Friends with Benefits

“Friends with benefits” is the phrase that came to mind after I tasted what is, hands down, one of the best things I have put in my mouth this year. Not those kinds of benefits (mind out of gutter, please). I’m talking culinary benefits, which is nothing to scoff at. Not when a dish like this is in the offing. The benefit I’m talking about is fresh, free sorrel, and a recipe that might make your head spin.

It all started with my friend Knox, who is known for his brilliant ideas (he is Mr. Soup Swap, after all). He’s also the guy who transformed a bare backyard into an amazing landscape of colorful and edible bounty in under a year.

Every time I come to visit I get to poke around the garden and see what’s new. It could be unusual fruit trees (medlars, anyone?) or a box that allows for stacking of potato plants, or a rabbit house with strawberries growing on the roof. Or it could be a clutch of sorrel plants that won’t stop producing.

“Do you want some sorrel?” he asked me as we eyed the plants that were going gangbusters.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you do with it?”

I’ve grown sorrel before, but I wanted to know what Knox does with these tart and lemony greens. The only thing I've ever done is make soup.

“I make the tart.” He said it like I should know about this tart. Like everyone should know about this tart.

I had never heard of a sorrel tart. Have you?

The tart comes from Deborah Madison who got it from Richard Olney, which is some serious culinary pedigree. She says this recipe is the reason she grows sorrel. Knox says it’s the reason he grows sorrel as well. And it’s the reason I’m going to be planting a lot more sorrel in the future.

Knox gave me a bundle of greens and I spirited them home and tried my hand at the tart. It’s a fairly simply thing: eggs, cream, some gruyere cheese. I used a 12 year aged gruyere I’ve recently become hooked on. There’s a red onion as well, sautéed down until it’s soft, and the pile of sorrel leaves.

The sorrel leaves are even better if prepped by a little wee one. The niecelets have discovered the salad spinner and love playing with it. I now have the driest greens in three states.



The thing about sorrel is that you take a nice pile of lovely greens, and once you cook them they turn into something that—to quote Bridget Jones's Diary— looks like “green gunge.” Sorrel melts into a sopping brown/green mess. This, I have discovered, is not such a bad thing—although it's not very pretty to look at. 



As I was cooking the sorrel and the onions, I began to think that the tart might be good with some wisps of prosciutto mixed in (if you’re the sort of person who goes for that). It would bump up the umami flavor. When it was fully baked and served, however, I changed my mind. This tart needs nothing but a fork; it’s deeply savory, in a way not common in vegetarian cooking. The onion and sorrel are a perfect match for the gruyere, the crust is flaky. It was one of the best things I’ve tasted this year, hands down.

My mother was in town that week and she loved it too—loved it. We wrapped the second half of the tart up and took it with us for a weekend on the Olympic Peninsula with the niecelets. Halfway through the weekend, my mother looked at me and said, “Do you think we should bother sharing the tart with the girls? I’m not sure they can really appreciate it.”

What can I tell you—it’s good. So good I’ve been begging sorrel off friends of mine. Shauna and Dan have a big plant about to go to seed and let me gather some leaves. My community garden has some in the shared herb section that I've been eyeing. And my most recent email from Knox told me I could come and get more from his garden (“If you need some stop by and get some...you know where it is!”).

Friends with benefits, indeed.

Not only is he generous, my friend Knox is also quite clever. He sautés the sorrel in butter and then freezes it, in individual plastic bags, so he can have this tart year round. Genius. I plan to do the same. Perhaps you should give it a try as well. Trust me on this one, a friend wouldn't steer you wrong.



SORREL TART
From The Greens Cookbook, by Deborah Madison and Edward Espe Brown
I don’t usually post recipes taken from cookbooks, but as this recipe was given to Deborah Madison by Richard Olney, I figure I’m just passing it along as well. It’s really too good not to share.

