Cirque du Malaise

My mom (Judith) and my brother (Elia) were just out here visiting me in California. We did a lot of things. So many things that I'm kind of exhausted and can't string a sentence together. Luckily, there are pictures for times like these:

Elia and I went to the mall. Yup, the mall. That's how we do.

I tried on this sweet hat. It will be mine.

We went to Cirque du Soleil and fell in love with 22-year-old trapeze artists wearing yellow tights and then we stood around at intermission and texted each other from 3 feet away. That's always fun.

We rented a phat house out at Stinson Beach, lit a fire, and read books.

We conquered this "hike" aka flat stroll along Limantaur Beach in Pt Reyes.

We hung out on Stinson Beach late at night and thought about skinny dipping. But didn't.

We hiked the Dipsea from Stinson to DTMV. Yes we did. Cuz we're badass hikers.

And then we ended it all with this epic sunset. God love the Pacific.

I'm on the first leg of my flight home from Thailand, via Tokyo on All Nipon Air, where I just made my way through an 8:30a.m. Japanese 3-course dinner served in cute little lacquer boxes full of delicious but mostly unidentifiable processed cubes of things. I ate the ones I was sure were not mushrooms or flaccid boiled egg. The highlight was the banana poppyseed ice-cream ball. Those kooky Japanese chefs.

The Japanese elevate everything to an art form, including cooking, eating, and being a flight attendant. The Chinese, on the other hand, plan their menus as if Hannibal Lecter’s cousin is coming to dinner.

Disclaimer here: I am a very picky eater. I’m not adventurous in the culinary terrain, unlike my mom, who ordered a Peruvian delicacy — baked guinea pig— when we traveled together to the Sacred Valley a few years ago. Judith is a chef and a restaurant owner, so I think she’d want me to point out here that I did not inherent my food pickiness from her. I get it from my father, who, at the age of 62, I introduced to burritos just last year. “Can’t I just stick with tacos?”

On my last night in Bangkok, on the 36th floor of the Chatrium, I ate alone at the hotel's fancy Chinese restaurant overlooking the gray river that winds through the endless city. The menu was an exquisite read — an ornothologist's dream, really — until I realized that it was actually a list of FOOD OPTIONS. I laughed/gagged at the "roasted whole pigeon," but I stopped laughing when I gamely perused the dessert selections and contemplated ordering something with the sublime name "Bird's Nest." I thought, I bet it's some sort of an elaborate drizzled sugar confection, maybe with an egg in it just to be maudlin. Just to be sure, I googled it, and THANK GOD I did because it turns out that "Bird’s Nest" is exactly what it sounds like: a bird's nest.

A swallow's nest, to be precise. A certain kind of swallow that is rare and special, and so it's a luxury of the upper class to get their hands on one of these nests, soak it in water for a bit, and then bathe it in coconut milk. I can only imagine that it tastes sort of like shredded wheat, but with a more fibrous quality that makes it an excellent intestinal stimulant. I might have been intrigued and brave enough to try it, until I read the fine print, which informed me that swallow's nests are comprised primarily of swallow's spit. Yes, their saliva.

I have to point out here that I think my cat Budapest might be Chinese, as once she came home with an entire birds nest (and a few little tiny just-born baby birds, whoopsie) hanging out of her mouth like, no big thang.

I shared the Bird's Nest menu item with my friends. Tom, who is Taiwanese and grew up eating Chinese Food, said, "It sounds gross, but it’s super tasty!  It was once of my faves! Like sharkfin soup, it is a Chinese delicacy.  Unfortunately, the birds are not happy, and they face extinction, so I stopped eating it recently.”

Then Vanessa told me that she actually tried Bird’s Nest, in Singapore. I have a vague recollection of Vanessa going to Singapore but I have to admit that I didn't retain this tidbit about her culinary courage. Although I love hearing about Vanessa's life — which is much more globally glamorous than my own — flying to Singapore for a few days and eating local delicacies is something I just expect from her. Vanessa is a jet setter and she’s cool.

