirty minutes before the event, the store's staff starts setting out chairs. First, a smattering. Then a few more. Soon, the space is filled with 20, 25 chairs, and with each unfolding of a new one, my heart dips further into its pocket. I don't want that chair to sit empty. Or that one. I don't want them all to sit empty, for god's sake. I don't want to let these folks down.
But then, somehow, the door hinges open, and people arrive. All the chairs fill. Latecomers stand in the back, and on the sides. Who are these people? And why are they here on a sunny spring Sunday?
Thank you for coming, says Lara, the owner.
And so it begins.
...
When it's all over, and we sell out of books (happy!), and I give final thanks, and I say my goodbyes, I arrive at Anita's. She feeds me pie, filled with sweet nectarines, topped with tender pastry stars. Her friend Libby hands me a cocktail, something cool, with gin and berry syrup. I sip it slowly, until the ice clinks alone.
A few hours later, I want to take Anita out. A proper dinner, to thank her for putting me up. But she reads my face; she sees my tired eyes. Sit, she says. So I do, on a tall chair in her kitchen.
She cooks for me, this friend from my past, and my present. Potatoes with hard-cooked egg, a bowl of bright greens, couscous with apple, and roasted mushrooms.
Just briefly. Nothing torrential or dramatic or tree-downing, but it rained. And the world was quiet. And I sat in a chair and read a book. Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. It's dated, for sure, but several friends recommended it, so I'm giving it a go.
So it was quiet, and I read, and it rained, and I took a walk. And all of this may seem very mundane, but I've got to tell you, it was momentous given the chaotic state of these past few weeks. Everything is good, wonderfully good, but that quiet hour fed me like a bowl of warm soup.
I'm home now, scrambling to catch up, and the hours slip and slide. Head down, keyboard out, shoes off, back hunched, I type until my wrists ache. I'm grateful, if addled, in this state of overwhelm, a state welcome and unnerving, familiar and exotic.
I close my eyes.
I hear birds.
I listen.
Remember the quiet, they trill, softly.
It will return.
And you'll wish, once again, for the thunder of today.
...
Recipe for Avocado with kumquats and walnut oil
When I have no time to fix a proper meal, I fake it by combining two or three things. I take my plate outside and turn my face towards the sun. Just 5 minutes of peace, 5 minutes of fresh air, 5 minutes of sky, and I'm ready to return to my desk.
1 avocado Handful of kumquats, sliced Walnut oil
Eat slowly, outside.
...
Come see me in June in California and Seattle. Here's where.
I'm popping by to invite those of you in New York City to come help Paulette and me celebrate the launch of our cookbook, Ripe: A Fresh, Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables. You've seen the Ripe cookbook website, watched the video trailer, and perhaps noticed a bit of early press. We feel very blessed by the warm reception the book has already received, even in its pre-publication phase.
Now that the release date is officially here, I will celebrate by pretzeling myself into a coach airline seat and eating snacks for five hours. If you hear someone mumbling incoherently in row 13, please say hi.
You are all invited to swing by Rizzoli Bookstore for the kickoff signing and toast. I would love to meet you, and I know Paulette would, too. Details are in that top photo. Rizzoli Bookstore is located at 31 West 57th Street in midtown.
In addition, we will both be signing our book at the IACP Book & Blog Expo on Sunday, April 1 at 82 Mercer Street from 1:30p-4:30p. (Tickets to the Book & Blog Expo run $10 and can be purchased online). There will be more than 100 cookbook authors signing books that day, so you're sure to get your money's worth.
Finally, I do have plans to be in Maine, Boston, Philly, Portland, Seattle, and at several venues in the SF Bay Area over the next few months. Our Events & Signings page has all the details, and will be updated regularly.
And thank you. Did I say that already? Thank you for your support. It means more than you know. More, even, than lip balm on a long-haul flight, and lip balm means very, very much to me.
With affection and sincere gratitude~ Cheryl
{{Thank you to the Running Press design team for creating such an artful invitation to our Rizzoli kickoff. Thanks, too, to IACP for permission to use the Blog & Book Expo photo.}}
If I close my eyes, I can see Rouen.The old town square, the cathedral that stretches towards the sky. I feel the awkwardness of my host father, whose little mustache makes me uncomfortable, whose eyes dart this way and that. I try to pretend I'm not allergic to the family cat. One day, I'm given a plate of meat so unusual I cry.
But discrete moments of tenderness during that summer of my sixteenth year stick with me. On the day my belly aches, my host mom brings me mint tea; she sits with me as I take small, tentative sips. Fourteen-year-old Babette brings out her radio, and we sing into fake microphones like sisters. At night, I sleep upstairs, in a room with an angled ceiling, a fact that, while I can't explain why, makes me feel very grown up.
A few weeks later, the family drives me to the train station. We say our goodbyes. We keep in touch for a little while after -- a year? maybe two? -- but soon these ties unravel, like a piece of frayed burlap that sports more holes than fabric. Do they ever think of me?
Apple products -- hard cider, Calvados, and flaky apple pastries -- are big in Normandy, the region where Rouen sits. It's also probably the first place I ever had a buckwheat crêpe, with slightly crisp edges and a dark, mysterious flavor my American palate hadn't encountered before.
