Thin in the Morning.

It's getting colder here.  To the point of buying fleece blankets, to the point of wearing socks to bed.  It gets dark earlier, I sleep in later.  I am preparing myself for hibernation, and I live ten minutes from the beach.  I have been frail for a week, maybe two.  Before kids knocked on our door, asking for candy we never had.  Before I got drunk enough to black out.  Before I ate sea urchin from its skeleton, cracked open before our eyes.  I was fragile in the morning, and dreamt of dreamless sleep. Instead, I remembered every punctuation of growing up in these 23 years of mine.  It happens before I fall asleep, when I'm trying to recollect my day.  It's been coming in waves, more frequently--more technicolor.  Saturated in all those moments of awkward growth and "coming into my own", as my mother used to put it.

It's July in Washington, DC and I'm 15.  I have my first kiss and lose my virginity all in one night.

It's a week later and I'm stoned at a concert in Baltimore.

It's six months after that and I'm reading Wuthering Heights in a makeshift bed, cold and reading in a spare room of my parent's house.

The next day my mom drives two hours north and she's not answering her phone.  She left a note reading, "I just need some space."

A year later I'm in college.

A year later I'm in Italy, hating everything but my freedom.

Three months, I'm dating Nolan.

We create dreams from dust motes in his two-story Victorian.  We take out some loans and move to California.

Get a dog.

Quit law school.

I learn from my mistakes, like how to cook and how to hold my tongue.  Nolan one time said I went 14 days without anything nice to say.  I threatened to make it 15 if he didn't shut the fuck up.  And I think about all of the times I should have been quiet, told my parents I loved them more, walked Charlie before he died, and how I should have taught myself to not find cooking to be a trade, but an art.  I would be happier with myself, calmer with myself, and in love with life the way I now understand I could still be.

I reflect on this before bed, so I can pray for it.  When the clock is at 11:10 and you're waiting until it switches.  When I let the dogs out and look up into the Milky Way.  Stars have always been opportunity, so I whisper the lilting pseudo-prayer of a light Star, a bright Star.

The lost time won't ever come, but I will come to terms with its ephemerality.  I will understand every atom in me shifts with a resounding confidence, where I can still greet days and whisper, "Yes."  I'll do it over coffee, in the shower, anywhere that the steam of dewey newness can open my pores and help me remember, every once in a while, that I'm still alive.  I didn't die when I had sex or smoked week in a penthouse loft overlooking the Harbor.  I didn't die when my mom left for a day or when I went to Italy.  I didn't die when I moved to California with Nolan, got a dog, or started to be who I am becoming.  Instead, each piece put me together more.  I'm everything I'm supposed to be, and I'm happy to sit at the kitchen table and take five minutes for myself to reflect on that.

It's cold in San Diego, and I hate waking up to let the dogs out. But if I ever see my breath when I step outside with them, it'll just mean I'm still alive.  And thank God for that.

It was one morning like that, when i was overwhelmed with this realization, that I made these biscuits.  Sweetness and heaviness are two of my least favorite ways to have breakfast, so I decided to tone down those elements with some goat cheese and pumpkin.  Paired with a super-simple fig preserve, and you have a perfect pair to your otherwise contemplative solitude before you're ready for a second cup.  Enjoy.

Pumpkin and Chèvre Biscuits with Fig Preserve

Ingredients:

For the biscuits:

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon quality salt
• 1/2 cup butter, cubed and COLD
• 2 oz goat cheese
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup buttermilk

For the fig preserve:

• 16 oz fresh figs (a great way to use some bruised ones)
• 3/4 cup sugar (or half with brown sugar for a more earthy taste)
• 3 TB clover honey
• 1 TB orange juice
• 1/3 cup water

Directions:

For biscuits:

1. Preheat oven to 425 and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
3. Using two knives, a food processor, or a pastry cutter, blend butter and goat cheese into the dry mixture.  Ensure ingredients stay cold and do not melt.  Reconstitute into fridge while preparing step 4.
4. Whisk together buttermilk and pumpkin in measuring cup or small bowl
5. With a wooden spoon, create a well in the dry ingredients, begin pouring in wet ingredients slowly and with big sweeping movements to ensure everything is moistened.  Do not over-mix.  Add a small amount of pumpkin puree or buttermilk if you notice your flour is not incorporating with the amount of liquid you have used.
6. Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead 8-12 times
7. Cut into rounds and place on baking sheet. (Feel free to glaze with butter, add some salt or allspice.  This is very customizable--just nothing that will melt or ruin the integrity of the dish itself at this stage)
8. Bake for 18-22 minutes
9. Let cool briefly, serve warm with pat of butter, salt, and some fig preserve

For preserve

1. Put all ingredients in a saucepan
2. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and juices are simmering for about 25-30 minutes
3. Transfer to a blender or food processor, pulse to desired texture
4. Transfer back to saucepan and heat gently
5. Serve with biscuits or refrigerate*

*I did not include instructions on canning, but can be refrigerated, covered, for up to one week

Mornings like these

The grey light brings out the nostalgia in me.

