Paris...Again

We were planning a trip to the remote part of England from which my husband's grandfather immigrated. Everything seemed to complicated, no matter which route and options we explored.

Then, after a particularly spirit-breaking day, I dreamed of Paris. We were there in the sunshine, my husband and I, riding lightweight bicycles that made us feel as though we were flying. We sped from the Arc de Triumph to the Pantheon on what felt like gossamer wings. Then I awoke to a dark January morning.

When we gathered in our snuggery that night, I told my husband about the dream. "Let's do it," he said. "Let's just go to Paris again. It's easier. We know how to do it. We can stay on the Left Bank again."

And so we began dreaming again. And hoping. And feeling lighter.

There are still many unanswered questions in my life.

But I can dream of Paris. What a hold she has on us!

Life forces us into decisions and roles we sometimes abhor. Falling in love with a city gives us options. There is nothing to do but submit yourself to the lure of the city. Paris...

Merry Christmas, Friends

Right up until the actual day of Christmas, I am pulled kicking and screaming into a season of great expectations.

I ignore them all. Christmas baking is a thing of the past, ever since I spent the run up to Christmas reading and grading exams. Some years - and this appears to be one of them - I don't even get a tree up. I tire of holiday music by Dec. 5 (save for the Celtic melodies that became so popular about 15 years ago).

But I do have lovely memories of Christmases past and some day when the year is not so fragmented and demanding, I will use them to craft new traditions.

The year about to end has been full of changes and challenges. I sought physical therapy for a rotator cuff injury and a bursa problem and discovered working out, the world of crunches and reps and - sometimes - sheer torture. I now spend more time at the gym than in the kitchen now.

But there is a distinct possibility a new recipe is about to debut. Stick around. And have a wonderful Christmas.

The tree is not mine, by the way, but one of those lovely memories.

A Turning Point: 9-11-2001

I woke up cranky that morning, dissatisfied with everything in my life. I had to drag myself away from my coffee to get dressed and leave for work; I was late. A coworker nabbed me in front of the newspaper building. "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center," she said.

I did not comprehend any of it as I made my way to the newsroom. The TV in the editor's office was on, and people were gathered around it. Within minutes the second plane hit its target; phone began to ring. The old wire machines would have been clacking and ringing away, but this was 2001, and Associated Press quietly moved its stories over the Internet.

It all happened so fast, one event after the other. We gathered and re-gathered in the editor's office, splitting the assignments. I called a former reporter we knew, a Congressional staffer, who spent a good 20 minutes on the phone with me so I could chronicle his exodus from Washington.

In between I called my mother: Yes, she'd heard from both my brothers, frequent travelers who were safe in Chicago and Los Angeles. Everyone did the same: Called family members. It was a symbolic circling of the wagons.

By noon the paper was on the street and we gathered in the editor's office for more assignments: I was to cover an ecumenical service that night in the park and gather reaction from area officials.

It was my day to teach journalism at our local university. I brought papers for all, and shared the morning's experiences and emotions with them. But mostly I let them talk: Many were exchange students in the United States for the first time. I left class as early as I could and raced back to the newsroom for more assignments.

When I returned home later that afternoon my husband and I watched television in silence. He surprised me when he offered to come to the candlelight memorial service with me. When we got there, I found most people did not want to talk, so I listened closely to the priest, minister and rabbi and once back in the newsroom, carved out an atmosphere piece. On the way home, I listened to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings on the radio.

My job that day and in the days after was to bring the story home, interviewing people I knew in New York and Washington, working with another reporter to tell the stories of three young career girls living in Manhattan. I interviewed the sister of a fire-fighting family from New York, and covered regional efforts to collect items for Ground Zero cleanup crews.

For the first time in a long while I felt a sense of purpose in my work. I worked harder on my writing than ever before, finding ample feature stories to engage me in between routine assignments. My writing output in those days was tremendous, and my new, invigorated approach seemed to carry over into my teaching. I was always happy to be home in the evening, and I spent a good deal of time in the kitchen.

Although I did not realize it at the time, the events of 2001 changed me, even though I had no personal connections to them. But soon after that, I began living life more fully, enjoying myself more, indulging myself again. My husband and I began to travel more, and though we grouse about the new regulations and precautions, we have logged more miles since 2001 than in the decade before.

Making thoughtful and right decisions means more to me now. I take pride in taking the high road, and I strive to be honest and objective in all my dealings.

Perhaps this is just simple maturity. I've never really connected these changes to any single turning point.
Yet I know that I began the process of becoming a new person on Sept. 11, 2001.

Tapenade on Tapas Weekend

A few years ago, my husband and I began what we called Finger Food Fridays, which soon morphed into Saturdays so I could spend some time in the kitchen.

It is a chance to eat some snack-y things like potato chips and nachos, along with healthier fare like raw vegetables and fresh fruit.

We're having a heatwave here in the Midwest. It's muggy and stifling and sweat rolls off your forehead when you do the simplest things like mince garlic or do laundry.

No one in their right mind would even cook on a grill. We declared a tapas weekend.

The word "tapas" got me thinking of tapenade. This provencal specialty gets its name not from olives as you might suspect, but from the Provençal word for capers, "tapenas." Some call tapenade the "black butter of Provence."

Apparently recipes differ from region to region. Some regions add cognac. Anchovies are a fairly typical ingredient, but I find that capers deliver enough salt for my palate.

I prefer my tapenade to be somewhat coarse, as opposed to finely ground, and I make it with about a cup of black olives, a third cup of green olives, a dash of lemon peel, some roasted garlic and a few capers. I sometimes forget to add a dash of olive oil, but that usually makes no difference.