I'm not like that. I'm like this: just before I wrote this blog post, I spent an hour here on the plane meticulously planning my exercise schedule for the remainder of 2011 in my iPad calendar. Knowing exactly what to expect is how I relax.

And on that note, so happy to be home!

The beforemath

The cake batter

Praying and hoping and hoping and praying

Emergency cool-down in the fridge

Lemon curd (better than it sounds)

Cream cheese and butter frosting

My mother, Judith, is an amazing cook. Not just in the way that most people's moms are amazing cooks, but in the way that she has been in the restaurant business her entire adult life and knows how to make at least 300 kinds of cheesecake without a recipe, for starters.

I am really good at cooking soup, cheesetoast, and reheated tamales. That's pretty much my whole kitchen repertoire. Baking terrifies me. It's so scientific and it seems like there is some magic to it that you have to be born knowing about. I didn't get that gene.

In fact, one of my first memories is of experimenting with my Holly Hobbie oven in an attempt to emulate Judith and bake yummy things. After one particularly revolting incident, I stopped eating eggs for about twenty-five years. If I use my imagination, I can still summon up the taste of those horrifying "muffins", and the bile threatens to rise in my throat.

So for Anna Hughes's birthday, I got this idea in my head that I would bake her a cake. I thought I would take "an hour or two" out of my busy work day and whip up something incredibly delicious and beautiful and perfect, something Tartine-esque. I asked Judith to email me a recipe for lemon cake.

Judith doesn't write her recipes down. She doesn't need to, because she's one of those laidback cooks that uses confidence and intuition as her main skillsets when baking incredibly complicated things. It was a pain for her to try to translate her genius onto paper, but she acquiesced.

After critiquing all of her typos and asking her if she had been having a stroke when she typed that out, I had to call her about a brillion times with questions. For us Virgo artists, little details like WHAT TEMPERATURE DOES THE OVEN NEED TO BE ON are sticking points that can really derail us. Judith was definitely beginning to regret the whole "sure, I'll help you bake a cake" attitude on about the fifth call, when I started crying because I couldn't find lemons for less than a dollar each—and I needed about twenty. Apparently there is some sort of lemon drought going on in the world, according to Judith. Tell that to my neighbors, who have 400 on their tree next door.

Judith suggested that I simply buy faux lemon juice at Safeway. I reacted like she had told me to make out with a leper. Luckily, the third store I visited was having a sale on lemons. They must have gotten them from my neighbor.

So here's how long it took me to shop for and cook this cake: SIX HOURS. Guess how long it took us to eat it? About ten minutes. It was worth it. It was the most delicious, endearing, so-ugly-only-a-mother-could-love-it cake the world has ever seen (for a brief ten minutes).

And it didn't even taste like panic.

Here's a PDF of the recipe, if you are brave. It's not for the faint of heart!

Every woman alive could write their own version of this. It's not an original idea. But it sure is fascinating, watching yourself turn out just like your mom.

Here are some of the things that Judith used to do that drove me bonkers as a child:

• Wrapping presents creatively with really beautiful tissue paper and raffia instead of good old-fashioned landfill-bound shiny commercial gift wrap. Growing up, I wanted my gifts to look like everyone else's gifts, and I wanted them all to match. I wasn't a big fan of the artsy homemade decorating. But now? I actually have a box full of gift supplies that consists mostly of re-purposed tissue from other gifts and retail purchases, along with plenty of raffia and other found objects. I wouldn't buy a roll of Walmart gift wrap with a gun to my head.

• Speaking of boxes, apparently I hoard things, just like Judith. I have an entire cabinet full of empty boxes, yet only one tiny closet for my actual clothes. I will throw out a cashmere sweater before I throw out an empty cardboard box. Let me just say that boxes are pretty much the only thing I hoard. In all other ways, I'm a purger. For example, this is the current contents of my refrigerator:

Notice how everything is pulled forward to the front of the shelves. I can't stand when stuff lurks in the back evasively.

