The Grand Plan

I meant to write in chronological order about my travels but I have to jump ahead for a minute here since I'm sitting on an airplane and having, as my mother would say, a moment. I packed my gigantic backpack (which quite comically tipped me over when I put it on) successfully deposited myself on the plane and had a panic attack when it hit me that I have no idea what I'm doing.

Here I should back up and tell you about the grand plan and it's formation. I have been working at a great nonprofit for the past three years, started a line of handmade clothing and organized a group of local crafters to promote local art in my little Central Coast California town. Generally I was really busy, happy and content being creative and doing good work in my community. Then I had my 28th birthday and somehow it really shook me up and it isn't even some mile stone of a year. In all honesty it was building for a while, this feeling of wanting to do something big and bold and different, of feeling a little too confined. And of course there were boy troubles. In my short romantic career I have been married, divorced, engaged (again), and most recently, happily shacked up with an amazing artist boyfriend. This whirlwind of romance leaves me breathless just to think about, and I have greatly abbreviated here. Recently that happiness with said gorgeous artist boyfriend ended with a gigantic crash and burn and I felt compelled to get the hell out of dodge--fast.

So what does a girl do when she wants, scratch that, NEEDS to get the hell out of town for a good long while and has been surviving on a nonprofit salary for three years? The answer is WWOOFing. It's a program called Willing Workers on Organic Farms, basically a work exchange where you put in a little elbow grease and they teach you about sustainable farming and give you room and board. It's a great big barter, my kind of arrangement. A good friend of mine traveled for a whole year in Italy and New Zealand WWOOFing with her husband and had a great experience. If you don't mind a little labor and can get over the embarrassment of the silly name when you tell people about your travel plans, it's a sweet deal.

So why Hawaii? My logic went like this. "I'm completely miserable. It's impossible to be miserable in paradise. And even if I manage to be miserable in one of the most beautiful places on earth, at least I'll be tan and fit from all that outdoor labor, and looking good is a close second to feeling good." I admit, this was not the most logical way to make decisions about my life, but it was the best I could do at the time.

So I quit my job, sold everything that wouldn't fit in the back of my ancient Isuzu Trooper and bought a plane ticket to Hawaii. Here's the travel outline:
1. Visit darling sister in New York to get a head change and some familial comfort
2. Drive from San Luis Obispo to Portland to visit my blessedly sane friend for a good dose of groundedness
3. Continue driving to Seattle to relax at my dad's and park the rusty old Trooper and my remaining earthly belongings at his house
4. Fly to Hawaii for six months of exhausting physical labor and breathtaking beauty
5. Fly back to Seattle for the holidays and figure out what the hell to do with my life

Good plan, right? Well, like all plans, it's brilliant if you don't think too much about it. Sometimes I make these little bargains with myself to hang on to my sanity. Like for the past two months since I decided to do this, sometimes I will start to freak out about how I just quit my job that I love, moved out of my house that I adore, broke up with my boyfriend that I still am crazy about (did I mention that he's gorgeous and talented and wonderful?) and am moving to a place that I've never been to live with people that I've never met to be a FARMER?!?! (Just to give you some idea of how crazy this plan is, let me tell you that my primary activities for the past three years have been making fancy women's clothing and working for a symphony orchestra.) At these moments I told myself that I don't need to think about it until I get there, and this has worked pretty well at keeping me from becoming a puddle of tears and anxiety on the floor. But, now I'm actually on the plane going to Hawaii and I have not read even one chapter of the many travel books friends have given me, or contacted any of the people I know through said friends who live there, or even read the organic agriculture books that I'd bought to prepare for my work there. Classic denial. And this is my own plan! The only thing I have done to prepare is paint my toenails purple for courage...purple is for courage, right?

All You Need is a Freezer

I was in Portland a couple weeks ago visiting my dear friend, spending lots of time in her pretty little garden, walking the dog and cruising around the town. It was SO hot the only thing that sounded good was cool and delicious ice cream. We had a mound of homemade creme fraiche and some serious motivation to make a cold and creamy treat. One problem: no ice cream maker. Turns out you don't need one. You just make the custard, put it in the freezer and blend it every now and again so that it doesn't get all icey. Not that we didn't have to do some experiments to figure this out. You can see one the useless methods above (swirling the custard in a big pot of ice water). Totally unneccesary but amusing.

