The first things I did in my new place.

I licked my wounds when I was alone.  I sat on my bed and listened to the train roaring two blocks from my window.  It was so loud, the coffee pot shook.  The little space between your eyes and your brain shook.  But that could have been because I was trying to comprehend my commitment to the big unknown that comes with taking out your own trash, sleeping alone at night, sitting in silence with only the big, big train to bully you to sleep. That was the first night.

The second night was not different, except I wore thick, woolen socks to bed.  It made me feel warm and comforted and like I wasn't so alone when I was bundled up and sweating.  I created a womb from "tumble dry" socks and big cardigans I only used to wear on walks with the dogs and to get the mail.  It was all survivalism.  It was all ways to trick myself that I was just on a very expensive, very revokable vacation.  And maybe it is.  But what if it isn't?  I spent time thinking these two questions over as I drove to Starbucks and cried in the parking lot.  I didn't make eye contact with the barista and the name written on the cup was Brad.  The man that set up my internet thought my name was Bratt.  I guess I could be anyone and no one in this central Texas town.  I guess, in many ways, I'm both at once to myself right now.

Four years.  Four years of not knowing anyone but one person, and know I have a whole world to use as my backstory.  Someone today didn't believe I was born in Indiana.  Another woman said I was too pale to have just moved from California.  Someone said I didn't talk like I was from Texas.  Everyone was confused and, having lived in seven states and having a story for each one, I was a little confused, too.

I keep pulling a thread from my flannel shirt and it's bunching where the stitching is missing.  I wonder how much power I have to unravel, to mend.  To create and to tear.  I wonder what other things I have fabricated along the way.  Maybe my whole life, maybe nothing at all.  I am always amazed at people who can create, who can take the proverbial (or real!) block of marble and turn it into a sculpture.  When I was in Italy, we studied the blue-chalked lines of da Vinci's blueprints.  It is a craft I don't have.  Instead, I can create lies and lives and false memories, fake accents, tell people I'm born and raised in a place I've never been.  But to manufacture a whole, working, livable product...I lack the care and attention, the tenderness of mind and creativity that someone more talented than I possesses.

One such case of talent and beauty, Aron Fischer's Facture Goods.  I was given a black walnut rolling pin by Aron and have fallen in love with its sturdy design and natural elegance.  I was inspired by his provisions to create something that would sustain me, comfort and nourish me.   With my small artillery of baking supplies, including the rolling pin and an old ravioli cutter my mom got me for Christmas, I was inspired to make some savory crackers.  Natural, simple, and versatile, these crackers were my take on being inspired by Facture Goods' rolling pin (because I couldn't think of making anymore cookies with it so soon after the holidays!).  See the recipe below and go visit the Facture Goods online store (I'm probably ordering the grain scoop by Gin O'Keefe soon!).

Parmesan and Lemon Pepper Crackers (makes 12 large or 24-30 small)

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter
• 3 oz parmesan
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked sea salt*
• 1 heaping teaspoon of lemon pepper

Directions:

1. With a stand or hand mixer, cream butter for a couple minutes until airy and pale
2. Add all remaining ingredients and mix until well blended.  Make sure to use a rubber spatula for the bottom part, in case the mixer missed anything (I found the flour to have not mixed with the butter once the parmesan was added by the mixer alone)
3. Flour a board or work surface lightly and roll dough out.  Form into a ball or rectangle (this will depend on how you want to cut your crackers out.  If you want to make round ones, then form into a log about a foot long.  If you want to make shaped crackers, form into a rectangle by rolling out with pin into desired thickness.  I suggest about a half-to-quarter inch thickness for this recipe).  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees while dough is resting and prepare a baking sheet or two by lining it with parchment paper
5. When dough is firmed up in the fridge, take out and either cut into thin rounds (if in log form), or use desired cutters for squares/shapes (you can use ravioli cutters, biscuit cutters, cookie cutters--it's up to you!)
6. Place onto prepared baking sheet.  Poke a few holes in the crackers to release air and so they don't puff up and crack too much
7. Bake for 22-25 minutes until golden brown and crisp
8. Allow to cool (will crisp up more as they rest)
9. Enjoy with soup or by themselves!

