Well, in honor of Patrick Hemingway’s 80th birthday, I thought I would share a few of his father’s wise words, which I happened to come across last week:
“In Europe then we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary, and I would not have thought of eating a meal without drinking either wine or cider or beer.”
—Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast: Sketches of the Author’s Life in Paris in the Twenties
For a long time now, I’ve been meaning to add a feature to this blog that would allow me to highlight appetizing food and drink quotes. Haven’t done it yet. Lots of little things get put on the back burner, behind life’s urgencies. But wait—within a few weeks, we should have an all-new Rambling Spoon. New looks, new links, new features.
Meanwhile, have a glass of wine and live your “one and only life,” as Ernest would say.
I have a thing about light. Then again, I’m married to a photographer, so that makes sense. In this house, we pay dear and particular attention to light in all its forms—sun, moon, star, candle, incandescent and fluorescent. I’m easily awe-struck by the day’s last rays as they hit the eastern trees across the field behind us. Or the way a full moon rises like a big ball over the amber Isleta hills as I’m driving toward home—just as it did last week. It’s not unusual for Jerry and me to stop whatever we’re doing, dash to the backyard and simply look at the dusk. I tend to think everyone does that, until I’m in a crowd at the golden hour of evening and realize no one else is mesmerized by the light.
Last weekend, thanks to a pair of food-loving friends (gotta love ‘em!) we celebrated the summer solstice, the longest day of light, at “Field to Food.” It was an outdoor community “locavore” dinner, with benefits going toward The Center for Ageless Living in Los Lunas. Quite an interesting place—a senior center based on the philosophy of sustainability. Beyond the living quarters, you’ll find yoga classes, a day spa, a rotisserie, gray-watered gardens and a field of heirloom tomatoes.
We began with a glass of Milagro Merlot and a colorful cup of beet soup from Amyo Farms:
I’m excited about this one. We talked to farmer Jesse’s mother (Jesse was in the field that night) and discovered Amyo sits just a couple of miles down the road from our place. They sell beets, potatoes, greens and eggs. I expect to be calling them soon….
Before we dove into dinner, Val got up and gave a little talk on New Mexico winemaking, the oldest in North America. I’m a firm believer in getting the right advice from the right people when it comes to wine. Val and I spoke that night about challenges. She’s contemplating what wines might work with a Naga meal.
Almost everything we ate and drank that night was grown or prepared within a 100-mile radius of the Center—herbed rotisserie chicken, Los Lunas beef, Estancia goat cheese, a salad of local greens, mint iced tea, apple compote. For the wheat-eaters: organic pasta, handmade bread, whole wheat crackers and Belgian waffles prepared by Mariepaule Vermersch, whose family has made these delights for more than one World’s Fair.
As per Redcoates custom, we closed down the tent, leaving long after the last light had retired.
It’s considered the longest continually occupied settlement in the United States. Acoma Pueblo sits atop a 367-foot sandstone mesa that hits 7,000 feet—high enough, the sun feels close and the wind ardently fierce. This place was founded in the 12th century. Just a handful of people live here now, but tourists come by the busload to peek at the puebloans’ past (and eat an ear or two of roasted corn, hot from the horno).
A 17th century church rests up here, San Esteban, with conspicuously old walls and history as thick as the doors. But don’t expect your pueblo guide (and you must have one to get up here) to wax poetic about the good years past. He’ll tell you one of those massive church bells was given to the people in exchange for children, who were enslaved in Mexico. And he’ll tell you the upstairs open-air porch served as a classroom for students learning Spanish; those who refused to study the language were sent downstairs to a dungeon of a dark, stifling room.
Today, most folks live off the mesa, closer to I-40 near the Sky City casino and travel center. But it’s definitely worth the 15-mile drive to the visitor center, where you buy your tickets for a trip up the hill. While waiting for the next bus, have a look at the recently opened Haak’u Museum (with pueblo art and photography as well as a superb exhibit of the famous Acoma pottery).