Just when I thought that there was no way that homemade ice cream could get any better, I came across a recipe that combines my two favorite foods: butter and cream. I'm from the Mid-West and love me some dairy. Oh sweet lord, what a combination....we used that beautiful creme fraiche instead of cream. It was so rich and gorgeous, I could only eat one tiny little scoop! There is an awesome recipe (with pictures!) at this great little food blog.

In Seattle my folks were hit with the craze (it was scorching hot there too) and we made a tangy blueberry variety. Now that I'm in Hawaii, my host family is also completely mad about the good stuff. They've been doing a passionfruit and goat's milk version that is so sour and sweet and reminds me of orangesicles from when I was a kid. Funny how life has these recurring themes. I'm really grateful that my life themes have switched from shattering self-doubt and misery to ice cream and traveling. Things are looking up.

Wine Makes Me Feel Dumb, But It Sure Does Taste Good!

Having friends in the wine business really pays off. My lovely friend Elly, co-owner of Proof Wine Marketing, has been a major blessing in my life in so many ways, and I'm not even talking about all the cool wine events that she manages to get me invited to. Last week we both found ourselves in Portland. She was there for the International Pinot Noir Festival. I was there on my way from San Luis to Seattle. Lovely lady that she is, Elly invited me to come wine tasting with her at a few places before the festival officially commenced. Being unemployed, free and socially acceptable drunkenness in the middle of the afternoon sounded like a fine idea indeed.

We visited three wineries specializing in Oregon pinot noir. Apparently Oregon pinot is like manna from the gods if you're a wine geek, which of course is why the festival is in Portland. Here I must insert that I know absolutely nothing about wine. My decisions about purchasing it boil down to two very simple questions: 1) does the label look cool? and 2) is it under $10? I cannot tell the difference between a fine wine and 2 buck chuck. Personally, I think this makes me the ideal tasting companion--I can be effusive and complimentary to any winemaker because it all tastes great to me!

This tasting tour was not your run of the mill, 5-varieties-in-30-minutes-while-getting-your-wine-poured-by-an-20-year-old-viticulture-student-"don't-you-want-to-join-our-wine-club?" schpeel. We actually got to hunker down with each of the winemakers for a couple of hours, walk through the vineyards and taste from the barrels. This was insider wine tasting. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the process, of particular interest since I've been boning up on my plant knowledge for my farming stint in Hawaii.

Here are just a couple of things that I learned about wine that maybe you didn't know either:
1) Everything from the mineral content of the soil to the amount and timing of rainfall effects the flavor of the grapes
2) That contraption they use to taste from the barrels is called the thief and the hole in the barrel they draw it out of is called the bung-hole. (Here my inner linguistics geek rapturously squeals!)
3) When they treat the wooden barrels for wine fermentation, it's called "toasting" the barrel. This makes me think of warm buttered toast and makes me really happy. I started imagining that I could taste it in the wines and frankly it made me like them even better. (This was sign number one that I should have spit like everyone else.)

Forgive me if you know all this already, but frankly I found it fascinating. It was amazing to see these winemakers who control everything from the vine to the bottling with such care and attention. These artisans were way passionate amassing knowledge about agriculture, new technology, marketing and of course good wine and food. I had no idea wine making was so cool. I love folks that really geek out on shit and everyone we met was totally freaking on making the best pinot noir possible. My inner dweeb felt a kinship. It could have been the six solid hours of guzzling wine, but I choose to believe that I simply have an appreciation for folks with a passion.

The Longest Bike Ride Ever

I need to start out this post by saying that I am not a wimp. There, now I feel better and can whine for a few paragraphs.

See that happy, smiling face above? I look so carefree, contented and adventurous. Like I'm ready to meet any challenge with calm and fortitude. That's the "before" picture. If only I had an "after" picture--then you'd know what a long, long bike ride it is from Manhattan to the only real beach in New York City.