• Storing food in unlabeled Ball jars. When I was growing up, our kitchen was unfinished and our bulk food was stored on exposed shelving in glass jars of all different sizes and shapes. I hated the hippie look and longed for order. I hoped desperately for a Martha Stewart cabinet system with matching Crate and Barrel containers. Now, I store all my food in old Ball jars. The more mismatched, the better. And I drink out of them too. Which, in a twist of irony, Judith hates.

• Never vacuuming. Judith hated vacuuming and it was usually cause for a pretty serious grump session that I would try hard to avoid. Guess what? I hate vacuuming too, and have been known to stomp around the house complaining loudly about how unfair it is that I don't have a maid. It's quite unfortunate that only my cats are privy to this particular form of hysteria.

• Shopping straight from the farmers. I grew up in New England farm country. We got our milk right from the farmer down the street. We got our veggies from the garden in our yard. I coveted the junk food I saw on TV. We never had it. Guess who loves to shop at the farmer's market now? I even got my hands on some unpasteurized, fresh "squeezed" cow's milk recently, and oh my yum, once you've gone there, there's no going back.

And speaking of TV, I only watched it when visiting my grandparents. Because the country TV we had? It only got one station: the Sesame Street channel. Judith was not a big advocate of television. I felt duly deprived. Guess who doesn't own a TV now? (I do, however, watch shameless hours of bad television on Hulu.)

And an added bonus for things my dad (Curt) used to do that I really hated, but love now:

I feel most comforted and at home listening to bluegrass music. It's true. What can I say; it's in my blood.

I am on a very strict and somewhat joyless food plan by mandate of my acupuncturist, the brilliantly talented Caylie See, L.Ac. of Acupuncture Kitchen in San Francisco. She got sick of my whining about always having a stomachache and decided to fix me. She gave me a 6-page typed-out plan that outlines food suggestions along with things I can’t eat; prohibits me from going near sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, gluten, or nightshade vegetables (among other things); and insists that I get 30 minutes of “quiet time” a day. (My whole life is quiet time, so I checked that one right off.)

Favorite breakfast: cooked leftover yam, blood orange, blueberries, avocado with Bragg's liquid aminos and turmeric EVOO

I’m not a fan of cleanses, having previously tried all of them — The Master Cleanse (Really? You want me to drink sugar all day long? That doesn’t raise any red flags for you?), the Liver Cleanse, various intestinal cleanses and colonics programs, wheatgrass bootcamp, starvation cleanses, the Type-O diet, Atkins. Not to mention that I excelled at anorexia nervosa for most of my pre-teen years. (There were months in there where I would only eat jellybeans and yogurt. Ask Judith.)

But I trust Caylie, and I was feeling desperate to make a shift, so I promised to acquiesce to her instructions for three months, no questions asked. So far? It’s been awesome.

For starters, getting off caffeine is one of the most empowering first world activities one can undertake. I am sleeping like a lamb these days. Cutting sugar out of my life has been hard, but rewarding. I feel lots better. Although, I crave strange things, like butterscotch pudding. And it’s kind of sad that the way I indulge these days is a $6 pressed green juice that I can drink in under a minute.

All in all, the shiz is working. Who knew that all I had to do to get rid of my stomachaches was stop eating almost everything, get off black tea, choke down Chinese herbs that taste like dirt three times a day, swallow billions of microscopic probiotics every morning, trek an hour each way to get acupuncture once a week, and drink so much water that I need a catheter? No probs.

Just to be really clear, this fascist food plan I’ve been on since January 1^st has nothing to do with New Year’s Resolutions. My New Year’s Resolution — in keeping with my philosophy of only making New Year’s Resolutions that I would already be doing anyway, was to see more movies this year. I’m doing pretty great at that. I’ve seen almost everything that’s worth seeing in the theaters right now, and some of the things twice.

One of the things that is emphasized over and over in The Artist's Way is how we have to get past the tactics that our parents and other early critics used to condition the innate creativity out of us. In this week's chapter we did an exercise called "Early Patternings" to quote/unquote try to excavate what happened to our poor, abused early artist.

I'm extremely well behaved about reading all the chapters, following all the rules, and doing every single task. However, the "early patternings" stuff simply doesn't resonate with me.