Christmas Eve.

The anticipation used to kill me, trick me, tease me.  Christmas break would start on a day before Christmas Eve and last all the way through to January 3rd.  I would cry when I didn't get what I wanted, I would cry when I had to go back to school.  I would eat turkey and ham and lasagna and seven different types of fish with my family.  We would play cards, pretend to like each other.  It was tradition and now I realize how ephemeral it really was.  How days moved like molasses, and then quick like warmed syrup.  From a small flurry to a blizzard, we wrapped ourselves in fleece blankets and wondered how the cold got into our old, old house and made our bones feel just as old.

That's what I remember about Christmas and I used to envy how others described it as magical, mystical, something worth looking forward to.  All those years, it seemed like a chore and how greedy I was to ask for more, to count the dollar value or my gifts compared to my siblings'.  How sad it all seemed the next day, anticlimactic and messy.  I always wanted more, but I could never articulate what I wanted the most.  I think all I wanted was to feel loved, held, a part of a larger family than the small nucleus that was mom, dad, brother, sister.

Lately I've been feeling nostalgic and hungry, grateful and like I lost something and can't remember where I put it.  These feelings don't often hit me in such full force.  Going home last week to Pennsylvania (more on that later) brought something out of me that I didn't know was in me:  the power to create magic.  The ability to create peaceful, loving memories with my mother.  Instead of remaining bitter, remembering how a week before Christmas in 2010 I got tested for HIV and then threw a fit when I didn't get the new iPhone, I could laugh with my mom and hug my dad tight.  I was invited to spend the night at my sister's first place, I called my brother and congratulated him on his new house.  I was creating, making, forging, and shaping a future with my small nucleus to last longer than the one day a year we forced upon ourselves for tradition's sake.  And that's what Christmas is about, that is what my parents wanted all along.  And I want to return that favor to all of you.  Bake this cake, forge those memories, make someone smile and discover that all you needed was there all along.  It's one part Christmas and two parts mountain dessert, Appalachian baking.  A moon pie, a whoopee pie.  Whatever you call it, it's a survivalist attempt at decadence.  It's delicious and light, moist and dense.  A mile-high contradiction where you can splurge a little, if it helps you remember your care-and-calorie-free childhood a little easier.

I received a lot of presents this year -- marble and ceramics, wood and paper -- but the best gift I could receive was knowing that I'm loved by someone, and I can return that love to anyone who will let me.

Peppermint and Eggnog Whoopie Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 2/3 cup eggnog, divided
• 1 cup cold water
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (mix it up with smoked salt)
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso mix
• 2 cups flour
• 2/3 cups cocoa powder
• 4 oz butter, softened
• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cup confectioner's sugar
• 1 teaspoon gelatin, bloomed in cold water
• 2 candy canes

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare two 9" cake pans with butter and parchment paper
2. In a mixing bowl or measuring cup, whisk all wet ingredients (1 cup of the eggnog) together and set aside
3. Sift together soda, salt, espresso, flour, and cocoa in a large mixing bowl and create a well in the middle
4. Slowly begin combining wet and dry ingredients, mixing with a rubber spatula to scrape all sides
5. For an added level of smoothness, pour wet ingredients through a sieve and scrape sides with spatula into a clean mixing bowl
6. Divide batter between two cake pans
7. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean
8. Allow to cool
9. While cake is cooling, prepare the icing.
10. In a small bowl, combine 1 teaspoon of gelatin with a tablespoon of cold water and set aside while gelatin blooms
11. In a large mixing bowl, use a mixer to combine butter, confectioner's sugar, cream cheese, until combined.  Whip in the remaining eggnog and vanilla.  Add a pinch of salt, if desired
12. When gelatin has stiffened, put in microwave for 15 seconds or until melted and whip into icing mixture
13. Allow to set for 15-20 minutes
14. When cake is completely cooled and icing is set with the gelatin, you can assemble the cake
15. Put one cake onto the plate, then scoop and smooth icing using a wet icing spatula or butter knife.  Of course, this can be messy, so don't stress too much
16. Top with remaining cake
17. Pulse candy canes in a food processor until a fine dust
18. Brush VERY lightly with water on cake to allow peppermint to stick
19. Pour peppermint crumbs onto cake to taste's desire
20. Enjoy with your family!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

We have brioche at dawn.

