A New Project and A New Website

Two different people.  I used to be this kid who wore black, that wore my grades as a mark of honor, who would smoke a cigarette and hold in my cough until no one was looking.  I used to live in a world of dichotomies, I took one direction, judging those who took the other.  Bitter and self-centered, I hated everything that wasn't within arm's reach, anything I had to work for.  I was this lazy with all the best relationships I've ever held onto--from Nolan to my mother.   I was like this in law school, in California.  I left this person there, too.

In the last two months of living in Texas, living alone for the first time, I've grown into a new person.  Soft and muted blues, greens, greys--I don't hide behind a layer of black, a 4.0, or in a puff of smoke, indiscernible from the fog that hung over Pittsburgh most mornings.  I appreciate beauty and tones, floral and minimalism.  I respect the curated life, the plant you buy for decoration and how it differs from the one you buy for herbs.  I work with my hands now.  I feel a vernal change in my bones to produce, to craft, to create.  I have callouses that have softened over from when I would hold a pencil too long, back in the day when I held a pencil to write at all. My working hands are toiling again.  I'm creating candy bars, confectionaries, memories.  Someone's breakfast, someone's "cheat day".  

I appreciate a good cup of coffee above most things, and that's something that hasn't changed between the old and the new life I have.  That is why I went to Press Coffee with a simple idea:  I want to sell candy.  A simple stand, a couple dollars a bar, for an hour or two to get my name out there and have some fun doing it.  Press was, to me, the perfect venue.  From its wonderfully curated decor to its light-dappled cafe tables, Press understands appreciating the small, everyday victories of the perfect cup of coffee, the first bite of a crisp pastry, finding the just-right leather chair to sit in and enjoy the morning for what it is:  an opportunity to create, relax, not take life too hard or seriously.   I would have never thought of the generosity that would come of Natalie offering to give me liberty on stocking them as often as I could produce them.  

I am dropping off my second order this morning.  Twenty-seven bars of Matcha, Cookies and Cream, and Peanut Butter.  They're delicate and snap when you break them.  They're wrapped in the same designs I used for Nolan's Valentine's Day present, florals for spring*.  They're one of the simple pleasures we allow ourselves to spend money on, and maybe one of my customers will share his with someone he loves today.  I hope, whoever buys one, they'll recognize the attention each bar got from me.  From cutting the wrappers to measuring the foil, to getting the perfect process of tempering and cooling, each bar was made from my hands, hands that once held pencils too tightly, cigarettes too loosely, and another boy's hand too recklessly. 

If you're located in the San Antonio-area, stop by Press Coffee at 606 W French Place 78212, and maybe I'll see you there, too! (Usually for only, like, five minutes in the morning before work, though).

What my work desk usually looks like

Matcha is probably my personal favorite.  Beau and I are hockin' these like it's 2012

(they're not $2, btw)

 

*groundbreaking

And finally, a special thanks to Samuel Nuñez  for creating such an amazing logo, that inspired so much of my work this last month--from the candy bars to actually making this website a thing.  Go check him out, too!

Mountain Cedar and Chicken Noodle Soup

I was five when I told my first lie. We lived in Kentucky then.  In a little ranch house with not enough room.  My sister slept in the laundry room, her bed was by the washer.  The house had one big tree in the backyard, broken bricks in a corner of the lot.  The fence on the left was overrun by blackberry bramble.  My sister and I would see who could fit the most in our mouths, the juices running down our chins like well-fed wolves. In that house, I told my first lie.  I told my mother I was sick, that I couldn't get out of bed, that I couldn't move.  She said I looked pale and I held her hand while we watched a movie on the bottom bunk of a bed I shared with my brother.  My mother had long hair then, thick and that kind of black hair that turns blue in the right light.  She was 29 then and worked in a warehouse for produce and generic-brand food.  Her whole life was over by then, I think.  She was never really her own person by the time I came along.  But she sat on the bed with me and we watched movies.  I lied to her and we both took a nap together.

In that same house, that small little house in Kentucky, with the vinyl siding and it's creaky front door, a tornado hit and my 29-year-old mom drove home to protect us. She drove a green pickup truck.  She tied a sun-bleached red bandana on the mirror the day she got it.  It was a summer then, hot on the skin and the heat broke the sky. She put that same mattress we fell asleep on over our heads and we watched as a tree branch smacked the window pane, leaving a scratch that was still there when we left two months later.

I haven't stopped lying since I was five.  I do it every day.  I do it over small things, like if I put cream in my coffee.  I do it about big things, like when I tell people I love them.  I do it as a way to get attention, as a way to hold someone's hand.  I do it for pity and for protection.  I do it for fun.  I lie to my mother more than anyone else.  I tell her I forgive her for everything, for the missed birthdays and the time she hung up the phone on me when I called her from Italy, drunk and alone and only had ten minutes left on the pay phone, only a few cents left in my pocket.  I lie to her to make it easy, because I remember how she sat on the bed and held my hand and loved me even when I was lying to her.

Every time I was sick after that day, she'd stay home with me and watch a movie.  She'd take my temperature with her hand flat on my forehead and at night she'd have my dad carry me to my room.  We had tradition, we had rituals.  We had moments that I haven't been able to share with anyone else.  I lied to her over and over again for seventeen years now, but every time I call her and tell her I'm sick, she always remembers this day, too.

Last week, I called her and told her the mountain cedar was blowing.  I told her that my eyes itched and how I didn't want to go to work.  She told me about her chicken soup with big noodles and roasted chicken.  Carrots and celery and oil.  She told me who I used to eat it and ask for seconds and thirds.  She told me how she wished she could be here now, in my kitchen in Texas, making it for me.  I lied to her again and said, "Yeah, me too."