It's the perfect taste for a hot weekend. I usually just serve it on toasted baguette, but it's too hot to toast anything this weekend. So we opted for fresh slice of French rolls. Leftovers were eaten the next day with sun-dried tomato crostini with artichoke and Parmesan topping. No wine, no alcohol of any sort. It's too hot for anything but iced tea and ice water, both with lemon.

Leftover tapenade can also be mixed into a green salad, a pasta dish, or into tuna or chicken sandwich spread.

The Farm Market: Weekend Stress Relief

"Oh, lovely!" I exclaimed, digging in my purse for my camera as I encountered golden beets in a basket at today's little farm market on the bay.

Two women buying produce laughed. "She's not talking about us," they giggled to the vender.

"Me neither," said the vender, who was indeed quite lovely with a pleasant, slightly weathered face, strawberry blond hair tucked under a pink baseball cap and her change tucked into the pockets of a flowered apron.

The farm market has grown these past five summers, and I have come to know the vendors. This is not the market I visited when I began writing here in 2006, but a newer one across town. There is no CSA this year, sadly, and not all the produce is organic, but the market is back to a grassy spot near the marina, and the light is much better for photographing produce and flowers.

I envy these microbusiness owners for their independence, and I love how nicely they display their wares. They are primarily women with a keen sense of merchandising.

The half hour or so I spend at the market each weekend is as essential to my sanity as a bedside novel, an occasional massage, and regular hair trims.

Here are more images from today's market. Aren't the colors fabulous? The photos below look like painted postcards to me.

The Ever Changing Flavor of High Summer

Each summer of our lives imparts its own flavor, especially as it recedes into memory.

There is a time in mid-July when summer is at its apogee, before cicadas and crickets make their end-of-season racket. Usually there is a day or two that set the tone for the entire three month period that begins, no matter what the lunar cycle dictates, on or about June 5 and ends on the very last day of August.

"It's all downhill after the Fourth of July," people in Wisconsin are fond of saying, and they may be spot on. But perhaps because I was a July baby, I think mid summer comes a bit farther into the month.

At any rate, the flavors that live on in my memory are usually captured around the middle of July: the balmy summer Nan, Candy, Sue and I rode our bikes to the beach daily, peddling through the old East Side and the little squatters' village to Seagull Point; the next summer when we rode those same bikes to the marina across town to watch boys and their sailboats. That was the summer I met the man I was to later marry.

There was also the summer I painted my bedroom, the summer I got my canopy bed, the summer I landed my first reporting job, the summer I moved to Madison. Iced tea, blueberries, bologna and cheese sandwiches and falafel are the respective flavors of those summers.

One summer in my early 20s I was between jobs, caught between yearning for a city that teamed with life and a village that brought me peace. That year I discovered a dusty little bookstore tucked between a TV repair shop and the back door of a beauty salon on a side street downtown. I recall buying a copy of "Diet for a Small Planet" and several packets of herb seeds. I planted the seeds in my parents yard: Dill, fennel and marjoram. It was the names that drew me, and in time the flavors.

Nothing draws me as fresh basil does. The basil in the photo above was purchased at a local farm market the summer I started this blog. That summer of discovery tasted so good!

High summer is slipping away, and soon we will hear the song of crickets and sense that subtle change in the sun's angle that spells August.

"July," I  wrote in high school "is a sultry harlot doing her dance on the summer lawns, with ribbons unfurling and tambourines clacking against the heat of summer. I welcome her passing for the cooler tempers of August."


Not so much these days as the Julys grower fewer and fly by with such alacrity.

Grilled Mediterranean Salmon and a Salad of Leftovers

When my brother and I were kids, we lived less than four blocks from school and thus were able to walk home for lunch.

In fall, we kicked our way through leaf piles that gathered in low places on sidewalks and drank in the smoky, apple-y aroma of the season. In winter we clambered atop snow banks and pretended to scale the Alps. In spring we were filled with the restless energy of kids who know vacation is drawing nearer.

We had an hour at noon, and the walk to school and back was 10 minutes either way. Our lunches at home - eaten to the drone of the local radio newscaster - consisted of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, hot dogs and beans, macaroni and cheese,  an occasional casserole, and on Fridays, salmon from a can.

It was one of my least favorite lunches, always served with mashed potatoes, or peas or creamed corn. I thought it dull and tasteless, and probably, deep in my mind, I truly believed salmon came from a can.

It took decades for me to appreciate salmon, which with its distinct tangy taste is nonetheless extremely versatile though not the blank canvas that is chicken. It was only after I began eating lunches and dinners at good restaurants that I fully understood this fabulous fish. Being good for you was an added attraction.

It also took me years to fully grasp the male fascination in firing up a grill as soon as the weather hits 45 degrees. I've never been a huge beef eater so, well, it seemed like a big fuss about nothing.

Then, almost 22 years ago, I married a grill guy and suddenly building a fire and cooking something over it became a pleasant ritual. He was so enthusiastic about experimenting with marinades and seasonings that I got caught up in it. We've gone through a hibachi and a couple of Webers. I can't see investing in one of those fancy-schmancy gas grills, because I like all the trappings of a big old black Weber and its rituals.

Recently, I've been experimenting with grilling vegetables and fruit. A few years ago, I grilled peaches that were luscious but not photo worthy. This summer, I'm going to play around with vegetables wrapped in foil packets.

But I digress. Last night I made Grilled Mediterranean Salmon, using a recipe from the Mayo Clinic Website. (I should note that I always buy wild-caught.)

Fabulous! I used it in a salad along with olives, almonds and Asiago cheese for today's lunch.

What's your favorite way to eat salmon? What's the tastiest meal you've ever made on a grill?