This all happened before I left for Pennsylvania, before I was reminded of the as it was.  Of the constant state of charm and chaos that exists when you visit a family home.  The kind that you can recognize the tired floorboards, the kind that are imprinted with your dad's shape on the couch.  All the good memories flood back and haunt you like a contorted zoetrope, and you're never really sure if you're dreaming or awake. I made these rolls with no intention of making these rolls, with no intention of being up until one in the morning, making sure I had turned the oven light off.  Intention wasn't the cause, but the end goal of having these with ham and jelly kept me going.  The soft pillows were enveloped in a hard crunch and I could taste them before I could smell them.  I knew they were special and simple and delicious.  I knew I wanted them to be impressive, I knew it before I ever intended on making them.

I have always felt that the grey morning light is terrifying.  One of the first poems I wrote, read out loud in the back of my parents' '98 Nissan Pathfinder, was about how I wanted to die when that grey light extended to my southward-facing bedroom window.  That was in Pennsylvania, when the whole month of December is one grey streak on virgin snow.  Out here in California, it can taunt you for two hours and be gone by the time you pull into work.  It's different here, but still frightening.

I've never been one for armor, but you can't hide from the ambient greyness.  Instead, you have to confront it.  Distract yourself from it.  Make it feel invited in a way that it can't smell the sick in you.  I distract myself from it, too.  I serve myself a beautiful breakfast when I realize how much I hate this kind of season, this kind of light.  The mild distortion of ephemera that only comes between the hours of five and seven in the morning.  And that can all be abated for a moment or two.  At the calm of the table, with the coffee pot scorching on the burner.  The small hiss of everyday life while the man you once loved and will love again sleeps in the next room, never aware that you only made the breakfast so you didn't think about your own mortality.  How you, too, could be gone by the time you pull into work.  And after that you would do the dishes, and after that you would take a shower, and after that you would get a towel and sit on the bathroom floor trying to stay warm.  The ritual of these brioche buns meant I was distracted, meant I didn't have to, for one moment, think about how suffocating mornings can be, when all you have is yourself.

Morning Brioche Buns

Ingredients: (this is for six buns, but I had doubled the recipe to share at work, as seen in photos below)

• 8 TB milk, slightly warmed on stovetop or in microwave
• 1/2 sachet of active dry yeast
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut in pieces, room temperature
• 1/2 tablespoon granulated sugar or honey
• 2 eggs, lightly whisked (1 tablespoon of eggs for washing), room temperature
• 1/3 teaspoon salt 
• 2 1/3 cup flour
• 2 teaspoons flaky sea salt (such as La Jolla Salt Co.)

Directions:

1. In a bowl, activate the yeast in the warmed milk until beginning to bloom and bubbles appear
2. Cream butter and sugar (or honey) until light and fluffy with mixer
3. Add eggs and continue to blend gently until combined
4. In a separate bowl, sift together flour and salt for lighter, airier dry ingredients
5. Gradually add these to the wet mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon until crumbly
6. Pour in yeast mixture and stir until all ingredients are wet
7. Oil or flour hands gently and turn onto a lightly-floured board.  Knead by hand until gluten and yeast begin to activate.  The dough will become springy and malleable in about 5-7 minutes
8. Put in an oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel for about two hours, or until doubled in size
9. Put back onto floured board and cut into six equal buns.  Roll and shape into rounds, place on parchment-lined baking sheet for another hour and a half to inflate again and become puffy.  During this proofing period, preheat oven to 375 degrees.
10. When the oven is preheated and rolls are puffy, you can either keep them on the baking sheets or place them in a skillet or other oven-proof bakeware for a visually-stunning breakfast.  Either way, they taste great.
11. Gently brush all balls of dough with reserved tablespoon of egg and lightly salt with flaked seasalt.
12. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden
13. Allow to cool and serve as immediate as possible.  Put in airtight container for morning.
14. Note:  I found that, with all brioche, these dry out really quickly.  To reconstitute them a little, place in a microwave with a damp paper towel for about 10-15 seconds.  The steam should help to soften them up a bit.
15. Serve with jam, butter, or some honey-baked ham I'm sure we all have received in a Pepperidge Farms box from a relative or two this time of year.