Tart Dough

1 cup flour
3/8 tsp salt
4 tbs butter, chilled and cut into chunks
1 1/2 tbs vegetable shortening
2 1/2 to 3 tbs cold water

Put all ingredients except water into the bowl of a food processor and process until the texture is small and crumbly. Drizzle the water in slowly until the dough comes together in a ball. Don’t process more than necessary. You can alternately do this in a bowl with a pastry cutter.

Roll out the dough and press into a 9-inch tart pan or springform cake pan, pricking the bottom with fork tines. Freeze the empty shell. Once fully frozen, bake the shell in a 450° oven until beginning to color.

NOTE: my tart dough shrunk a bit, and bubbled slightly on the bottom despite having been pricked. Next time I’ll try baking with pie weights.

Tart Filling:

4 tbs unsalted butter, divided
1 large red onion, sliced thinly
1/2 tsp salt
6-8 oz sorrel leaves (I used about 7 oz)
2 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
2 oz gruyere cheese, grated (I use an aged gruyere, 12 years)
Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375°

Melt 3 tbs butter in a medium pot or pan and add the onions and salt. Sauté about 10-15 minutes, until the onions are soft and stewed. Set aside. In a new pan, melt 1 tbs butter and add sorrel. Cover and cook until the greens have wilted, about 4-5 minutes. Allow both the onions and the sorrel to cool.

Whisk eggs and cream together in a large bowl. Add the sorrel, onion, and half the cheese, stir to mix. Add pepper, as desired.

Scatter the second half of the cheese over the pre-baked tart shell. Pour the filling on top. Bake in the center of the oven until fully set (40-45 mins). The final tart should be well colored. Serve hot or room temperature.

Stalking Wonder: Farewell to 7th Avenue

Oh, friends, I’ve been absent round these parts. Once I turned in my final manuscript for the book, things got busy. There was all the life maintenance deferred during deadline, and my mother’s 70th birthday—which I think you’ll agree deserves some celebrating. And there’s been the minor problem of having run out of space on my hard drive and being unable to download photos, but mostly there was San Francisco and 7th Avenue to deal with.

Yes, 7th Avenue. Isn’t seven a nice and lucky number?

Nine years ago this month, I moved into San Francisco. It was the height of the dot-com era and housing was hard to come by. Open houses drew forty to sixty people, some of whom showed up with checks already written for the first six months of rent. Others offered to pay more than asking price. At one open house I was given a questionnaire that put the sorority rush process to shame.

I was lucky, I was offered two houses (apparently I'm good at sorority rush). They were both in the neighborhood I wanted, both in my (limited) price range, and I turned them both down. My friends thought was crazy. "You don't know what it's like here now," they told me, "you've been in Japan a long time. You might not find anything else in your price range. The city has become expensive."

“They just weren’t right,” I told them. I wasn't being picky, I just had a feeling my house was still out there.

That was Tuesday. On Wednesday I read the listing for 7th Avenue.



I started calling it “my” apartment before I even saw it, before I even talked to the women who were looking for a housemate. I just knew. When they asked me to meet them on a weekend morning I agreed, though the last thing I wanted to do was go into the city where I had been working all week.

Ten minutes into the conversation they started talking about me as if I already lived there. “Do you want me to take a walk around the block while you discuss it?” I asked them.

“No,” they said, smiling broadly. They knew too.



That is how I ended up in the big Edwardian flat, half a block away from Golden Gate Park and on a direct tramline to my office at the publishing company. That is how I met Meg, still a dear friend, and how I fell in love with the fog as it rolls over the Sunset District and gets tangled in the tall cypress trees in the park. I could see the tops of those trees as I lay in bed, and at night I could hear the foghorns. I had grown up a stone’s throw away from San Francisco, across that red bridge, but it was exciting to be living in the city at last.



The flat was huge—two living rooms, two fireplaces, a formal dining room with big, fancy double doors that rolled shut with the sound of thunder. It was built in 1910 and all the doors were made of solid redwood. If you had to take them off the hinges—as you do to get furniture in or out—and you happened to drop one of your toe, you'd limp for a week and a half.