A Church Potluck Favorite: "Pretzel Salad"

I grew up hungry.  There wasn't a lot of food in the pantry, there wasn't a lot of time for love.  I grew up "working class" and was raised by my siblings, because my parents worked so much. When they got home from the odd jobs they worked, they'd put Spaghetti-o's on the table and tried to get me to drink milk more.  It was my sister who taught me to tie my shoes, frustrated one morning when I didn't want to go to kindergarten, the laces trailing behind me and tears welling in my eyes.  I already felt like a failure at six years old.  She grabbed my laces and taught me with patience, we got on the bus and she held my hand until I calmed down.  A lot has changed between us, and that's the last time we were tender to each other.  A lot has changed, but I still get worked up so easily. I grew up poor.  I grew up poor and I didn't even know it.   I grew up poor and knew no other way.  I grew up poor when my parents worked four jobs and resented them years later for being too tired to listen to my day, my stories, my dreams of being a famous writer and never seeing them again.  I grew up poor and never helped my mom around the house.  When she needed it most.  When she was so exhausted, she'd fall asleep at the dinner table.  When she wasn't herself for so many years, fighting the good fight.  She worked in a freezer once, in a grocery warehouse. My dad took a job once stuffing coupons into newspapers. They did it for us.  They tried to make ends meet, to tie my laces and keep me young.  All of this in Kentucky, where my brother stepped on a nail and he didn't want to tell our parents, in case it cost too much to fix.  I asked him about it while I was in North Carolina in June.  He still has the scar, and I still have the memory of the sacrifices everyone made, and how I was happy to be too young to understand them all.

One thing I was kept young about was food and levels of flavor until I had moved out of rural Pennsylvania and into Pittsburgh (arguably, still rural Pennsylvania).  Until then, I only knew about cake layers, pizza toppings, adding a little more cream to my coffee and calling it something French--I called that cooking.  I didn't know herbs existed in their green state, or that anything you saw at through the smudged bakery glass could be made at home.  I didn't know a lot of things, because my mother fed a family of five on a dollar-store budget.

We come from Indiana low-country, an often underrepresented class that subsists itself on eggs covered in ketchup, twenty-year grudges, and first marriages that never seem to stick.  It's a place where you can drive for twenty miles and still see the same rain cloud in the distance.  A place where they get fresh water from a water tower, painted light blue and where kids climb to make out and smoke weed.  It's a place with a Dairy Queen and two cemeteries: the Catholic graveyard and the Baptist graveyard.  A place where the elasticity of money means being creative, stocking a deepfreeze in the garage with bulk cuts of meat, and eating more preservatives than maybe a neighboring longitudinal town.  It means knowing what tastes good and sharing it with your family of five, putting a little extra in the brown paper lunches you pack when the school's get too expensive.

It's comfort food without the luxury of Southern heaviness--no buttermilk or animal fats.  Too expensive.  We budgeted with Crisco, Velveeta, and Great Value-brand butter, saving bacon fat in a mason jar by the stove for Sunday morning donuts.  Everything was saved, everything reconfigured instead of throwing it out.  I assume that's how this dessert was made.  Some cream cheese was going beyond the saving point, some pretzels were stale.  A woman no different than my mother--working class and a mother of three--layered and baked whatever she had on hand, set and cooled the product of her labor in the fridge.  She told her friends who told her friends, who went to church and share it at potlucks.  It was made cheaper with Jell-o, made easier with Cool Whip.  It was adapted and streamlined for economy, using barely any heat and barely any ingredients.  And once my mother got the recipe, it became a staple in our house.  "Pretzel Salad" it's called.  It's a working-class answer to the cheesecake, simple and sturdy and tart how you like it.  It sweet enough to balance out all the salt-of-the-earth people I've met throughout my life, reminding me who I really am and where I really come from.

