Let me call you meat heart

Every Year at this time, as I take stock of “the body situation” before receiving more delightful Valentines Day chocolates, it always seems there is more of me to love…and that’s really quite ok with me for a couple reasons.

1.) I feel truly cared for by a generous, creative, brilliant husband who creates food “filled with love” that he cooks and serves me on a bi-nightly basis. 2.) He likes my curves and I don’t mind them as long as I can still fit into my favorite jeans and tie my own shoe laces. NO, my favorite jeans are not the stretchy “pajama jeans” you may have seen of late on insomniac TV but I do wish I had been the one who thought of that idea first

If you are clever enough in this season to find yourself dating or falling in love with someone who knows their way around the kitchen, or maybe they have a modest interest in LEARNING, or they are just smart enough to have a decently stocked bar sans plastic red cups… you are a momofuku. It’s not a bad word, look it up mom.

If you are a food lover finding yourself in this situation, take the opportunity to explore any sort of culinary bent or talents you see emerging and help selflessly develop them so that you may eventually selfishly reap the benefits of their future skills and knowledge. Then invest in a treadmill or eliptical machine to work off calories while watching your nightly favorite food porn a la Bourdain, Zimmern or Iron Chef America.

An Added Bonus to the Culinary Gift: For all the ladies who may be reading this and are in a relatively new relationship – getting a guy a gift related to food will be much less threatening to him than anything implying a too intimate too soon “love” situation…and will be much less awkward for you if he doesn’t reciprocate. Even in this day and age – the way to a mans’ heart is still through his stomach. Start there and gradually work your way into his more vital organs like some sort of buttery, irresistible cholesterol with breasts. Make like a fantastic, prime, thick cut, rare ribeye steak – classic, simple and satisfying – and you will “meat” your match. (Insert groans here). But really, it works.

As a lady who ended up with an amazing guy, I have softened my skeptical view on Valentines day over the years and now generally view any opportunity to express my appreciation to him worth exploiting. I have found that either tools, books or kitchen supplies are the best gifts for my man, as they are actually used and appreciated (whereas even the nicest cashmere sweaters usually end up hanging on my side of the closet in short time).

Eventually, as time goes on and your lives intertwine, you will find yourselves even more on the same page regarding food, and that will translate to smoothing out other areas of your lives as well. This year at Christmas, I laughed out loud as I opened my gifts and realized he had bought me all the items I had considered for him: a potato ricer, a gnocchi board and the culinarily inspired song collection by One Ring Zero published in the book “The Recipe Project” . In return, I had purchased him the sausage making attachment for our Kitchen Aid Mixer, and the “Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing and Sausage Making” as well as the new Ferran Adria Biography “Ferran: The inside story of El Bulli and the man who reinvented food”. Our love and our passion is tied to the food we make that we feed and nourish each other with. It’s a spicy, exciting, always evolving sort of love life to have.

Seriously, all puns aside, you might ask “How does one start this process?” and to that end I have written down the perfect Recipe for falling in love in the Kitchen.

Step One: Peruse a selection of non-traditional, Kitchen Oriented Valentines day gifts starting here with  this selection available at a discounted rate on Amazon.com .  Skip the heart shaped girly stuff and move directly to knife sharpeners, a great knife, a boos block cutting board, grilling or pizza making accessories or some alder planks for salmon. Get a gift that makes him feel like a man – he doesn’t want to bake heart shaped cookies.

Step Two: Buy the gift (order it today!), make your first meal together (give him room to be creative don’t dominate) and sit down at the dining table with one lit candle and eat it together. Talk about what you like and what you would both want to improve. Plan the next meal.

Step Three: During dessert, be like a sweet and savory custard. Not too sugary, not too salty – he needs to want more. Keep your ankles crossed and be a lady but kiss with abandon. Repeat.

Don’t fuss over the details too much and in short time, love will bloom like a righteous souffle given the proper amounts of fluff, heat and space.

menu checklist

This past year has been a year of development, of exploring the possibility and realities of faith, of focusing my eyes out on the world instead of towards my internal conflict and frustrations. This outward focus has made it a little easier each day to throw off the covers, rub my eyes, fling the curtains open and let the sunlight into my life.