Instead, I did it myself, like so many things these days.  This soup is an apology, a memory, a souvenir from when we all played sick and tried to get out of school with the flu.  It's a revisionist tale of how life should have gone.  It's to my mother who was 25 and young when she had me.  It's to a little boy who still has family in Kentucky he's never met.  It's to the 1,500 miles in any direction to the closest people I love.  It's a warm soup, a comforting soup.  It's a soup you eat when the tornado heat breaks and you have three small children to stop crying.  It's the soup you reheat when the dollar has to stretch because you're saving up to move out of a house where your daughter sleeps in the laundry room.  It's a soup for a home, not for a house.

Chicken Noodle Soup and a Boule

Chicken Noodle Soup and a Boule

Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

  • 2 large chicken breasts, defrosted
  • 3 sprigs rosemary, divided
  • 2 lemons, cut into wedges
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 3 carrots, diced
  • 3 stalks celery, diced
  • 1 large yellow onion, diced
  • 1 head of garlic, minced
  • 96 oz chicken stock (as always, preferably homemade, but there is a lot of flavor in the soup for store-bought)
  • 1 1/2 tablespoon chicken base (found in supermarkets)
  • 1/2 tablespoon lemon pepper
  • 1 tablespoon pepper
  • 16 oz egg noodles, cooked separately in another pot

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 450
  2. Rip two aluminum sheets off big enough to wrap your chicken in.  Place chicken breasts on respective foils and rub salt, pepper, and olive oil all over.  Add four lemon wedges per chicken breast and rosemary.  Wrap tightly.  Bake on sheet for 25 minutes or until cooked through.
  3. Set chicken aside to cool.
  4. Begin on the mirepoix.  In a large dutch oven, heat butter and oil over medium-high heat.  Before butter burns and when oil is almost smoking, add carrots, celery, and onion.  Cook down 10-15 minutes and stir occasionally, until vegetables are tender and onions are translucent
  5. Add garlic and remaining sprig of rosemary (diced finely).  Cook only for a minute to release some flavors and not burn, stirring constantly.
  6. Pour in chicken stock.  Allow to heat through and bring to a low boil for five minutes.  While waiting on that, tear the cooled chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks with your hands or a fork.
  7. Add the chicken base, pepper, and lemon pepper.  Stir thoroughly to ensure that the seasonings have incorporated into the soup
  8. Add the shredded chicken
  9. Cover and let simmer on low while you prepare the egg noodles in a separate pot (follow package instructions here, but add a little bit of chicken stock to the liquid for some added flavor)
  10. Drain noodles and add to soup.  Simmer to warm noodles up.
  11. Serve with Laura Calder's Miracle Boule and have for the rest of the week

Pestare.

Sometimes when you want to be alone, you have to find solitude in the crowd.  To watch the crows lined like gargoyles on the stoplight lit green, waiting for the cars to come, to swoop down and steal the children.  Watching the young crippled girl sing her lovely song, but no one leaves a dollar in the outstretched woven basket.  The vendors remind you of your nine-to-five, their chapped hands and grey-wrinkled eyes remind you of winter, of your mom, of home.  Each vendor has an antidote, each more conscious of buzzwords like "sustainability" than the last.  I find myself smelling small baskets of grape tomatoes, setting them down and promising to be back.  Going to the nearest ATM and paying a $3.25 surcharge to go back and buy those tomatoes.  Asking if they're heirloom, not knowing what that means exactly.  I find myself emboldened by the knowledge of a meal to come, the way it creeps into my mind like nerve-friction.  How I can sense something creative, and each greengrocer and fishmonger in Little Italy lays out the totems of inspiration.  I brush against a vendor selling caramel sauce, ask someone about culinary school.  He says he's against it, but I don't believe him for a second.  That night, I google Le Cordon Bleu tuition.  I help a seller sharpen a knife and say I'm partial to Japanese knives (I'm not).

Carrot Greens and Almond PestoI lied to everyone, said I'd come back before I left for eggs and ox and hummus.  I didn't.  I pretended.  It was free to pretend until I knew what I was looking for.  And I found it in the plastic bin like the kind my mother keeps Christmas ornaments in, hidden in the corner of a ruddy, earthen woman's stand.  She spoke no English.  I asked her how much the zanahorias were.  Two dollars.   I smiled and picked the most exotic of the root vegetables.  The ones that were twisted, mangled sensually.  The kinds that had curves and humps, small Venuses of Willendorfs in the crisper bin in the fridge.  Purple, orange, and tan, the color of spider veins.  The color of the earths.

I picked up bread, cheese.  Green beans and sea salt.  I picked it up and carried it home in a brown paper bag.  I felt legitimized by my purchases and want to keep my promise to the farmer, that I'll come back in April when he'll have quail eggs for me.  But, until then, I'll keep making this verdant green pesto, and I'll welcome Spring with open arms.

Carrot Greens Pesto

Ingredients:

  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1/4 cup almonds (dry toasted in skillet for five minutes)
  • 2 cup carrot greens
  • Scant 3/4 light olive oil
  • 1/4 cup freshly-grated parmesan

Directions:

  1. Put almonds in a skillet and toast over medium heat for about five minutes until begin to brown and become fragrant
  2. In a food processor, process almonds and garlic until finely ground
  3. Add greens and pulse for two minutes, or until a paste forms
  4. Add parmesan, pulse until incorporated
  5. While the motor is running, slowly pour oil into feeding tube and continue to run until full incorporated
  6. Store in container for at least two hours for flavors to incorporate, use as you would basil-based pesto

Carrot Greens and Almond Pesto