Life Begins at 30

The Cost of a Flavorful Peach

If you're interested in reading my thoughts about the
infamous $3 peach, click on over to Bay Area Bites.

An unabashed attempt to lure you back

A few friends of mine have left the Bay Area this year, or are in the process of leaving for greener different pastures.  You know exactly who you are.  I only have one thing to say:  Joe's dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes are back for the season.  Come home!

My family is tickled by this

Look what happens if you google "grandma".  A picture of my grandma Lupe, from an old post, comes up.  You should have heard my aunt trying to explain this to grandma a couple weeks ago.  She had to start by defining the Internet, then by defining Google, and on and on.

CUESA's Coastal Harvest Farm Tour

Yellow oyster mushrooms, originally uploaded by jen_maiser.

Ever wonder how a mushroom is grown?  It's a fascinating process that I wrote about on KQED's Bay Area Bites this week.  As a part of the tour, I visited Far West Fungi and Yerena Farms.  It was a fun and informative day.

This summer, CUESA is conducting two additional farm tours:

Valley Orchard Farm Tour
Sunday, August 26
Tour Lagier Ranches, our local almond producer, and Hidden Star Orchard in Linden.

Milk and Honey Farm Tour (SOLD OUT)
Sunday, September 16
A tour of Spring Hill Cheese in Petaluma and Marshall's Farm Honey

Both tours are $25 each and include lunch made with farmers' market ingredients.

Farmers' Market Panzanella

I was overwhelmed today by the bounty at the farmers' market.  The entire market smells of melons, sweet and intoxicating.  Everyone I spoke with was in a great mood.  Stephanie picked up some gorgeous okra to continue her okra adventures. 

Exhausted this evening and consumed with everything I need to get done, I found inspiration from Mark Bittman's 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less and threw together a local foods panzanella.   The bread was an olive baguette from Brickmaiden Bakery (Pt. Reyes).  The Armenian cucumber was over two feet long and was brought to market by Full Belly Farm (Yolo County).  The gorgeous tomatoes were from The Peach Farm (Winters).  I used chives from one of my very favorite farms: Marin Roots Farm (Marin County).  I tossed everything together with some (local) salted anchovies, champagne vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.  One of the few times recently that eating a completely satisfying meal has taken longer than making it.

Thanks to Jeanne for sending me the Bittman article today!

Grandma's Tomatoes

"Take a picture of my tomatoes and put it on your blob,"  she said.  Amazed that she even knew that the word was close to blog, I felt I must comply.

A great week

last Sunday: Fairfax Scoop, Strawberry ice cream
Monday: Bi-Rite Creamery, Malted vanilla ice cream with peanut brittle and milk chocolate
Wednesday: Repeat Monday
Thursday: Repeat Monday
Sunday: Repeat Monday

Lucky for my waistline, I will be out of town most of this week!

Defaulting to Happiness

I have always been a generally happy and optimistic person.  When I was a child, I was nearly annoyingly so according to my younger sister who recently told me, "The only reason I was grumpy so often is because you were so damn happy."

All that changed this year when my world turned upside down.  For the first time in my life, I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.  I listened to my friends who told me "you'll get through this," but I had no trust in their confidence.  I smiled and thought to myself how wrong they all were. 

Every day I woke up and put one foot in front of the other.  I only did exactly what I felt I could handle, and did not push myself.  For months and months.  I bailed on friends at the last minute, ignored birthdays and holidays, and didn't return phone calls.  They all sat beside me, told me that they understood and that they'd wait for me to come back.  They told me that I was normal, and that I wasn't a freak for the things I said and did.

Except for my friends and family, to whom I clung for dear life, everything else I knew was up in the air.

Probably the most honest advice I got during the autumn was "It will be awful until it's not."  I didn't understand the information when it was spoken -- a time when I was grasping for anything to hold on to.  Knowing that things will be awful "until they're not" is nothing really firm that I can do anything about.  And for a Virgo like me who likes a specific time and date on things, it wasn't the easiest thing to hear.

And through it all I learned to ask very specifically for what I needed.  "I know I can get a shuttle, but I really need a ride to the airport."  "I really need to you just check on me every once in a while."  "I need to go out to dinner with someone tonight."  "I need you to listen to me and not think I'm crazy."  "I need you to go with me to the farmers' market."

I learned that standing in the middle of my apartment and saying out loud to the room, "I really need someone to call me right now," didn't work and that I had to actually pick up the phone and ask for friends to hold my hand.  I had to learn to be weak in front of people -- something that I'm not always good at.  I had to be ok with being vulnerable.

And eventually, I stopped my panic.  I stopped worrying when I'd be "getting over this" and decided "not today".  And I made a couple of important decisions.  The first was that, as much as I wanted to flee the city immediately -- say good-bye to the town where nearly five of my seven years here were spent with J -- I would stay put.  I would allow myself to leave as much as I needed to, and that resulted in many many flights to Southern California to see my family -- sometimes for weeks on end.  But I wasn't quite ready to say good-bye to San Francisco.  I feel more settled into a community here than I ever have in my life, and I don't feel like my journey here is done yet.

Secondly I decided that, even if I was in the exact same place in a year: single and still confused about my life, that I would be ok.  And that it wouldn't be the end of the world.  In that decision, I gave myself permission to relax -- relax about my need to constantly move forward, and to just be.  To do whatever it was that I needed to do to heal and regroup.

I decided to take a trip.  I decided to stay in my apartment for the moment.  And I managed to step back and get some perspective.  Magically, things got better.  They were awful and then they weren't. 

Like a good recipe, it was a lot of purposeful ingredients put together combined with a dash of this and a pinch of that which helped turn me around.    And I literally feel like I was reborn.  I'm back to defaulting to happiness, and it's the most amazing feeling.  I have to catch myself from saying to a line up of strangers at the local coffee joint, "I'm happy -- do you understand what a miracle that is?"

I want to dance in the streets until midnight
And to laugh till the dawn of the day
And when they ask why I act so strange I'll reply
I'm just happy, so happy this way.
-- Judith Owen, Happy This Way

on cemeteries, maupin, and mushrooms

Every Sunday, my mom and my aunt take my grandparents out for adventures around Los Angeles.  Usually they involve visiting old haunts and interesting LA places.  I often get a phone call from them while on Sundays saying, "We're in ______ (insert any teeny tiny Los Angeles neighborhood here), where should we eat?"

Today, I received a different type of message from mom:

"Hi Jen, uh ... I was hoping you'd be available.  We seem to be locked in a cemetery and I was wondering if you could call someone to help us ..."

I think she wanted me to Google a way to get out of the cemetery.  She later said she thought I could call the non-emergency police department number for her.

Fortunately, they got out soon after when a groundskeeper found them, but that's one message from my family that I'll be happy to never receive again.

*****
I know that things have hit a little lull here, and you may be seeing a couple more non-food related posts.  I've been assured that this is an ok thing.  If you don't agree with it, you can blame my friend who encouraged me to write about whatever I need to.  Her blog rhymes with Schmood Fusings.

*****
I finished "Michael Tolliver Lives."  Truth be told, I finished it in about three days.  It was satisfying and interesting to see Maupin's view on San Francisco in the 80's through to today.  If you haven't read any Tales of the City books, definitely start with the first -- this one will only be interesting if you've read the others.

*****
Does anyone have an interesting mushroom salad recipe?  I was thinking of doing a salad with a variety of roasted mushrooms that can be served at room temperature.  If you have a suggestion, I'd love to see it.