I've tried making buckwheat crêpes at home -- I made these ones last week from a recipe I found in The Gourmet Cookbook -- but they only get me so far. I sauté the apples with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon until they warm and start to collapse. I make the crêpes as directed, and they are lacy and "successful" and fine. But I'm not in Rouen. I'm not sixteen. I'm not a foreign girl in a magical land with a cathedral just outside my door. I'm not on the precipice of something I can't see.
A tightly run, highly organized press trip is many things: fun, entertaining, and broadening. If you're lucky, you'll get to experience the very best a particular region has to offer.
And that’s great. But it’s only part of the story. Oregon is an entire state, where there are kind people and jerks, sunny days and rainy ones, up-and-coming artists and those who can't make ends meet no matter how hard they try. To pretend otherwise, to pretend that this place is somehow uniquely devoid of the crime, poverty, hunger, and unemployment present in every other state of the U.S. would be silly.
A colleague of mine who has lived in Oregon for a decade and a half referred me to this article published just last week. Titled "Why are Oregon's children so hungry?," the piece notes that twenty percent of the state's population is on food stamps, and Oregon has the highest rate of food insecurity among children in the U.S.
And yet, she notes, the mayor of Portland is actually quite proactive in trying to combat these trends. "He's doing amazing work in making sure people at risk, in Portland anyway, have access to fresh local food. He's building orchards, taking the city's fallow land and turning it into gardens, getting funding for food stamp matches at farmer's markets, and even grows vegetables in his yard to give to the neighborhood." Pro.
There's also a high rate of homelessness: con. And yet, "Most of them,” she says, “come here because the assistance for the homeless is better here than elsewhere." OK, so, pro. Meth is a big problem in the state: con. And yet, treatment programs are available: so, pro.
I'm writing all this simply to provide some context -- a bit of a reality check, if you will -- for the wonderful food, wine, and genuinely impressive culinary artistry I encountered. It’s great, but let’s keep our feet on the ground while we enjoy it.
On to the food. As before, the descriptions below correspond to the slideshow above.
Father-daughter team Erica and Bruce Reininger of Arrowhead Chocolates represents the merger of two generations into a single, family-owned company. Bruce was a fish biologist, then a logger, then a web designer, and then he decided he wanted to learn how to make chocolate. So he studied like mad to master his craft. Erica is his apprentice. A graphic designer by trade, she helps her father create beautiful chocolates in the family's 1,500 square foot shop in Joseph, a small town in Eastern Oregon. Erica and Bruce taught us to make the dipped salted caramels pictured in last week’s slide show.
Jenn Louis of Lincoln Restaurant and Sunshine Tavern appears next. A former caterer, she operates two successful restaurants (her early efforts a few years ago tanked with the rough economy). In 2010, she was named a semifinalist by the James Beard Foundation for Best Chef Northwest. Her grilled octopus with mizuna, cucumber, and pimenton was outstanding.
Cousins Kim and Tyler Malek operate Salt & Straw, a “farm to cone” ice cream company that has enjoyed a sharp uptick in local and national interest in an extremely short time. The pair started with a cart on May 26, 2011, and upgraded to a brick-and-mortar “scoop shop” less than 3 months later. We tasted a flight of ice creams, among them lemon-basil sorbet, strawberry ice cream with coriander, and melon ice cream with coppa, an Italian-style dry-cured pork. Fatty, creamy, unique, and very, very tasty.
Stephen McCarthy is a distiller, and we got to visit the orchard where he sources the pears for his liqueurs and eau-de-vies. Because pears grow on the end of long branches, McCarthy and his staff affix bottles to the trees -- so that the pears actually grow inside the bottles. Walking the property is both amusing and surreal, with bottles hanging upside down everywhere you turn. Among several other fruit-based spirits, McCarthy’s Clear Creek Distillery also makes a Douglas Fir eau-de-vie, which is bright green, and very boozy. It tastes like a tree.
Another chocolatier brings up the rear of the show. David Briggs founded Xocolatl de David 2½ years ago with $50 from his paycheck as a savory chef at Park Kitchen. He grew his business and acknowledges the enormous amount of support he has received from other local chefs and artisans. His “savory-forward” chocolate-making style means he’ll incorporate ingredients like chiccharrones, which he makes himself, into his chocolates, many of which skate on the less sweet side. I’m not much of a pork-in-my-chocolate kind of girl, but I’m crazy for his two-bite Raleigh Bars. These blocks of pecans, nougat, caramel, and chocolate, with a hint of fleur de sel, are ridiculous, and I’ve been hiding them from my family.
The trip ended late Saturday night, September 10th. This meant I would be flying home the next morning, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a fact that gave me tremendous anxiety and pause. I got to the airport early, bought a cup of tea, and heard a woman playing guitar. I wandered towards the music, unchaperoned for the first time in days. A sign said her name was Gayle Ritt.
She sang Home on the Range, and it was slow, and beautiful, and haunting. My shoulders relaxed. Then she sang America, The Beautiful, sweetly, and softly. I breathed in. I breathed out. When I boarded my flight 30 minutes later, my stress was gone.