As lovely as it was, it was also inexpensive, a rare thing in this city of high prices (I won’t tell you how inexpensive, it would pain you). The landlord hadn’t raised the rent in over a decade. We took this seriously and made a point of bringing in roommates for whom this would be a boon—teachers, students, those working in nonprofits, arts, social work. The city had become expensive while I was gone, very expensive.

In the beginning there was a gang of us living there. I was delighted to be living with people, after seven years of living alone, and loved the rituals that developed. Wednesday night, without fail, was West Wing. On Mondays we sometimes went to very bad movies (we may or may not have smuggled beer into the theaters, which may or may not have made the films better). Sundays were often spent on the couch of our downstairs neighbors, where I discovered that the only thing better than watching Sex in the City with girlfriends, is watching it with gay men.



We were all fairly busy with our own lives, but the times together were fun. I remember one evening when, after a few drinks, we realized the dog needed to be walked (yes, there was even a dog who napped all afternoon in the sunny patch on the dining room). We bundled up and headed to the park in high spirits. There we rolled down grassy hills, laughed madly, and enacted our first game of fantasy baseball where we pretended to pitch an imaginary ball, running the bases in the ball field while the imaginary crowd went wild. Then we put on heels and spent the rest of the night drinking sangria in a tapas bar.

There were parties too. Holiday parties, birthday parties, a fondue party where I nearly burnt the house down (don’t ask, it’s embarrassing). The dining room had high wainscoting around it and on top of the ledge were twenty-five small votive candle holders. When we had parties the candles were lit and the whole room simply glowed. In those moments I felt rich and drunk on life.



It all seems hazy and golden now, those days of twenty-somethingness. It wasn’t always rosy. There was heartbreak, jobs lost and found. There were mismatched roommates and dirty dishes in the sink. It was life, with its pleasures and hard knocks. But on days when the knocks had been particularly hard, there was this house to come home to, and often a friendly face to chat with while curled up on one of the sofas. There were cups of tea and glasses of beer and conversations with neighbors on the stoop. At the best of times, it felt like a family.

I went to grad school while living here, writing papers late into the night, and I started my freelance business here. My roommate bought me a teapot to mark the occasion—and the tea strainer you see in the banner photo above. She explained that I no longer needed to take my tea with me in a commuter cup. I still remember how very odd it felt that first morning when everyone went off to work and I stayed home. Can I really do this? Am I allowed?

Over time there were fewer roommates. When Meg moved out I took over the second bedroom as my office, working in a room that was drenched in golden California light every afternoon, so bright I had to buy curtains so I could see the computer screen. There was a year and a half where it was only me living there, though I never liked it. The house was big and rambling, meant for people; it felt lonely to be there alone.



That was the year I got sick and started this blog. I spent days at home, staring out my window at the treetops in Golden Gate Park, watching the wisps of fog curl like tendrils. When I felt strong enough I cooked for friends, who came over for dinner when they were done with work. My friend Cheyenne and I once spent an evening immobile from exhaustion—her from a demanding job, me from illness—lying on neighboring sofas, staring at the flames in the fireplace.

Then, when I began to feel better, I decided to leave. I never thought I was moving away permanently, I simply decided to go to Seattle for the summer. It was to be a break from San Francisco, nothing more. Then I would come back to this city I love, to a house that had become home. I never thought Seattle might be longterm.

But life has a funny way to making up its own mind. I did come back, but I left again, and then again. For the past two years I’ve been here only sporadically. I’ve come and gone, and it’s come to be that I have two homes—one on 7th Avenue that contains my furniture, another one in Seattle that (usually) contains me.

When I moved to Seattle the younger sister of a friend of mine moved into 7th Avenue, staying in one of the empty bedrooms. She’s in her twenties and excited about living in the city. The first weekend her friends came over. I heard them laughing in the bathroom as they got ready to go out and I smiled. I remember those first dazzling days of living in San Francisco, the sheer giddiness of this beautiful city. When they left I told them to have fun and I meant it. They will have fun, and they will have hard times, that’s just the way it is. But I know she has a home to come back to at the end of the day. Sometimes that makes all the difference.