When you get up top, don’t lose yourself in the crowds on Main Street….
And don’t forget to go before you go up:
No plumbing on the pueblo. But there is a watering hole:
And a man with his dog, Lobo:
One more thing: before leaving the premises, be sure to stop at the visitor center for a meal at the Yaak’a Cafe, which serves traditional pueblo fare such as lamb stew, beans and chicos, horno bread and a variety of dishes cooked in corn husks.
Yes, really. It’s far better than it sounds. Delicious, in fact. I’m talking fruit, not fish. Tunas are the little green, red and purple fruits of the prickly pear cactus. They’ve started showing up in Mexican markets around here (glochids already removed), so I thought I’d experiment. Tunas are packed with hard little seeds, edible but somewhat annoying. Toss them into a blender, however, and the seeds are easily pulverized.
Here’s how I made juice: I sliced each tuna (about 15 in all) lengthwise, turned each half over onto a cutting board and smacked the tuna on the skin side to loosen the fruit inside. I scooped seeds and flesh into the blender, tossing the skins to the side. Then I squeezed in two limes and tossed in a handful of sweet cherries. The result: a thick, pulpy juice with flavor akin to kiwis and strawberries.
Not only did it taste good, but it carried the nutritional benefits of the prickly pear. The plant’s paddles, called nopales, have long been eaten for good health, particularly in fighting diabetes.
FYI, we live just southwest of Kirtland Air Force Base. Lately, we’ve noticed inordinate activity in the sky—lots of black helicopters and (presumably) military training excercises, all with increased frequency. Kinda makes you go, “Hmmm.” Kinda makes you wonder what’s next on the agenda.
Might be nothing. Might be something. Definitely worth mentioning.
Heng Phala is shown preparing lunch in the cooking corner of the apartment she shared with her son and mother. This photo was taken in 2004, when Phala had been HIV positive for about two years before she began taking medicine in preparation for ARV treatment. Phala thought she had been infected by her husband, who left her. She died the following year, leaving her 2-year-old son in the care of her mother, who lived in a crowded neighborhood on the edge of Phnom Penh. When we last saw them, Phala’s mother worried about feeding her grandson.
All this month, Words Without Borders is running a special issue on food. When the editors of the WWB Blog asked me to write about Cambodia, I thought first of hunger. Certainly, I have indulgent recollections of Khmer soups and curries, grilled fish and banana-flower salads and the sweetest mangoes of February. But when I think Cambodia and I think food, I almost instinctively think hunger. Hunger, because it—more than sweet or sour, bitter or salt—is what so many Cambodians taste first in the morning and last at night.
I remember meeting a social worker named Kim Sophornn, who works with villagers who suffer from mental health problems. I wrote about Kim in my book, and about something he told me that has stuck with me ever since: 70 percent of Cambodians worry about what they will eat tomorrow, 25 percent worry about food next week and only 5 percent never worry at all. When most Cambodians think about food, they think about survival.
The old man of decades past left us with a luscious grape vine that creeps across the yard, a little more every day. The first tiny bundles of grapes appeared a couple of weeks ago. They’re no bigger than pinheads now, but if last year gives us any indication, those grapes will ooze with sweet juice in another six weeks or so.
I love grape leaves. I got all excited by the prospects of cooking with these leaves, which grow of their own accord with little help from us. So I started poking around for grape leaf recipes and came across Leila Abu-Saba of Dove’s Eye View. I couldn’t resist her baked mushrooms in grape leaves. I lodged the recipe in the back of my brain and knew I had to try this when I had enough young leaves to gather. I played around with the recipe a little (I always feel compelled to do so), and here’s the result:
Baked Grape Leaves with Mushrooms and Rosemary (inspired by Elizabeth David’s recipe, via Leila Abu-Saba)
Ingredients:
Young grape leaves, enough to make two layers in a casserole dish*
Mushrooms, your choice, sliced
2 strips bacon
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, dipped in boiling water to release their oils
Lots of garlic, minced
Olive oil
Drizzle of balsamic vinegar (white or red)
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated Pecorino or similar cheese
*Use young, tender leaves and remove their stems. Older leaves become too tough.