I imagine it must be what the feeling of flight feels like – the faith of taking the initial leap, the knowledge that you have wings that are ready to flex and a grasp of airflow and aerodynamics that lets you understand with your brain that everything will be ok. And still, this baby bird voice inside you is a little afraid of falling from the nest. But once you have taken the leap once, and soared on the wind, exploring the up drafts and downflows, the sudden drop and catch of wings on current, your confidence soars and you have this thrill in your chest of the KNOWING that you did it, you were right to think you could and then this joyful anticipation of doing it all over again.

This year, I have taken risks, I have studied my strengths, I have practiced my skills and honed them and focused them onto areas where I wish to be impactful in the world – education, encouragement, and empowerment of others.

Duck Carnitas Tacos

I have combined my love of food, passions for helping others and ability to develop relationships into a format where people come together to have dinner and conversation for a cause. The dinners are a forum, for creating good, for discovering possibilities of what individuals can do, and what community can do together to make the world a better place. The dinners are called The Soul Food Project and started off strong this past Saturday May 28th in a South Pasadena Backyard.

The anticipation and anxiety I felt about making them go well – it happens always on the morning of an event, when I feel this tightness in my chest and can hardly breathe. I’m always afraid of some unknown disaster that will befall an event and afraid of disappointing people and letting them down.  All I could do was pray that the outcome would be beautiful and release every other expectation. After 2 days of cooking and a lovely evening of feeding 20 unique and generous individuals, some who brought wine, some who took photos, some who insisted on helping in the kitchen, others who played host and hostess and made this group of practical strangers feel like family by the end of the night – I realized how little of the outcome rested in my hands and how much of it was contributed by each person who took the time to attend.

This dinner for a cause benefited Africa Heart an organization close to my heart, allowing one of their staffers, a dear friend of mine Steve Sacher to purchase an HD film and digital camera to take with him this summer to record the work they are doing there. The guests even generously purchased some of the jewelry made by the women in Kenya that we work with – that I had available at the dinner – a bonus I wasn’t expecting, allowing our donations to go even further towards the camera purchase.

Erin helping with appetizers

Moments like this, where I realize the success of an event is not in my hands, but in the hands of the one who planted the inspiration in me, and in the hands of the generous and kind guests who attend and donate with open hearts and minds, moments like this are moments of light that give me courage to fly. They are Moments of hope.

Thyme to eat your vegetables!

So “Why…” one might ask “would you go on a vegetarian diet?”

Two words: curiousity & boredom

For six years I have been making a monthly ritual of tearing pages of recipes from my favorite food magazines, Saveur, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Gourmet (until this year R.I.P.), Cucina Italia and Cook’s Illustrated. With coffee in hand and usually a dog on my lap, I have been carefully categorizing pages by type of dish (soup, salad, sides, meats, desserts, drinks) and seasonal availability in clear plastic sleeves in a binder. Over time, we have discovered some new favorites and amended yet more of them to make our own versions – yet I have rarely if ever used the myriad of delicious sounding vegetable dishes that somehow rose above the clutter to inspire me to include them in the book.

Well worn are the lard smeared pages bearing our favorite recipes of pie crusts, pork belly, beef marrow and hand made tamales. Partially translucent are the papers bearing scallop, fish crudo and tartars with vinegars and slight hint of truffle salt preserving the pages like time seasoned scrolls in the hands of a fatted monk reverently recording worshipful utterings to a God of flavor.

But any interloper opening the book to take a look at the crisp, tightly bound pages bearing the vegetable recipes, could blow the thin layer of dust from the plastic jackets and see clearly how they have been left alone, like ripe bulbs lying in wait beneath rich winter earth…until now.

This week I sat in my overstuffed chair, again with coffee, and removed every vegetable and vegetarian themed recipe I could find. Then I went through this months (and last months) issues and pulled out some additions – although they were more rare because it seems like everyone but me is currently focused on BBQ and Steak Grilling for June and July.  I laughed like an insider foodie veteran as I found recipes in this seasons publications that could have been exact duplicates from years past – specifically summery combinations like radish and corn, fennel and apple, avocado and tangerine, basil and tomato…is there really anyone in the world reading a food magazine who hasn’t heard of bruschetta before now?