I spent this past week packing up my furniture, my books, the artwork I had left behind when I went to Seattle. As I wrapped glassware and candlesticks I remembered the times—good and bad—the parties, the conversations, the meals and cups of tea and jokes shared around the dining room table. This place has been my home, but it increasingly doesn’t feel like home anymore. When I come back now it feels like visiting a college dorm or first apartment.

Ah, yes. I remember that time in my life. It was good, but it’s over now.



The furniture I packed this week—things that were swaddled in blankets and lifted onto a truck—is coming to Seattle. It will be put into a garage to wait until I’ve found my next home. I don’t know where that is yet. Sometimes it scares me, this leap of faith I’m taking. I love San Francisco and I loved my life there. It is and always will be home. But sometimes it’s good to leave home—not easy, but good.

At least I hope that it is. I hope that it will be for me.

As for 7th Avenue, I’m not turning in my keys just yet (did I mention: seriously amazing rent deal?). It’s a hard world sometimes, I might need to run home again. I’m glad it’s still there; I’m grateful.

Thanks, 7th Avenue. I was lucky, indeed, to have found you. I hope to be lucky again.

Stalking Wonder: The Picnic

Isn't that photo glorious? I should have saved it for the end of the post but I couldn't resist. It's too happy, and happy shouldn't be put off. You've got to grab happy whenever and wherever you can.

For me these days, happy is a picnic. The weather has sorted itself out, the gardens are thriving, the days are long and warm, and I can think of few things finer than eating outdoors with friends and family. It's picnic time all right.

I recently had the extreme pleasure of being included in a picnic that was wonderful in every way. A beautiful garden, where we ate under a cherry tree already festoon with tiny green fruit, next to a lilac bush still hanging onto the last of her blooms. We were surrounded by daisies and lavender and all manner of beautiful plants and flowers. It's a magical spot.



And then there was the food. Gorgeous lettuces plucked from a garden (by a wonderful new gardener) and dressed in homemade ranch dressing with buttermilk from a local farm. A potato salad with asparagus and morels and a basil dressing (wow), chicken and ribs right off the grill, cookies and wine and the most amazing dessert. It truly was a feast.



But more than the food—which was outstanding—were the people. Friends old and new, some met that very day. A conversation that dipped and wove its way through stories and laughter and strong opinions. The sharing of thoughts and hopes and experience, and even outrage sometimes, as the sun arched across an impossibly blue sky and headed for the horizon.

It reminded me of a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I've always loved:

"I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant."

That day was.



And I did what I love to do. I nestled my glass is a hollow in the lawn and lay on my stomach with my toes in the grass and I listened to a conversation that contained whole worlds in it. Wisdom and experience and humor shared—and I was reminded that we humans are tribal creatures, not meant to live alone. We survive best when encircled by bonds and relationships and connections. Some people get this through their family, some people create a family of friends, drawing people close and forging the ties that will sustain them. That day we felt like a little tribe, out in the garden, sharing our lives and our loves and our food together under a generous sun.

It was the very best sort of day.

And in the end we had flan with rhubarb compote—the most amazing flan made by an amazing woman, topped with dulce de leche she had carried back from a trip to Argentina. It was so delicious that we all fell silent as we ate it.



But for me that day was not about the food—as wonderful as it was. It was about the people, the connection, the time spent together in a glorious garden. The feeling of community, of communion, of good things beginning to grow.

Don't you think you should try having a picnic soon?


Photo of yours truly, in her favorite habitat, by the lovely Bonne Vivant

Don't think I'd leave you high and dry without recipes:

Danny's potato salad with morels and asparagus and basil vinaigrette
(I loved this dish)
Viv's incredible flan de queso (your life may never be the same)
Shauna's buttermilk ranch dressing (inspired by Cookiecrumb)
Rhubarb compote

Happy weekend, friends. I hope you get a picnic in soon!