Strawberry and Pretzel Pie (Pretzel Salad)

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 2 cups finely-crushed pretzels (to the point of coarse meal or flour)
• 1/3 cup firmly-packed brown sugar (light or dark--I preferred the stronger molasses in dark)
• 3/4 cup + 1 tb melted butter

For the cream cheese filling:

• 1 package cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup sugar (your preference.  More tart means less sugar)
• 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, sour cream, or plain yogurt (up the sugar if using the former two options, so it isn't overwhelming)
• 2 teaspoon vanilla (optional)

Strawberry layer:

• 1 quart strawberries, hulled and smashed
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 lemon, zest and juice
• A slurry of 3/4 cup water and 3 TB cornstarch

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 and prepare a 9-inch pie plate with butter and parchment paper the bottom (optional)
2. On the stovetop, melt butter gradually and set aside.
3. In a food processor, pulse pretzels and brown sugar together until you get the consistency of corn meal or flour.
4. In a mixing bowl, combine two cups of the dry pretzel mixture with the melted butter.  Stir with a wooden spoon until just combined, then pat wetted pretzel into the prepared pie plate, molding into the plate to form a consistent thickness and even layering around whole pan
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until browned
6. Set aside and allow to cool to the touch, about half an hour
7. While crust is cooling, get a large mixing bowl and whip cream cheese and 1 cup sugar together until peaks begin to form.  Soften these peaks by adding your yogurt or cream and blend until the consistency of very stiff meringue, but still easily spreadable.  Add vanilla,  if using.  (This step doesn't take an awful long time, so if your pie crust is still not cool yet, now would be a good time to hull and smash your pint of strawberries, if you aren't following the mise en place philosophy)
8. Use a rubber spatula and mix cream cheese mixture by hand for a couple rotations to ensure all ingredients are mixed properly, then pour over cooled pie crust.  Distribute mixture over crust and transfer to fridge to cool further and solidify filling for about half an hour.
9. While pie is in the fridge, combine strawberries and 1 cup sugar and heat on medium-high to promote maceration.  Stirring every so often, bring to a boil.  Berries will continue to release their juices.
10. Add the zest and juice of half of a lemon, stir.  Bring to a boil.
11. Add cornstarch slurry and reduce heat
12. Simmer until thickened into a jam-like consistency
13. Remove from heat, mixture will continue to thicken as it cools
14. When cool to the touch, pour and spread mixture on top of cream cheese layer of pie.
15. Return to refrigerator and allow to completely set for no less than one hour.
16. Enjoy!

Enjoy another taste of my memories, because I'm sure they're your memories, too.

Acoustics.

Fall has come in so acoustically, and it is all around me now.  I can see it most in the morning, when the rest of the world is asleep.  The dogs stretch their long limbs, widen their jaws into yawns.  They don't want to walk on the dew.  They want to sleep on the hand-stitched Navajo blanket in the morning.  The coffee comes in bursts of steam.  I wipe my glasses off with my sleeve.  I stand in my underwear at the new kitchen sink, head dipped over the last of the summer's peach. I tear it with my hands.  I feel most strong when it's quiet.  When the shower is scalding hot.  When the window is down but the heat is on.  When I can wear jeans around the house.  When our two bodies interlace at night, when I see the tan-lines faded.  When the birthmarks start to show.  When my palms and cheeks are red.  When it's late and you can only hear the occasional siren in the deep, deep distance of our new hometown.  And soon a quick inhale and his long, familiar snore drowns everything else out. I let the change happen, because it's been good to me.  I did not trust it at first, the change of adulthood.  I looked back on how many lives I have lived, and how many more I have ahead and realized that, for each, the impetus was a desire for difference.  I am lucky to feel the autumnal metamorphosis this year, because it is usually so stagnant in California.  I am lucky to live in this two-bedroom house. I am lucky to discover all the new things I'm learning to love these last few years.  I am lucky, I am lucky, I am very, very lucky.

This is not what I thought three weeks ago, buried in the bed.  Covered up, hidden from my own insecurities.  Afraid of my failures, not able to see my triumphs.  My father called me and I hung up mid-sentence.  Nolan kissed my hand and asked if I wanted to get ice cream.  I cried until I shuddered.  I was tired of owing any small amount of success to someone else, attributing each failure to my own misunderstanding of life and how it worked.   I did not feel powerful.  I did not wake up early and take a minute, recollect my thoughts, drink black coffee that fogged my lenses.

I locked the door and didn't let anyone in.  I incubated myself for three days.  I reminded myself to be happy, because sometimes you have to, because no one else will.

I turned 23 the next week.

I moved into a new house four days later.

And at each moment I discovered something new.  When the bruises began to turn purple, when I was most tender.  When I limped away, licked my wounds.  I found myself glad for the change.  Glad to be alive, to have my head above the water when it came to my debts.  Glad I recognized what I owed Nolan, happy to let myself be vulnerable so I could tell myself how stupid I was.  Happy to wake up before the sun, because the sun sleeps in late these days, to brew coffee and write a note to Nolan. "There's coffee waiting for you.  Have a good day."  I write it on paper I got in Belgium, a souvenir of who I was, written over as someone new.  I changed, I evolved.