The lonely ones

Piled together, the stack was more significant than I had imagined and as I curiously thumbed through them page by page, line by line, wondering how I would make “no meat” work for a whole month, I found myself getting hungry…and found some of the recipes were sounding actually, really appealing.

Maybe I’m spoiled, I know I’ve just been lucky to be able to be in the kitchen of an amazing chef for the last two months – as a specially accepted interloper at BistroLQ and LQ@SK – adding my organizational assistance for reservations, website updates and occasional wine pouring to the mix of legitimate food intelligent restaurant owners who were nice enough to let me hang around, probing everything with my wide “kitchen virgin” eyes, salivating over the intimate creation of 5 course prix fixe plates before they even hit the pass.

Being surrounded by such richness, such girth of flavor and culinary creativity, for me almost requires a vacation from the buttery joy-sauce of all that savory stimulation, like the irrepressible need to drink wheatgrass juice for a week after returning from college spring break at 19 years old in New Orleans.

Lately I have found myself standing in my kitchen, fridge door open, question mark on my face before dinnertime. “Chicken or pork? Beef shank or sweetbreads? Tacos or pasta” and none of it has made my stomach growl. We eat a lot of tacos, I’m talking about handmade corn tortillas with rich garlic oil, fresh crispy cilantro, lime chipotle seasoned chicken or grilled “from the Mexican market” carne asada and plump, creamy green slices of avocado topped with cotija cheese – these are not your mothers stale packaged taco shells filled with from-the-packet seasoned beef – these are tacos that make you want to cry with happiness and watch soccer.  Your eyes may, in fact fill with tears from the heat of the peppers but your tears are quickly calmed with a cold sip from your humid bottled cerveza. But lately, even the thought of these glorious tacos have failed to raise my heartbeat when considering supper.

Couple this meat boredom with the fact that in exactly one month, I will be devoting myself to a fabulous culinary tour of Italy and Greece, Rome, Naples, Sorrento, Amalfi, Puglia, Gythion, Kalamata, Athens and Crete – and it is my sincere desire is to rid myself of said boredom before entering what I consider to be the holy meccas of food tastiness.  Losing a few pounds before then might not be such a bad idea either…that is if I can manage it in a month. I’ve heard after all, that most of the beaches in Crete are nude and one less beached white whale with a fanny pack and baseball cap would probably make the world a better place.

I’d like to be able to dive into that sea urchin pasta, that creamy cheese pizza and that seafood fritto misto with absolutely no hesitation. I want to boldly pick up that entire roasted lamb leg and rip a hearty chunk off with my teeth, grinning madly as oil dribbles down my chin and I catch it with hearty crusted homemade bread. If I can’t shake this feeling of boredom, I may as well stay at the Hilton and eat at The Hard Rock Cafe everywhere I go and leave the real eating to the remaining passionate ones who’ve been obsessively marking their food guidebooks with dog eared pages and highlighters for months.

So I’m eating vegetables. For a month. In hopes that I will regain my sense of appreciation of meat, gravy, sausages hissing steamy fat, wispy slices of perfect prosciutto, spicy paprika peppered Hungarian slab bacon and smears of rich white lardo that stick immodestly to my lips.

I will eat the occasional fish, I’m not gonna lie – the allure of sushi is too hard to avoid, especially in the summer heat and I’m not out to prove anything here. But I will eat ONLY the best quality sushi, that is my reward to myself – so we will be seeing more of you Mr. Masa at Shogun in Palmdale. I will be eating cheese, I will be eating eggs and I WILL still use lard in making crusts for pies, tarts and quiches – why go for second best when you can make it perfect?

So maybe it’s not vegetarian, maybe it’s just vegetable centric – but with a garden like ours – with eight varieties of tomato plants taller than me, squash plants that look like aliens taking over the yard spreading their yellow blossoms (soon to be stuffed with cheese and fried), baby artichokes, peppers, herbs, zucchini, cucumbers, bush beans and purple eggplants, it would be absolutely crazy not to take advantage of all the good, flavorful, seasonal stuff…and give the hearty meats a rest for a short summer season.

Day 1 Recipes:

1.) Roasted Radishes with Brown Butter and lemon (from Bon Appetit April 2011 issue)

My review: simple, easy to follow recipe with tasty results. I like radishes raw, but for those who aren’t as keen on the bite of their flavor, the roasting takes the edge off and makes them more like little potatoes with a peppery lightness.  I appreciated the addition of lemon juice, which I initially forgot to add to the brown butter…but it makes a difference. It is more summery that way.