My Summer Secret Weapon: Mugicha

Here in Seattle today it’s hot, really hot. There's even been a weather advisory issued for extreme heat. It's been like this all week.

To be honest, it’s a little too hot for me. I have an inverse relationship between heat and happiness: the hotter it gets, the less happy I become. That’s why I need my secret weapon, mugicha.

Mugicha, if you’ve never heard of it, is a roasted barley infusion that is served throughout Japan in the summer. In Korea it is called boricha. It’s not technically tea, it’s roasted barley, but it’s brewed the same way and served cold and it’s one of the things that help me through hot weather. In fact, brewing that first jug of mugicha—as I did this week—is the sign that summer really is here.



This tea is the Japanese equivalent of American iced tea, ubiquitous in the summer, though never served sweet. When my brother and I were kids we called it “burnt tea.” It has a nice toasty grain flavor that I love and is caffeine-free.

Mugicha comes in a rather large sized teabag, which will make a decent sized jug of tea 1.5 liters). You boil the teabag in a pot of water for 2-3 minutes. If it’s really hot I heat the water in an electric kettle and pour it over the teabag to avoid having to turn on the stove (did I mention how much I dislike being hot?).



This is the box of mugicha I have in the house at the moment. If you buy this brand (House Foods), you may be confronted with two options: one with red on the label, the other with blue. The red variety must be brewed with hot water, the blue can be brewed with cold. I generally buy the red, because I don’t know what they do to the barley that makes it possible to steep in cold water. Also, I like to cooked cereal smell of the mugicha brewing. It’s tradition.



When the temperatures begin to rise, I get strategic with my mugicha. I make a jug a day. I either steep it at night, so it’s cool enough to go into the fridge first thing in the morning, or make it during the day and pop it into the fridge before I go to bed. In the height of summer, I reckon I drink a jug of mugicha a day. If you’ve got a secret weapon, it’s best to have a ready supply.

I’m not made for heat like this. I’m bred for misty English moors, raised in the fog belt of the Bay Area. When it gets hot I wilt. Then I retreat to the bottom level of my house, the coldest spot I can find, with a fan and a jug of chilled mugicha. It’s the best way I know to beat the heat. The weather advisory said it's important to stay hydrated. I think I've got that covered.

Do you have any good summer survival strategies? I'm trying to figure out how to deal with Seattle’s occasional heat wave, I could use all the help I can get.



For those interested in making mugicha from scratch, here's a recipe.

The pitcher in the photos is from the Quadro line by Luminarc, who also make the Working Glass jars I love. Their products are great, they last for years.

The Great Anko Controversy

Oh the controversy, my friends—the controversy of anko.

There are few things that western foreigners living in Japan disagree about more than anko (also called an), the sweetened red bean paste widely used in confections throughout Asia. Most hate it with a passion, I fall into the distinct minority by liking it.

This led to disagreements, strong words were exchanged. It never came to blows, but a few more bottles of Kirin Lager and it just might have. These resident foreigners didn't merely dislike anko, they hated the stuff.

I have a theory about how this came to be. This is what I think happened.

Japan can be a befuddling place for the foreign resident in the beginning, nothing operates the way you expect and while people tend to be kind, it is often hard to get a straight answer. When things become overwhelming, there is an urge to find comfort in something familiar.

This is why almost every foreign resident I know has a story about going to buy a donut or pastry. It looked just like the donuts back home—the ones filled with chocolate or vanilla cream—but when they took a bite they got a mouthful of some sweet bean crap they wanted to spit out. They were feeling down to begin with and this was the final blow. They took it out on the poor anko.

It's not the fault of the anko, it was never trying to be chocolate.

I am one of the lucky ones. I was six years old the first time I went to Japan. I never mistook anko for something it wasn’t, I learned to love it in its own right. It’s no chocolate substitute, but it is good. Much of Asia agrees with me. In the markets you can see packets and tins filled with the stuff.