I also need to preface this story with a note about my cycling companions. My sister Kate, her wife Jess and their friend Anna are probably not human. Only robotic beings would be able to so easily pedal on and on for hours. For them, 100 mile bike rides and participating in Iron Man competitions are leisurely activities. For us carbon-based life forms, leisure normally includes a cocktail and some nominally strenuous activity, like dominoes. In my case, there are only two acceptable times for a person to break a sweat, both of which entail lying on your back. I should have been much more suspicious when these ladies proposed a bike ride to the beach.

My sister lives on 148th Street in West Harlem. Our destination that day was a place called Riis Park, in the same area as Coney Island . At least that was my general impression. Being unfamiliar with the greater NYC metro area, I trusted in the navigation skills of my robotic cycling buddies. As the picture suggests, we did in fact take a train for part of the way. That should have been another indication of how far it was. The rest of the week we had been cycling all over Manhattan because as my sister said "its more convenient than the train." (A sure sign of her robotic programming. There's not much that's more convenient than stepping on and off a train.) Even after having taken the train, we're talking about a 4o mile round trip ride. For a girl accustomed to walking a quarter of a mile to work and back each day, maybe a yoga class if the mood strikes, this was definitely a stretch. We got off the train in Brooklyn, biked down to Coney Island and then just kept going. And going, and going.

So here I am panting in the 99% humidity of a New York summer, cursing under my breath and trying to NOT be the complaining, out-of-shape whiner that I am. Telling my happily-cycling robot friends, "This is great! I'm doing fine!" as I gasp for air. Here enter the heroes of the story, the two things that sustained me on this ordeal: the Russian deli and the shake shack. Tasty Russian deli right off the boardwalk in Coney Island. I think it was called Russian Delight, but maybe I'm just making that up because I was so delighted to be there. Nothing can perk a girl up like a good foreign deli with lots of new foods to sample. There was a delicious cabbage salad that none of thought was cabbage until we tried it. (Kate thought it was noodles, I thought it was onion.) Tasty little plum and cherry fried donuts-things, cheesy pastry pies and lots of other goodies, whose contents I can only guess at. Basically cabbage, meat and cheese, artfully rearranged into lots of different dishes. That was just on the way there. On the way back we discovered the shake shack right there at the park entrance. It was a little roach coach with hot dogs, hamburgers and every imaginable flavor of milkshake. The shake shack special is an unknown concoction of ice creamy flavors. When you ask the nice man at the counter what's in it, he replies, "Just eat it, it's good." Word. Ice cream, I've decided, is the perfect sustenance for a long journey home.

I take it back--there were three things that sustained me. The beach was really beautiful. When my sister told me about this amazing beach, a real beach, in New York City of all places, of course I was skeptical. I'm a West Coast girl, through and through and am a little prejudiced in favor of the unspoiled beaches of Central Coast California. I wasn't expecting much from this coastline in terms of beachy beauty. Coney Island about met my beach expectations--imported sand with crowded tall buildings right behind, ladies smoking cigarettes and tanning their chubby painted toes while gossiping about their neighbors, subway rails running the length of the shore. The real beach was much different. Riis Park is a really long stretch of sand with warm water, not a lot of folks around and cool decaying old building scattered here and there along the way. There was a decrepit old airplane hanger that we passed with weeds growing everywhere and some trees scattered about. Otherwise, there wasn't much to tell you that you're still within the city limits. Just pretty water, soft sand and quiet. My kind of beach. I even went swimming since the water was so warm, something I rarely do in the chilly Pacific.

I am kind a wimp to whine. It was a lovely day.

In the Beginning, There Were Oysters

It all started with a delicious dish of killer-cheap oysters. I was visiting my sister in New York and we decided to rest our weary bones at Fish in Soho. The best deal on the menu is the Red, White and Blue Special: six blue points and a PBR for $8. Heaven on a half shell.

During the second round with darling sister, I had an oyster-induced epiphany: the next six months of my life will be characterized by only two things, eating and moving. Until then, my life had seemed so complicated and crazy, but these little mollusks were singing a song of simplicity. New York was the first leg on my journey. After that its off to Portland, Seattle and then six months in Hawaii learning about sustainable farming. If ever there were a worthy subject for a self-involved blog, this was surely one of the more interesting ones.

Thus, the genesis of a blog about two very simple things that make a lot of people very happy: eating and moving.