2.) Mario Battali’s Roasted Asparagus with capers and eggs

My Review: I didn’t roast the asparagus this time, i blanched it quickly in boiling water and put it in an ice bath…I figured since I was already roasting the radishes, I could vary the cooking styles of veggies. I really like the asparagus this way, it is tender and perfectly cooked. The addition of the eggs to the sauce is a really nice boost of richness and protein and I was grateful for it as I am trying to ease us into the veggie diet. I also used cider vinegar since I was out of red wine, and it worked fine when I added a little dash of sugar to the mix as well to boost the sweetness. I also added truffle salt at the end – because why not?

Another of my favorite Battali Asparagus recipes is this one with savory pepper zabaglione in Food and Wine (first published in his Babbo cookbook, which you must add to your collection if you want to understand the genius of simple, tasty Italian food.)

3.) Cauliflower and Carmelized Onion Tart from Bon Appetit March 2007

My review: This is one of the few recipes I have made before now, and MAN is it still fanfreakingtastic. The creaminess of the cheeses (ahem, this is NOT a low fat dish), the caramel sweetness of the onions, the crustiness of the cauliflower, the snappy addition of the sharp dijon mustard spread on the crust before everything is piled in and baked to a golden perfection – man it is a WINNING combination vegetarian or not. I can’t believe i haven’t seen this in any restaurants before now.

This time around, I substituted good swiss cheese for the gruyere and used 6 oz of regular cream cheese instead of 8 oz of mascarpone – and it was just as good this time as when I made it “authentically” before. I usually add a bit of cayenne or red pepper just to spice it up a little and I personally think it makes all the difference. This recipe is almost like a quiche, but less “eggy” and it can be eaten for lunch, breakfast or dinner with equal satisfaction.  I had leftover tart reheated this morning with the leftover vinaigrette asparagus – to which I added some fresh radish slices – and it was really a perfect brunch dish.

I want to make a note here that I am not biased to featuring Bon Appetit magazine, it just so happened that these were the first recipes I decided to make from the pile…

Overall, I would have to say it was a successful first day at bat with the whole veggie thing – I’m looking forward to testing out more of these recipes and will share the outcome with you here.  Now I need to go into the kitchen and  figure out what we are taking to grill at this fourth of July BBQ, because I refuse to be one of those people who goes as an invited guest to someone’s house and says “oh, I can’t eat that, don’t you have any vegetarian options?” Sigh.

If you like my blog, please sign up for the mailing list or follow me on twitter @alilovesla and spread the good cheer! I would love to hear your favorite Vegetarian (or other) recipe ideas as well as suggestions for where to eat in Italy and Greece! Email me

#wheresthebeef?

my dream job?

Even in this economy, though some of us have been lucky enough to find a job that fits our skills and experience, more and more, those who are employed are still dissatisfied with the job. “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend,” said Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board. That could spell trouble for the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity.”

It begs the question, what are we seeking in our jobs? What is it that we perceive is missing from the realm of employment that doesn’t seem to have been a problem of the past? I don’t remember my Father or Grandfather, a Power Industry professional and a Foundryman respectively, ever complaining that their job wasn’t fulfilling or satisfying to them. Granted, Union members have traditionally had less job stability issues to worry about, but still, I have to wonder did they ever sit at their desks thinking, “why does it all feel so meaningless?”  I imagine not. So what is it about our generation of employees? Do we complain more? Are we more spoiled or less hardworking? I see resumes flying in from diligent masses of the extremely qualified unemployed seeking work, and I can’t believe this is the case.

What has happened in the last 20 years with the expansion of technology and connectivity as discussed by Thomas Friedman in his book “The World is Flat”, is that the world has grown smaller, the borders of life opportunity have expanded and we hardworking, professional humans have also expanded the scope of our interests, passions and expectations. This has directly translated into a lack of fulfillment with traditionally acceptable workplace standards. In short, what was once considered highly desirable – stability, steady pay, health care – well it’s just not enough anymore for our big dreams and creative ideas.  In the race that society is in to become more entrepreneurial, the individual is getting to the goal much faster than the corporate world is able to, leaving much to be desired in the positions that are available out there, and hence, our dissatisfaction on the job.

