Often, especially in summer as a counterpoint to my longing for the deep heat that is not available, I am grateful for the fresh air in San Francisco.  Moistened by fog and directed by the mighty pacific ocean, the air here is rich and full of momentum.  Truly wonderful things to inhale and incorporate on a daily basis: abundance and movement.

How lucky are we, to have this healthy place?  You don't have to drive to L.A., or even close, or even its direction, to experience how much less enjoyable life is when the air is full of crap.  As soil is to a plant - i.e. EVERYTHING - so is air to us.

There are certainly other places to find fresh air, but how many of them are big cities?  Most of the places that give you air this sweet are out of the way.  Such as the beauteous, remote mountains in Idaho where Ken played music this weekend as part of RanchFest 2010.  Thinking of Ken, in this place, with all of the trees and rich greenery, I could almost taste this air, and it prompted me to send him a text message that said, simply, "Breathe."   Of course that message works on so many levels.

Getting to these remote places, where the majestic trees so generously share their oxygen, requires many of us to burn an amount of fossil fuel that seems preposterous, given that the goal is to get to an unspoiled place.  There's a Catch 22 in there, or at least a great irony, driving miles to escape the smog from cars. 

As the unspeakable horror continues in the Gulf of Mexico, and the urge is to focus on the forces and parties with greater responsibility for this incomprehensible mess, lets all take a few moments to think both about what is not yet spoiled (as well as to affirm our commitment to its preservation), and to recognize what we do in our appreciation of nature that might be ultimately counterproductive.

Today I open my arms to the wind.  I forgive the chilly fog for ruining my summer swims.  I thank my lucky stars for the clean air right outside my door.
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The aftertaste. 05/19/2010
 
Right now I am in a bit of a cooking funk.  Actually, its part funk and part cook's block: I can't for the life of me figure out what to make for dinner.  Its been like this for weeks.  

Its not that I lack resources to figure out what to make, or that I lack an interest in food.  There's plenty that I want to have placed in front of me.  Of course, I DO lack time, energy and a properly stocked fridge, but that is standard, and plenty of times I make amazing meals under these conditions.  For days on end even.

I generally love to cook, so the contrast between now and the rest of the time is severe - for me, it is a bit of an identity crisis.  Who knows what brings about the disconnect between what I want to eat and having the urge to make it for myself.  Usually one naturally and joyfully leads to the other.  But not right now.

In any event, successfully getting through one of these funk-block periods - we all have them, I know, and this one will end, I know - requires a) admitting defeat and making your standbys, even though you don't want them, and b) good condiments.

That is what I did tonight - I made a super unimaginative and (to me) totally uninteresting meal.  I have made this meal so many times, on so many weeknights.  Breaded and fried chicken pieces, rice, cooked carrots.  (Speaking of admitting defeat, I really do just end up calling them nuggets and if I try to refer to them as "breaded and fried chicken pieces" or, worse, "chicken strips" my kids look at me like someone who, on principle, would rather not use a wheel than use one.)

Not willing to have my one sit-down, relatively calm meal of the day be totally unremarkable, I turned to condiments.  As we were sitting down to eat, I rummaged through the top shelf of the fridge, home to a sea of condiments.  Many of the condiments on the top shelf have been made by me.  As a result they are largely delicious, but all in unmarked mason jars, so they are also largely indistinguishable from one another, at least before they've been pulled out and inspected. 

Part of making the condiments in your fridge work for you, and enjoying them rather that looking at them when you get the milk out and thinking to yourself, "god, that shit is good - I never remember to take that out!" is banishing your own ideas about what tastes good together, and just plopping some of what tastes good onto your plate.  Tonight, my meal was taken to the next level by the addition of my own, homemade saurkraut, which I cannot stop putting on everything, and lemon chutney.

The lemon chutney, which I made, and which is for sale at succulence, is styled from a recipe by Laurie Colwin.  If you love to cook and you have never read Laurie Colwin's collections of essays, Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, you are in for a treat.  Her recipe for lemon chutney instructs you to let the chutney sit for a month to ripen.  Laurie then says, "After six months of ripening, it enters another realm, and no words do justice to the flavor."

(Thanks for pointing out that line, Stephanie!)

My chutney is a bit different than Laurie's, and I have not made it to the 6 month mark, but tonight the chutney was a spirit-lifter.  The chutney - saurkraut combination was perfect.  As I made my way through the evening - putting the kids to bed, washing the dishes, paging through the new New Yorker, trying not to think about work - I kept getting these delicate waves of sweet, tangy, lemony, aftertaste - the kind that is equally in your nose and your mouth.  The aftertaste was divine, with just the most subtle hint of cardamom, which can put anyone in another realm if added in the proper dosage. 

Instead of tonight's meal being insignificant and immemorable sustenance, it was something that gave me all of these wonderful sensory experiences, lingered for hours and erased any sense of drudgery around feeding myself.  All because of a little condiment.
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Succulence. 05/17/2010
 
Hey internet!  Here we are!

How's it going?
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