Method:
Blanch the leaves for 2 minutes, then drain and set aside. Fry the bacon, let cool, then crumble and set aside.
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Line your baking pan or casserole dish with a layer of leaves (choose your dish size depending on how many leaves you have). The leaves will hold their strength in cooking; you might want to chop them for easier eating.
Place a layer of sliced mushrooms atop grape leaves. Add garlic, rosemary and bacon crumbles, salt and pepper, then drizzle with olive oil and a touch of vinegar. Top with another layer of grape leaves.
Cover the dish with foil and bake until mushrooms are tender. Remove foil, top with grated cheese and return to oven until cheese is melted and crispy.
The WordPress software on which this site runs was just upgraded, whole hog. If anyone notices a problem, kindly let us know.
Also, in going through the myriad nooks and crannies of the Wordpress control panel, we found several people (okay, 70) had signed up as subscribers with curious names like, “SxyRussianBlondes” and “WetSaranWrap” and “Grwpcnrd.” All such curiosities have been removed. In the unlikely event that you are “WetSaranWrap” and you feel chagrined at the deletion, feel free to re-sign, but with a more prosaic name.
A young boy named Poey clasps his ears as a clearance team detonates a bombie in his family’s farm field. Poey’s father had risked considerable danger by moving the bomb to a tree so Poey and other children would not find the bomb.
On May 30, 111 countries adopted a treaty to ban cluster bombs. Some of the world’s biggest users of these munitions—the United States, China, Russia and Israel—did not sign the treaty. But the agreement, nonetheless, is a big step toward victory for activists who have fought decades to rid the world of these explosives.
What are cluster bombs? Large canisters filled with hundreds of tiny bomblets, or “bombies.” The canisters open in the sky, spreading little fist-sized bombies across the targeted land. Some of these bomblets are painted bright yellow and look like miniature pineapples—kids can mistake them for toys. A bombie can lie in the ground for decades until someone kicks it, tosses it or smacks it with a hoe.
But it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of the wine.
Our neighbors and newfound friends, Val and Jon, recently treated us to a most interesting evening of sniffing wine. Sniffing? You bet. We swirled our glasses and dove our noses into the fumes, lingering over pungent aromas of garlic and sulphur, cork and “horse.”
You see, Val was studying for a Society of Wine Educators exam, in which she had to sniff her way through several glasses of wine gone bad and correctly identify the culprits. They’re called wine faults, and they reek. They are what tells you, without doubt, that something has gone terribly wrong in fermentation or bottling.
So, in an effort to be good study buddies, Jerry and I helped Val smell a row of wines after Jon slipped a little drip of something evil into each glass. We’re talking rotten eggs, sweaty socks, nail polish remover, damp forest, and onions—which you never, ever, EVER want in your wine. Believe me. These wretched odors came from the little vials of a wine fault aroma kit, which are made for evenings such as these. Workbook included. (You can buy your own kit, if you’re so inclined.)
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My favorite chapter?
I’d have to go with this one, simply for the title. Sounds like a band name to me.
Now, then: when all the sniffing was done, we sat to a perfectly delicious chicken dinner and proceeded to drink a lot of perfectly lovely wine. We stayed late into the week night, chatting about everything. Simply perfect, it was.
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for June, 2008.
Welcome to my ramblings on food, drink, travel, politics, history and all the other avenues that converge in life. I’m a journalist, author and media trainer; and for five years I was Gourmet's Asia correspondent until the magazine's recent closure. I’m a bit obsessive in the kitchen. Much like my mother, I start thinking about dinner well before breakfast….
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