What to do? Scale expectations and roll out your expanding interests a little at a time in the workplace helping to educate your co-workers, supervisors and CEOs along the way. Show them the rewards that come from having fulfilled and passionate employees on the job with just a few simple workplace adjustments, most of which won’t cost them anything and will increase their bottom line over time. Look at Google, at Idealabs, at workplaces that emphasize and encourage flexibility and creativity and then present clear strategies to adapt certain elements that would work within your industry. If you are patient and clever, you can change the ethos and the ho hum job of present could become your dream job of the future.

The Soul Food Project is an idea that has been slowly coming together in my head over the past few months and I’m excited to be finally launching it this month!

This is a project I’ve been working on lately… visit the website at www.soulfoodproject.org to learn more and RSVP for our first Dinner May 28th!

This past year i’ve been involved in so many amazing opportunities to learn, help others and create art in the world. I wanted to find a way to combine all my interests and passions together to be able to better support the causes I care about financially. Its a tough thing to do these days with so many people in need, its hard to stand out from the crowd, create something of value to people and attract them to be part of the cause.

The soul food project is a Dinner club in Los Angeles that meets once a month. Our conversations are focused on art, writing, film, music, and food with our commonality revolving around three key elements: Community,Cause, Cuisine

Because I have had so many great opportunities this year, it was challenging to focus the options down into a format that people would understand and be interested in taking part in. After a great conversation with a friend I chose 3 key words to use as away to help hone my interests and get to the meat of what I wanted to do. These three words: Encourage, Educate, Empower (not in any specific order) have helped me to narrow down and focus in on starting the soul food project, where I will be able to educate newbies to causes and also to different foods teaching them how to enjoy new flavors and even cook if they are interested. I will be able to encourage the people involved in causes by giving them a forum to present their goals to a group of interested and creative individuals, and I will be able to empower the people working for causes by providing them with the donations given by the dinner guests. Finally, I hope to be able to empower the dinner guests to understand the feeling of being able to do good, give back and make a difference by helping introduce them to new causes where they can learn about how to further support the organizations after the dinner.

It should be a LOT of fun!

The aim of the club is to learn together how community built around cuisine and cause creates and influences culture and can educate and provide awareness for necessary change. We are all being influenced by our own individual stories, history, experience and cultural influences and we each have so much more influence through our ART than we even know. We have an incredible ability to impact the world. This project is about understanding how we can come together as communities to use our influence for good, then acting on those conversations.

We are looking for the following:

20 monthly Dinner Guests, Kitchens to cook in, homes to host dinners in and Restaurants interested in sponsoring dinners 1x a year. Chefs and cooks interested in assisting with menu planning and execution. Sponsors and Providers interested in donating money, food or beverages.

Want to get involved? Email me

So many lines of sweet and poetic text I have written thus far in my short career about amazing experiences, feelings, tastes, smells, sounds and moments that inspired me and yet, they all fall empty without the addition of one key ingredient; the people that made them possible.

Consider your BEST memories; what commonality do they hold? Is it the view? Is it the taste or smell? (Lord knows those memories fade all too quickly), Is it the feeling you had in that moment? What made it rich?

I am a person who enjoys solitude, peace, quiet. A tripping brook, a dogs knowing panting smile, a breeze that makes the dandelions scatter to the unknown, a bee chasing the lavender. I am a person in need of solitude and yet…

My best memories are of a diverse range of experiences – and have been shared with the people who made those moments possible, who propelled me to a place or an achievement where i was able to enjoy such solitude, or possibly even the very thought of sharing that FEELING of solitude with them WHILE I was in the IN moment made it all the more rich.

Consider Twitter, a social media phenomenon – According to This site on average 460,000 NEW twitter accounts are created DAILY… these are people sharing private moments with, well, mostly strangers. Why is this practice SO popular? Because sharing the moment, even with strangers, albeit interested strangers, STILL makes that moment more rich than if it were not to be shared with anyone.

