Posts tagged ‘Seattle’
Love
My cereal bowl. The only piece of dinnerware I own.
I’m in love with life right now. It’s unabashed. It’s warm and fuzzy. It’s happier than I thought I could be.
I’m updating the blog with this mini-post to announce that homesickness has officially hit, even though I thought I was immune. Some of the credit goes to the Seattle Times, which published an article of mine in the Pacific NW Magazine this week. But most of it goes to a care package. Monday afternoon a box arrived in the mailroom with BERNSTEIN scrawled on the side. I carried it down the stairs, through the drizzly street, up the elevator – all the way to the common room, where I split it open with scissors. A few curious floormates between classes looked up.
It was filled with solid gold, or maybe solid sunshine. A bar of Theo chocolate. A smooth cylinder of orange vanilla green tea. Salts, salts, salts! (Gourmet salts!) A coin purse shaped like a cookie, a breathtakingly beautiful teacup, and a 108-piece, double-sized macaroni and cheese puzzle (which, yes, I finished in one night.) A finger puppet. Cookbooks, some adorable CakeSpy products, gourmet nuts and popcorn, stationary printed with pots and pans.
But best of all? A card. It has a photo of Pike Place Market on the front, and inside, signatures from Seattle foodies. Thorough honesty – standing there in the common room, surrounded by people, I managed not to cry, but barely.
Window view
It wasn’t just Seattle, even though that was a big part of it. The chocolate bar, the tea, the CakeSpy cupcake comic, all of it is so Seattle in a way that Boston can never be. I miss Pike Place Market, Molly Moon’s ice cream and Top Pot Doughnuts with serious heartache. I miss mountains. I miss the water. I miss recycling. I miss my neighborhood, the evergreens blackening as the sun drops low. All of this, all of Seattle, managed to fit into that cardboard box.
But it was more than that. With Seattle came everything else, inseparably woven with family and my old life. As I flipped through cookbooks for the first time in a month, it truly hit me how much I missed the ability to get up and bake, whenever. And as I held that letter, I was overwhelmed with humility and appreciation and unfiltered love. There are people who care about me in Seattle. And for a few seconds, I forgot that I wasn’t there, and understood the significance of what I’d left behind.
I’m okay now. I unpacked the box, passed around the salts to be sniffed, broke off a piece of chocolate and felt better. I called Jenny of Purple House Dirt, who organized the mass care package. I left her a scattered, distracted voicemail about how happy I felt, sniffling all the while.
And right now, I’m filled with joy and gratitude.
The package included Gray Salt Caramels from Seattle-based Fran’s Chocolates
I know I do this all too often, but I’m compelled to thank each one of you for your support, kind words, and readership. And tonight, an extra special thank you for these incredible people: Jackie Baisa, Felice Lam, Keren Brown, Linda M Nicholson, Lorna Yee, Frank Guanco, Shirley K, Melissa Peterman, Valentina Vitols, Alice Currah, Kelly Cline, Myra Kohn, Andrea Duchon, Jeanne Sauvage, Jessie Oleson, Jenny Miller, and Janna Wemmer/Secret Stash Salts. Some of you have never even met me in person, and yet, you went out of your way to make my week beautiful.
One final heartfelt thank you to Jenny Richards. I just don’t have any more words to express how much this package meant to me.
[The no-recipe, all-Boston post is in the works. Just getting enough photos to put it together!]
Vanilla Bean Jasmine Rice Pudding
Nobody understands it, but for some inexplicable reason I like to work in the dark.
Well, not complete darkness. But as long as there’s a bit of gold left in the sky, I flick the light switches off before preheating the oven or leaving out the butter. I watch the lightbulb gradually dim until all that’s left is the little red glow of the filament, like the scarlet flicker of a snake’s tongue, until that too goes out in a snap. Then I get to work.
I throw open all of the curtains. Despite the chrome-colored damper of winter in Seattle, there’s a natural light that filters through the glass and brightens the kitchen in a way that artificial light cannot. I like the shadows that fall from the measuring cups on the counters. I like the burnt-edged way my photographs come out, and despite my father’s eye rolls and my friends’ confusion, I like the way I feel at home.
Some days I want to tackle big projects, like French pastries and gourmet spice profiles. I feel ambitious, and I turn on the lights to help me keep focused.
But sometimes I’m having one of those afternoons where I want my mind to de-clutter. I had one of those last week. I wore my oversized hunter green sweater and soft brown slippers to school, calling it “the macaroni and cheese of clothing.” In a word, it’s comfort. That day, I wanted to eat something just as simple and comforting as a day in sweatpants or a kitchen bathed in vanilla-sugar light.
It’s always hard to decide what to make. I usually pick based on what I feel like baking, since that’s where I derive most of my joy. But that day, I focused on what I felt like eating. I couldn’t think of anything that satisfied my craving, though, so I heated water to make myself a cup of jasmine green tea instead. That’s when it came to me.
When I stumbled upon rice pudding, I felt my heels lift off the floor a little, and then I could think about nothing else. Rice pudding is my very favorite comfort food – creamy, soft, and studded with a million little vanilla bean seeds.
It’s funny. I don’t like to waste money or ingredients, so I have a “vanilla scale” in order to save on both. I have two brands of vanilla extract – one cheap and one quality – and two brands of vanilla beans – one cheap and one quality.
I use the cheap vanilla extract for experiments and where it “doesn’t matter,” in muffins and scones. I save the good vanilla beans for dishes where they’ll shine, in my opinion where they belong: ice cream, custards, and really good rice pudding.
I didn’t even blink before deciding to use one of my most precious vanilla beans for this rice pudding. As I began to cook the rice, I had a sudden stroke of inspiration. I quickly lit another burner on the stove, poured in the milk, and added three of my family’s favorite jasmine green tea bags.
I didn’t know how it would turn out. I didn’t even consider that it might be awful and ruin my vanilla bean. I just inhaled the fragrant steam coming up from the jasmine milk, and the powerful aroma of the vanilla bean seeds speckled on my fingers. I knew I wasn’t making a mistake.
The pudding came together quickly. I felt more and more serene with every stir of the wooden spoon. The kitchen was warm, and my heart felt full. I held a warm bowl of rice pudding and curled up in the rocking chair in our living room, the one by the huge window that stretches from floor to ceiling. I took the first spoonful of rice pudding.
Oh, oh, oh, the jasmine was so not a mistake!
I didn’t taste it at first, just the beautiful woody creaminess of the vanilla. But then there it was, quietly, floral notes that crept up like crocuses in spring. The slight flowery bitterness of the jasmine green tea, complimented perfectly by the vanilla… I turned off my cell phone and put away my iPod. Then I got myself another bowl of rice pudding and snuggled into the chair until the very last ray of light went out in a snap.
17 and Baking 