I remind myself that my clothes aren't in trash bags anymore.  I remind myself that I never loved that drug dealer.  I remind myself that my father was right, that I was young and stupid and didn't appreciate a goddamn thing when I was 17.  All of those things are different now. I remind myself that I have lifetimes ahead of me, and that this one is just passing.  I remind myself that when I'm arthritic and can't hold anyone's hand, to be comforted in knowing that I let myself be vulnerable or a day or two.  I remind myself all of these things, because fall isn't a time for dying, it's a time for remembering.  That peacefulness of daybreak is all we have right now, and I couldn't lay in bed once I realized what a mistake I'd made.

I made this fudge to have in the moments when I felt strong, when the ripped up stone fruit couldn't satiate me.  I made it to feel comforted by the pecans, to savor the tang of the buttermilk.  It didn't feel like home, but it felt like nostalgia.

Pecan Buttermilk Fudge 

from Bon Appétit

Ingredients

• 1 cup pecans
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 tablespoon honey
• ⅛ teaspoon kosher salt
• Flaky sea salt (such as Maldon)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Line a 9x5” loaf pan with parchment paper, leaving a generous overhang on long sides; set aside.
2. Toast pecans on a rimmed baking sheet, tossing occasionally, until fragrant and slightly darkened in color, 8–10 minutes. Let cool, then coarsely chop.
3. Heat sugar, buttermilk, butter, honey, and kosher salt in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until butter and sugar are melted, about 3 minutes.
4. Fit saucepan with thermometer, bring mixture to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until thermometer registers 238° (mixture will be pale golden and smell faintly of toffee), 6–8 minutes.
5. Immediately pour mixture into a medium bowl and, using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat until cool and thickened (it will be stiff and matte), 5–8 minutes.
6. Fold in pecans. Scrape fudge into prepared pan; smooth top and sprinkle with sea salt.
7. Let sit at least 1 hour before cutting into pieces.

Goodbye to Him

He was gone by Monday evening.  He was determined to die in his own way, and it's been understood by us all that it had to happen.  It's always inevitable, isn't it?  The way seasons come in confused rushes, the way you're never quite nostalgic enough to move back home.  He died on his bed with his family next to him, with his breathing heavy, then soft, then not at all.  He panted and looked my mother right in the eyes, probably apologizing.  Probably wanting her to hold him tight through it all.

My childhood dog died.  His name was Charlie, he passed away of natural causes.  He was fourteen and my family had him since I was nine.  Three months before my brother had cancer, a year before I started middle school, a decade before I left for college.  I thought he was a girl at first, so delicate and beautiful.  He was bought in the rain and was scared of the thunder.  He was special, different than our dog, Humphrey.  He was needy and my sister would dress him up in baby doll clothes.  She painted his nails.  He ate a library book and a hundred dollar bill once.  He had a developmental disorder where we had to baby-talk to him for years and years, so he felt safe and understood we loved him.  He had a scratch under his right eye where it always cried a little.  He was beautiful, strong.  He was afraid of the basement and never went in there.  Not even when there was a storm and the television said to go somewhere safe.  He refused, that stubborn dog.

He one time starved himself to bones when we left him at a kennel, when we went to Florida for a week.  We were charged $200 to fix the fence he broke trying to find us.

He one time starved himself when Humphrey died, too depressed to play ball.

He loved the snow and even when he was arthritic, he still jumped head-first into the first fall of December.

He was special, he was different.  He was delicate like a girl dog.  Beautiful in his own way.  He was blonde, he shed a lot.   He didn't know any tricks.  He was stubborn.  He was perfect the way all dogs are perfect and special the way the small quirks of age make you special.

He was home to me, but he had creaks in him, too.  He stumbled, he fell.  He growled if you touched him when he was sleeping.  He would kiss your hand, then ignore you.  He couldn't walk down steps, so they built him a ramp to go outside.  He couldn't walk up steps, so my parents moved their bedroom into the library on the first floor.  Every morning, my mom would walk him around our fenced-in yard, the whole circumference so Charlie could smell and hear and remember he was still loved.

He died in his sleep, he wanted it to happen.  He panted, then slowly let go.  He lived for fourteen years, and it was greedy to ask for any more.

My mother called me the other day and said she was lost in the mornings, with more free time.  She said she wasn't going to get anymore dogs.  She said they would move the bedroom back upstairs when it didn't hurt so bad.  She said she's waiting for a sign that he's happy now.  I asked her what the sign would be and she said it was too soon to know.  She'll know when she sees it.

I don't think the dreams I've been having are a sign that he's happy.  I keep dreaming he's in pain, that we had to make the choice ourselves.  I dream about being a senior in high school and holding onto Humphrey as we put him down.  I remember crying until I threw up.  And I wonder why I haven't cried this week.  Why Charlie was different.  I'm waiting for a sign now, too.  To know it's okay that I haven't cried yet.  And when that sign comes, I hope this dam inside me breaks.