When I got home, I emailed her. I told her how much her music meant to me on that particular day.
She emailed me back.
I asked if I could use her music behind my slideshow.
And she said yes.
And that part – that part was totally unscripted. That part was pure Portland.
Last weekend, Travel Oregon invited me and about 20 others to experience the culinary scene both within and beyond Portland's borders. Disclosure: they paid for everything.
My hope is that even though my expenses were paid, I can still provide meaningful, informative food coverage of some locales worth visiting. I try to be thoughtful. I try to approach these experiences with a critical eye. But whether I've succeeded is ultimately for you to determine yourselves.
Below is a key to my photos, which appear in the slide show above. In a follow-up post, I'll introduce you to some local artisans and their food crafts, and give you my sense of this changing, growing, youthful, and very quirky city -- warts and all.
Frame 1. Lovely Mt. Hood on a clear September day. Kayaks drifted. Trillium Lake sparkled. Flowers flowered.
Frame 2. A picnic bench at Penner-Ash Winery (15771 NE Ribbon Ridge Road, Newberg, OR). Dusk. I wanted to lie on that table, flat on my back, and gaze at the sky.
Frame 3. Powell's (flagship: 1005 W Burnside, Portland). I wandered the 68,000 square-foot bookstore, then got lost walking back to the hotel even while using the turn-by-turn on my phone's GPS. This is not unusual for me.
Frame 4. Dinner at St. Jack (2039 SE Clinton Street, Portland), named 2011 Rising Star of the Year by the The Oregonion. Highlights included the crispy-salty frites, chicken liver mousse, and...
Frame 5. ...a dessert of plums and vanilla poached pluots.
Frame 6. I like tea. This is no surprise. Portland is home to a fine little shop called Steven Smith Teamaker (1626 NW Thurman Street, Portland), which I'd toured back in 2010. Pictured is one of their herbal bags (Meadow?). I'd like to tape it above my desk, for art. It's prettier than what's up there now, which are some crappily framed postcards I bought when I was 17.
Frame 7. Dr. John Kallas led us on a leisurely forage through the woods and took care to point out several leaves and berries that would cause hemorrhaging and instant death should we consume them. I'd had romantic visions of piling a wicker basket high with chanterelles, or pretty twigs, but there was something equally pleasant, and less taxing, about listening to him speak knowledgeably about huckleberries, thimbleberries, baneberries, and cow parsnips, the lower stem of which can be peeled and eaten like a banana. I bet you did not know this.
Frame 8. A foraged salad at Timberline Lodge (27500 E Timberline Road), a ski lodge founded in the 1930s in the throes of the Great Depression under Roosevelt's New Deal. If you're an architecture buff, you'll enjoy this place and its historical importance. There were a lot of old people milling about, but that didn't faze me because a) I enjoy old people, and b) I was fed a salad of smooth yellow violet, indian paintbrush, wild ginger, tiny tomatoes, bush berries, huckleberries, and verjusette. I swear I did make any of that up. Executive Chef Jason Stoller Smith knows how to make food plucked from the forest taste like it came right from the earth. Oh, wait.
Frame 9. He also knows how to make ice cream threaded with pineapple weed, which pairs especially well with peaches and something he casually refers to as vanilla-olive oil powder.
Frame 10. Picturesque McCurdy Farms orchard (2080 Tucker Road, Hood River). The pears here grow in bottles. I'm not kidding. They grow inside bottles. More on that next time.
Frame 11. Here is a pear. I do recognize that this one is not, in fact, growing inside a bottle.
Frame 12. This man is making burgers on the roof-deck of the Wieden+Kennedy Ad Agency, which handles accounts for Nike, Kraft, Target, and (dingdingding) Travel Oregon. The building itself is crazy-ridiculous and security guards about the same age as my kids are apparently keeping all kinds of corporate secrets very safe. I'm glad they were there protecting me, too, since I was very busy eating sliders.
Frame 13. Sliders! These are the beef ones from Chef Gregory Denton of Metrovino (1139 NW 11th, Portland). They had a fancy sauce. (The menu actually said "fancy sauce.")
Frame 14. A close-in, mildly disorienting look at a gorgeous freekeh salad with toasted hazelnuts, pickled cherries (!), and borage flowers (!) from Chef Scott Dolich of Park Kitchen (422 NW 8th, Portland). Freekeh is a grain. Borage is a flower. They are both real things.
Frame 15. Dark chocolate-dipped caramels with sea salt. I dipped them myself. More on those next time.
Frame 16. And this is the real spirit of Oregon right here. There were 3 unscripted moments in the trip, all on the last day. Passing this sign while boarding my flight home was one of them. You'll have to wait for the other two.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Cheryl Sternman Rule. I’m a Silicon Valley food writer with a lot to say and a keen desire to share it with a broad audience. I write cookbooks and freelance for numerous national publications, but here you’ll find unedited tidbits to chew on, recipes to try, and provocative food-related content ripe for discussion. Enjoy your stay.
To read my full bio and to see my print articles, please visit my portfolio website at www.cherylsternmanrule.com.