I am a strange person with a strange sense of humor and a WIDE range of interests. I find it incredibly annoying to have to be pegged to such a limited # of interests among my friends and family. Twitter broadens my audience, it gives me other people to share my weirdness with – and the best part is – THEY OPTED IN. I didn’t twist their arms or make them sit through an awkward dinner or elevator ride in the office, I simply sent my weird observations of the world out into the universe in a 140 character format for whomever might be interested to read it – and they did, or they didn’t. Chances are, they did (at least if they are familiar with me and like what I have to say about the world). I now have a private cheer leading section for my random weird thoughts of the world…I gotta say, that is kinda empowering.

Imagine the kind of influence this gives to people? Imagine the kind of Clout you can unknowingly have in the world of social media? Imagine the power you might have to impact someones buying decision, their relationship outcome, what restaurant they forsake or endear, which wine they drink, which cause they embrace…or what show they watch tonight, live JUST because YOU are watching and tweeting your commentary LIVE along with the show. Its a strange type of unexpected influence you gain when you tweet and people follow you anonymously.  There is even a Twitter Influence gauge called “Klout” that tells you your level of influence based on who you follow and who follows you… Here is the down low from their website: “The Klout scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. True Reach is the size of your engaged audience and is based on those of your followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages. Amplification Score is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100. Network score indicates how influential your engage audience is and is also on a scale from 1 to 100. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.”

My Klout Score is 28 of 100 btw, it rose from 23 when Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods Started to follow me (for reasons yet unknown although I’m extremely flattered and am always trying to get him to retweet my tweets).

Twitter can make the most common food loving girl next door into a celebrity if she has good strategy and enough clever and strange things she is willing to share with the world. Not that I’m there, this is still a work in progress, though it’s really quite cool how social media can expand your possibilities and introduce you to people, places and opportunities you may never have found otherwise.

But If you really think about it, no matter how clever you are, how dashing, how daring, how one of a kind, how many “Followers” you have in cyber space or in real life, if you’re not doing something MORE meaningful with all that potential, with that influence, with that voice you have established… What is the worth of it anyway?

All this is to say that MY BEST WORK, it has yet to be done. My best work has more to do with influencing people to get off their asses and do something more meaningful in the world than drinking a lovely chardonnay, buying a sexy pair of shoes, outwitting their high school arch enemy with Witty banter on facebook, writing a food review or trying a new restaurant. MY BEST WORK, will be focused on easing someone’s suffering, providing hope, empowering an individual who will change the world when he or she is provisioned the resources to do so and identifying spots of light in the world where, one person, one voice, one dollar, one tweet at a time, we will be able to change the course of one life or many, depending on how we choose to USE our influence.

MY BEST WORK is yet to come…

Stay tuned and join in the fun.

Something warm, gooey and comforting. Something soothing, homemade and new. Something pure born of chemistry, time, precise care and attention to detail. Something rich and fulfilling.

I’m talking of course about Mozzarella cheese, but I’m also talking about new friendships formed recently when we gathered in our home to participate in a bold culinary adventure.

What is it about food that makes it possible for complete strangers to come together and form community? What is it about sharing that bite of tasty creation that allows us to break down walls and have deeper conversations that might never otherwise occur? How is it that mere minutes of cooking side by side can overcome years of shyness we might feel as an individual, and allow us to reach out and overcome cultural, age, spiritual, ethnic and political gaps in our lives?

Something rich, fulfilling and long lasting can be born of a simple collection of ingredients that cost only $9 when there is time spent together in the kitchen with a spoon in hand, a thermometer and a plate of tomatoes at the ready.

This past weekend, my husband and I hosted the first of what I suspect will be many future cooking parties at our home and 17 perfect strangers collected themselves at 3pm in our country kitchen to learn how to craft homemade Mozzarella cheese from scratch. It took four simple ingredients – non-pasteurized whole milk, citric acid, rennet (coagulant), and water.  One pan, one colander, one thermometer, one spoon and many hands later, we had stretched our way into new realms of conversation and perfectly smooth white balls of Mozzarella cheese lay sitting in an ice bath while we sipped glasses of wine by the outdoor fireplace and explored the lives of new friends while the sun set and the stars came out.

It wasn’t until 10pm that our last guest left for the night, hours after the Mozzarella had cooled, the homemade pizza had been grilled and eaten immediately (a perfect punctuation for a deliciously made cheese), every drop of wine had been poured out and the last of the tomatoes and basil snatched from the balsamic and olive oil -laying abandoned in forlorn puddles on the plate.