And one more thing...

I want to give a special shout out to La Jolla Salt Co. for their great deal on this denim apron I purchased in support of small businesses in my area.  I was lucky enough to have a little bit of their salt for this recipe and I can say it gave it the perfect amount of balance and crunch the brioche needed.  Baking gets pretty messy and I've finally graduated from using old flannel shirts to a full-blown profesh apron now!

Rainclouds.

I've been thinking of dimensions.  Sizes and expansiveness.  How, if I shout at you, you hear me only so far away. How memories echo like voices and it gets muffled the longer it rings out. A king size bed is 80 by 76 inches, but it's been the smallest island nation these last couple weeks.  Dimensions and space-time, moments that feel like static, hopping between eyelashes and rug burns and the small, prickled hairs that cover the nape of your neck.  All of it in the in-between, the almost-touching.  Like God and Adam's fingertips. It thunderstormed in San Diego, the world was a grayish colored that's normally reserved for mothers who stress too much and the dawn fog at the marinas.  it made me lazy and hopeful, a little insane and I tried to convince myself that I was the same person three years ago.  But the country is expansive and it would take me thirty-odd hours to drive home in my rented, Japanese-made car.  Thirty miles to the gallon, they advertise.  How many gallons until I'm seeing the same rainy storm clouds, when I turn my head and look westward behind me?

I'm going home soon, the real home.  The one with five bedrooms, six cats, and two parents who don't love each other, but love the comfort of one another. It's a big house and it floods once a year.  I grew up in that house and they remodeled since I last saw it.  Two years ago was when I was in Pennsylvania last and even then I told my mother I wanted to move.  And when the opportunity presents itself, I'd get in my rented, Japanese-made car and drive fast, fast, fast on the turnpike.

I'm going home soon and I want to see rainclouds and if the world fell apart without me there.  I want to be as cold-to-the-bones as possible, where you're almost burning because it's so cold.  I want to keep my window open and freeze to death under flannel sheets.  I want to experience feelings again--good and bad, repressed and resented.  I will come home to one lonely dog and parents hopeful that I haven't just fucked my life up.  And maybe there will be snow on the ground and maybe there will be patchy, grey-brown grass.  The mall is going to close soon.  Maybe it's exactly how I left it, because Appalachian time moves in a slow-fast past in space-time.  You can drive twenty miles and the engine can echo off an apple orchard and you never have to apologize for nothing.

I made a pie this week and brought it to work.  The office flooded the next day. The pie was made from foods in that state of in-between.  Frozen cherries and almond paste made a month ago.  It was cold when I made it and there was steam coming from my fingertips when I got out of the shower that morning.  I wasn't home, but I was frozen to my bones.

Balsamic Cherry Tart with Frangipane

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/4 sugar
• 3 egg yolks (depending on altitude and dryness of flour), separated
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• a large pinch salt
• homemade almond paste from here (make ahead of time), room temperature
• 2 TB heavy cream
• 2 TB brown sugar
• 3/4 lb frozen cherries
• 2 tb balsamic vinegar
• 2 tb honey
• Juice of half a lemon
• water to cover

Directions:

For the crust:

1. Prepare a tart pan (with a removable bottom, preferred) with butter or a light cooking spray
2. In a food processor, pulse butter and sugar together for about two minutes until incorporated and light
3. Add 2 egg yolks and pulse to combine
4. Add flour and salt and mix until ball forms
5. Knead very gently onto a floured surface (should still be pretty crumby, but solid)
6. Press into prepared tart pan and set in fridge.
7. Preheat oven to 375 (do this step now, so it doesn't seem like you're waiting forever for the oven and to save energy)
8. When oven is preheated, take tart pan out of fridge and bake 10-12 minutes, or until just golden brown
9. Let cool while preparing other ingredients

Filling:

1. In a mixing bowl, use a hand mixer and whip almond paste, one egg yolk, cream, and brown sugar together until light and full incorporated.
2. Using a rubber spatula, fold onto tart crust and spread evenly.  Set aside
3. In a small saucepan, combine remaining ingredients and simmer until juices begin to come from fruit and liquids reduce by half.  Stir occasionally.  Here, we are trying to steep the cherries with balsamic flavor while cutting some of that sweetness and replacing it with a brightness from the honey and lemon.
4. When cherries are fragrant and just beginning to break down, take off heat and strain.  Making sure to be gentle on the cherries as to not break them completely
5. Position on top of almond paste mixture and press gently
6. Bake 20-25 minutes, until frangipane is puffed and cherries are bleeding their juices
7. Allow to cool completely, serve for breakfast

Giving Thanks.