Anko is made from a paste of adzuki beans mixed with sugar. It’s used to fill any number of sweet pastries in Japan, Korea, and China. The sweetened beans can be mixed into ice cream or put on top of a sno-cone. There’s a sweetened bean dessert soup that is often served with pieces of toasted mochi floating on it. You might think anko is a healthy dessert, but just think how much sugar it takes to turn a bean sweet.

There are plenty of ways to eat your anko, but my very favorite way is wrapped up in daifuku mochi.



Mochi, for those of you who’ve not encountered it, is a smooth paste made from pounding Japanese sticky rice. In the old days—and still sometimes out in the country—mochi was made in a hollowed out tree stump and pounded with a wooden mallet. Two people must make the mochi, one to pound and the other to quickly stick their hands in between the mallet-falls and turn the mochi. This sounds and even looks dangerous, but you get a good rhythm going and it can be quite fun. I’ve done it myself.

These days, most people make their mochi in an electric mochi maker that pounds the crap out of it. Or they buy it in the store.

Fresh mochi is wonderful—a supple soft and chewy substance that the Japanese say is like a baby’s thigh (or maybe the baby’s thigh is like mochi, I can't quite remember). It’s a soft pillow, chewy enough to hold the impression of your finger. On it’s own, fresh mochi has almost no flavor.



In daifuku mochi, that supple rice paste gets wrapped around a pat of anko so that you get this sweet and chewy experience unlike anything I know of outside of Japanese confectionary. You can get daifuku mochi with bean paste that is completely pureed and smooth, or simply mashed for a more rustic experience. I like the rustic myself.

There is also a special variety called ichigo daifuku that has a strawberry hidden inside. I like these too. I’ve heard tell of banana daifuku, but I’ve never seen it myself and I’m wary of the idea. As my friend Megumi says, “Banana and anko do not get along well together.” I’m inclined to believe her.



Every couple of months I go to either Uwajimaya, Seattle’s huge Asian supermarket, or to Central Market in Shoreline, to stock up on Asian foodstuffs. Each time I buy myself a single daifuku mochi as a treat. Both stores carry the same brand, from Japan. As soon as I get home I unwrap it carefully and eat it slowly, savoring every bite. Oh sure, I like chocolate, but in my private world, anko is just as good, in a different way. Especially when it takes the form of daifuku mochi.

I’m afraid I don’t have a recipe for you—I honestly don’t know anyone in Japan who makes these from scratch (though I recently heard that Clotilde was learning how, so I’ll let you know if she posts a recipe; in the meantime, there is this). Daifuku mochi is one of those few things where I just don’t see the point in making my own. Not when such a perfectly good specimen is easily available for sale where I live. If ever I move out of range of an Asian market though, I'd definitely take up the cause.

Also, me and a houseful of daifuku mochi might be a dangerous thing (my thighs might start resembling mochi, and not in a good way). It’s best that I am restricted to one every few months. It’s enough.



But if ever you see daifuku mochi for sale I would encourage you to give it a try. Anko is not chocolate and never will be, but it’s good in its own right. You might hate it, but you might be converted and want to join the small but proud band of non-Asian anko lovers such as myself. When wrapped in fresh mochi, it’s a lovely thing indeed.

In Japanese the word "daifuku" means great luck. I consider it great luck that I like anko. Those other guys are missing out.

PS. For those who want to try their hand at making daifuku mochi, a reader just alerted me to a how-to post on Vegan Yum Yum (thanks, Rita), which makes it look quite simple. I'd love to hear if anyone gives it a go.

Stalking Wonder: Spontaneity

No sooner had I declared spontaneity dead in San Francisco than I was convinced otherwise. It is true it takes planning to get together with friends there, everyone is so busy. My friend Meg and I once tried to make a date and were searching for a free evening three months out. Everyone is bustling, everyone is booked. Perhaps it’s just the way things are these days, but I don't like it. I miss spur of the moment pleasures.