I wondered at the day, at the collection of newcomers, at the success of the event, not just the chemistry of the cheese which turned out so well, but the chemistry of the people who stepped out of their comfort zone and took a risk to let new people into their lives, even if for mere moments in the big picture of things. If this is the richness that comes of cooking together, the soulful tastiness that is the reward for opening our kitchen and cleaning stacks of pots and pans late into the night, if this is the satisfaction I can expect to fill in my heart when we do an event like this, long after the stomach has been awarded its bites and bits, then I can’t wait until our next cooking class.

You should come!

Not that there is anything wrong with either of those two items, but when you are spending more than 1 day enraptured in the small world main street brand of bliss, and if you happen to be one who enjoys the finer things in life, occasionally you get a craving for say… a crisp salad, some fresh fish (not fried) or a nice martini.

There should be a Disney park for grownups where we can walk around with hurricane style beverages and visit the beer garden before or after (or both) embarking on the interminably endearing small world ride.

On our recent visit to the Southern California Disneyland, we had the delightful occasion to stay in the Grand Californian hotel, something I had always been curious about. Upon check-in, we were immediately upgraded to a suite – a delightful and kind gift bestowed on us I assume because we were two decently dressed young and prosperous seeming people without a band of raggedy, rowdy children in tow. (Though I’m sure that time will come in a few years and peaceful, gratuitous, impeccable suites will be a foggy thing of the past.)

The regular room price of the reserved room, not cheap – about $300 a night WITH the 40% discounted rates. The room we ended up being given is priced at a monumental $1200 a night, and though it was lovely, clean, well lit, had two balconies and lots of space, we both agreed that it wasn’t as comfortably furnished or as well stocked as some of the nicer Las Vegas resort suites we have stayed in (for $200 a night or sometimes for free with a travel offer) such as the Wynn, the Palazzo, The Venetian, etc. The Palazzo still remains my favorite because it is quiet and houses what is in my opinion, the best spa – the Canyon Ranch spa – AHHHHHHHHH within.  But I digress…

The Grand Californian is lovely, especially if you don’t have the pay the advertised rates and get a free upgrade. The lobby is spacious and furnished in a 1920s Frank Lloyd Wright inspired art deco style reminiscent of the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park. though it is a copy, it is still quite well done, especially all the wood and stonework, created by the carpenters on site who work at Disneyland. The furnishings are comfortably functional and the wooden rockers in front of the giant stone fireplace are a perfect spot to enjoy an evening cup of cocoa after the last firework has sparked from the sky. I even saw a cute old 1950s vintage style TV in one corner with tiny child-sized rockers that played Disney movies 24 hours a day. All in all, it is a lovely, quiet and peaceful place to stay for couples as well as for families – something I was concerned about – but the pools and spa and quiet music piped through the air combined with the lush trees and landscaping make it seem a world away from the stroller laden stressed out masses just a few yards past the hotel entrance.

We called down to the Napa Rose restaurant to get reservations for the evening and were told that they were booked until 8:30 pm, but that we could come by earlier to see if they had cancellations. So we headed down on our evening break between our last ride of the day on Pirates of the Caribbean and the Fantasmic showing of 9pm and walked into what was seemingly a completely empty restaurant and bar. Though there was NO ONE at any table, we were told we could sit at the bar, a place which we amiably enough enjoy eating on most dining occasions, though we wondered slightly at the logic of making two actual enthusiastic customers eat at a bar while the invisible no-show customers never arrived (over the course of 1.5 hours).  The lovely bartender from London made us a couple of mean Hendricks Martinis and brought over the menus, which we perused with enthusiasm at the offerings. I can usually tell if the food is going to be good by the way its described on the menu…if one has taken the time to describe it thoughtfully, creatively and descriptively, my mouth will be watering before I even make it past the “starters” portion. In this instance, I would say it was slightly watering but I wasn’t slathering all over the place like I have at some of my favorite places.