The theme this year was burlap and wheat.  Tactile, scratchy.  It irritated the skin, the colors were mute.  The vase full of weeds and blooms were foraged on the morning walk.  There were sprigs of rosemary in jars, next to the salt.  For garnish and for earthiness.  For authenticity, for aromatics.  Rosemary steeped in hot water can speed recovery.  I think we can all use a little of that.  The table was beautiful, simple and connected.  It was crowded.  The windless day would sigh a breeze, and the grapevine would rustle slightly.  It was alive.  Every moment was electric in that brick and mortar kitchen.  We ate outside. It's hard to reflect, I get lost in my thoughts.  i'm like Narcissus, lost in that reflection.  Thanksgiving is hard for me, it seems silly sometimes.  I never appreciated my parents; I still don't, fully.  When I was young, my mother would stay in her bathrobe until three, when the turkey was done, and she'd change into jeans and a black sweater.  Every year.  Every year, it was her formalware.  She cooked for seven hours, we'd be done in twenty minutes.  Never appreciated.  No one ever thanked her for her meal.  No one ever told her she was beautiful.  She told me she wore her pearls this Thanksgiving, the ones I got her last year.  The ones I bought in June, waiting, anticipating, happy to make her feel special.  And she did.  I am thankful she wore them, thankful she smiled as she clasp them around her neck, feeling beautiful and not having to cook for three ungrateful children.

I am thankful for my father, who tells me every day he loves me.  I reflect on the Thanksgiving I called him from Italy and told him he needed to send me more money.  He said the banks were closed and I hung up.  I ignored his emailing until I saw my bank account.  I'm thankful he was patient, patient in a way I know I couldn't be.  He loves me more than I realize.  It's jarring when you realize how one-sided that love is.  I'm thankful he's waiting for me to catch up, to appreciate him.  Appreciate the times he took me to school.  Every morning he'd buy me coffee and ask me about my day.  Most mornings, I was too asleep and too annoyed to answer back much.  Now, I want to go to the Legion and drink a beer with him.  Ask him how his life is.  Tell him I'm growing up and I love him, too.

I'm thankful.  I'm reflecting on this.  I was called ungrateful more than once in my youth, and I don't want to be that same asshole anymore.  I try to say thank you for everything.  It's difficult sometimes.  When you feel so deserving of love, and you still have to stop and realize that someone is willingly letting you have it.  Nothing is for free.  I've given it my all this year.

There were five of us for Thanksgiving, and I cooked for everyone.  I did it out of love, as a challenge to see if I could.  I wrote it all down on paper and used our neighbor's oven as a back-up.  I roasted vegetables and thought about terms like umami and emulsify.  I've grown a lot as a cook, and today I wrote down all the things I could do with pasta.  I've seen a change in me, and I like it.  I'm thankful for that.

And I'm thankful for friends.  I grew up lonely, and it's a human condition I can't shake.  I laughed with friends and called more that evening, we made dinner and I wrote little Thank-You cards, totems of gratitude for sticking around.  Sometimes I can be desperate, I'm always playing aloof and then begging for love.  But we ate around candlelight, drank the red when we ran out of white, and created a small family that night, and I'm thankful for that trust.

Thanksgiving is not the hand-traced turkey holiday of my childhood, it's not that line drawn in the proverbial sand between autumn and "The Holiday Season" where it's more appropriate to have a Christmas tree up.  It's is living, breathing, steeping yourself in that gratitude and calling your parents, saying you love them.  Saying you'll change every year a little bit and love them forever.  Loving everything a little harder next year.  Nothing is for free.  I've given it my all this year.

Here are some pictures of the table and our guests...