But I was wrong, you see. Spontaneity is still alive in the Bay Area, you just have to make it happen.

The email was sent at noon, and a few hours later we were in the car, heading north to Petaluma. Rosie, Josh, and I decided to slip away from the city for Friday night dinner at Della Fattoria, driving through the rolling hills of West Marin to get there, the countryside of my childhood, the golden-green landscape that will always mean home to me.

I’d like to say you would have been lucky to be there with us. In truth I would have bored you silly, as I did Rosie and Josh, by pointing out all the landmarks and memories that dot this journey. You would have seen my old kindergarten, the ranch where I got bucked and then stepped upon by a horse, my very first library (I still remember where the Betsy, Tacy, Tib books were shelved), the variety store where I used to buy stickers and packets of watermelon-flavored Bubble Yum.

But soon even my nostalgic chatter died down as we fell under the spell of the winding road and the hills that glow in the setting sun. There’s a rustic beauty to this corner of the world, honest and unpretentious. Doesn’t matter how much I travel, I will never fall out of love with the place I come from.

I still wonder why on earth I’m not living there right now—especially when I see signs like this. I will always have West Marin mud on the heels of my boots. The gold-green tapestry of these hills has marked me forever.

As soon as the drive had lulled us, slowed us down and made us shake off the city, we had arrived. We slipped into Petaluma though the back door, a country route that brings you down from the hills into town past old Victorian houses on tree-lined streets. Our destination for the evening was on the main street of town: Della Fattoria Bakery and Cafe.

At night the interior glows with warmth, and the bohemian décor makes me feel like I’ve stepped into a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, a lovely pink painting where everyone is witty and looks beautiful. It really is a wonderful place to be.

And then there is the food. The bread with the perfect crumb that is ever so slightly redolent of the fire it was baked with. Words fail me when I try to describe this bread. You have to taste it.

The salad is made of the freshest greens, grown either by the wonderful Weber family, who own Della Fattoria, or by a local farmer whose name I am likely to recognize. In fields I may know from my childhood.

And then there was ravioli, made fresh for the evening. One was stuffed with rainbow chard, Bellwether Farm Crescenza cheese, made just down the road, and pancetta. It was served in a proscuitto cream sauce (yum). The pasta had been kneaded back in the kitchen, on the same counters I would walk past later that evening.

We ate our meal, and talked and laughed, and drank our wine, and the evening felt like a Hemingway story—weighted with simple pleasure and set in memory so that months and even years later it could be brought out and it would have lost none of it’s sheen.

Remember that time we drove to Petaluma for dinner?

The entire café feels that way, full of stories that are unfolding, people whose lives intersect for an evening to share wine, break bread, sit together at a communal table. People whose laughter intermingles for a brief moment in time. For me, these are the times I remember.

And the wine glasses are kept filled.

Of course the best of evenings still must come to an end, and this one does with a perfect Meyer lemon tart. The whipped cream was piped on by the Weber family grandson, who sometimes pitches in at the café. He's my favorite busboy, at no more than ten years old. I hear he’s socking away his tips.

After a warm hug from Kathleen Weber, we are sent off into the evening with the gift of a loaf of bread tucked under our arm.

We make our way back to the bright city, on the highway this time, now empty and free from traffic. And even though we’ve been gone only hours it feels much longer, like we’re coming back from a vacation instead of just dinner. The hours somehow stretched themselves out, filled a space that had been empty without our even knowing it. In the time we’ve been gone, we’ve breathed and laughed and been cared for with good food. In those few hours we’ve lived.

I won't soon forget it. And every Friday I will long to be there again.

Happy weekend, everyone. I hope you get to do something spontaneous soon!

Read more about Della Fattoria and their Friday night dinners

Sign up to receive their weekly menu (mailed each Wednesday, just in time to make plans)

If you're lucky enough to get to spend an evening with the Weber Family at Della Fattoria, enjoy it for me please. There is honestly no place I'd rather be on a Friday evening than sitting at their table in that pretty pink light, laughing with friends.