We decided on the tuna carpaccio with blue crab and caviar and the Pizzetta with prosciutto, creamy Cambozola, carmelized onions and red grapes to start. Being a couple who enjoys taking their time with eating, we always wait until we’ve had our appetizers and let them set the tone for what the main course ought to be. Having been “duped” into eating lousy food in the past, I always like to think of starters as a blind date – lets see how it goes with round one, and then decide if we’re going to move on to the disco or head home to wash our hair for the evening.  We were extremely happy with the appetizers, the pizzetta stealing the show right off the bat with the creamy meltiness and sharpness of the cheese mixing with the sweet onions and crisp snap of the perfect crust – a great combination of flavors perfectly executed and delivered at the perfect temperature. The Tuna carpaccio was subtle, cool and fresh with a slight hint of citrus, I think from a creme fraiche though it seemed invisible. The crab was tasty and fresh and again, not too salty or briny – nice and flaky and not soggy on the plate. I would have loved a larger dab of the caviar as it was so tiny it could hardly be tasted, but it was a nice touch visually. Overall, the pizzetta was gone first and Tuna second, but we were eager to try course two by the time we had scraped the last morsel of starters from our plates.

I went with the rack of lamb – medium rare but more on the rare side, and accompanied by a sharp cheddar yorkshire pudding and red wine jus. I actually forgot what Scott ordered, but that was because my delicious, tender and flavorful lamb was SO much better than what he got, that we both just tucked into the lamb and the side order of broccolini with blue cheese croutons – which again, was subtle, well executed and perfectly greened. The croutons were crispy and teased you with the blue cheese flavor that left you longing for more, but when the plate was finished, you realized you had exactly the amount of flavor you needed to be satisfied.

Since we had more evening entertainment to attend to and we had silently (with our eyes you see) agreed to grab some ice cream on main street earlier in the day, we skipped the dessert and finished off the evening with a fantastic shot of imagination in New Orleans Square watching the Fantasmic show – a creative and lovely bit of engineering genius and musical collaboration that leaves us both with a lump in our throat and tears in our eyes every time we watch it.

Strolling back to the hotel at 11pm, two satisfied big kids taking in main street, we held hands lit by the warm glow of golden bulbs that adorn the buildings and smoky streetlamps. As I absorbed the last bit of reedy Dixieland tune of the day I couldn’t help but think that our visit had been enhanced by the quality of the dinner we had enjoyed and the luxury of time we had taken to sit and share a delicious meal, giving us a chance to soak in the excitement from the world of wonder around us. It seems that at least where taste buds and culinary expertise are concerned, Disneyland may be growing up after all.

To me, Cannery Row is perhaps the most endearing and poignant study of human nature. It remains, year after year, my favorite book of all time. I can read it over and over again until the dog eared pages start to pull from the spine,  and still I learn something new every time my eyes pass over the beautiful words within. Written with a humble sense of peace within nature and realistic wryness about the behaviors and motivations of its characters, I feel like this book has achieved a balance that few books ever have. Of course, the same could be said of many of Steinbecks’ amazing works, most notably “Of Mice And Men” and “East of Eden” though the latter is more focused on the darker side of human conscience and the inner workings of complicated relational jockeying than on the influences of the natural world surrounding it.

Something about reading the poetic realism of Steinbeck feels like “coming home” to me and every time I yield to its’ siren’s call and tuck in to the book for the 5th, 6th or 10th reading, I feel like things are right in the world again.

When words fail to make it clear

the parts of life that I hold dear,

when in your eyes I see a vacant stare

crickets chirp, my stomach turns

the feelings trapped within me burn

for all I hope is to be understood.

Perhaps there’s something I can’t see

something obvious and free

but shielded ever from my point of view.

If there’s no space for recompense

no true response or interest sensed

If there’s no time for listening

what motivates a voice to sing?

Have we so changed, remembering not

the times of past, of battles fought

to give us life, humanity

a chance to speak and to be free.

And loving as it ought to do

requires acknowledgment from you

if something given you from me

means anything at all.

And even when there’s nothing there

at least a blink to show you care

one human being to another

lover, fighter, sister, brother.

We love and live, we give and take

the giving part’s the one that breaks

still, taking not our lesson from it

we postulate how we might have done it.

When words fail and love is flung

without remorse, a song unsung

into the breeze, vague talks of good

without a plan, though with ease it could…

Can it be as richly cultivated

upon a heart that’s cool and jaded

as it could upon a warm and welcome furrow

where learning from the past

we can kneel together

and plant tomorrow?