As far as my early artist goes, there weren't a lot of scathing critics. My parents—both being young hippies and aspiring artists themselves—weren't exactly the types to look down on creativity. In fact, a lot of my earliest memories were about doing artsy things with my parents. We didn't have any money, and we lived in a severely rural part of New England, so most of our entertainment was self-made.

They sent me to a communityWaldorf-style school when I was 3. They (tragically) let me and my brother dress ourselves from the time we could walk. They indulged my harebrained delusions of becoming a ballerina. They didn't blink an eye when I said I was going to go to art school and major in pottery.

Early on in the process of doing The Artist's Way I wrote this letter to my mom. I have been wavering on whether or not to send it. Judith doesn't really like the mushy stuff, and she's pretty private. So if you too don't like the mushy stuff, and you don't want to be a part of me outing my mom, better stop reading now.

Judith was 27 in this picture. That's right, 11 years younger than I am now.

Dear Judith

I remember being very young and sitting at the kitchen table coloring with you. You always encouraged us to do creative things with our time instead of watching TV or playing with stupid plastic toys. We were constantly undertaking projects like making our own Christmas tree ornaments or baking cookies or painting murals on the walls of our rooms. At some point you brought home an old piano that someone had been getting rid of, and we all took turns really sucking at playing it.

Your own creativity was always an inspiration to me. You made clothes; you gardened; you cooked; you quilted; you made jewelry; you had that awesome Quaker-esque weaving loom that took up half your bedroom.

I am so grateful to have grown up in a home where creativity and art was encouraged and the consumer bullshit was kept to a minimum.

And beyond that, thank you for sending me to Syracuse, for being supportive of my decision to go to art school and to get a degree in photography and ceramics. Thanks for not being the kind of parent who encouraged or demanded that I pursue a more "practical" career. You've never once given me advice to do anything other than what I am already doing, and while it has taken me quite a while to find something I actually like to do, I appreciate your patience and your occasional financial support over the years.

If I could have one wish it would be to see you get back to your own creativity and re-embrace your abundant talent and passion for making things. I know that it's your calling.

Love,

Joslyn

I recently accepted an invite that one of my client-friends extended to attend a salon at her house. By salon, I am talking about the old fashioned, Oscar Wilde kind of thing, where artsy intellectuals gather to talk about cerebral concepts and toss around brilliant bon mots.

I am not a party person, and parties where I don't know anyone are reeeheeeally not my thing, and circle discussions raise my blood pressure just slightly less than partner exercises, so it was a courageous risk on my part to go to this shindig. At first, I was mildly terrified, 100% out of my element, and desperately wishing I had never left my house.

Why did I leave my house on the first place, you ask? Well, I really adore this particular client, Ipek, who makes her living teaching bigwig executives how to tap into their right brains and be more creative. And creativity in general is one of my favorite topics these days. And the subject of this particular salon was utterly riveting: it was on the work of Sir Ken Robinson, an education reformer from Great Britain who believes we don't put nearly enough emphasis on creative expression in our Western school systems. Please, please, please, if you haven't already, please watch this video on TED.com.

Indeed, the salon turned out to be a very worthwhile experience, albeit way challenging for me socially. The women were collectively real smart, and we got all into it about creativity and thwarted creativity and how as children we were taught to stifle our creative sides and aim to excel at math and housekeeping instead.

Actually, I must admit—and did, to these ladies—that was not my experience at all. As I recently wrote in a very public letter to my mother, Judith, I was blessed to have lived a childhood rife with creative influences and encouragement. So where did it all go bad? Who was my first artist's critic?

See? I wasn't a weird kid at all. You're weird!

Well, as near as I can tell, it all comes down to this boy we'll call Dennis. I transferred to a new school in 8th grade and had to go through the 13-year old's excruciating process of making new friends and trying to fit in. I actually knew a lot of the kids there from grammar school, so I had that in my favor. But I didn't know Dennis, and I thought he was kinda cute. Until one of my friends asked Dennis what he thought of me, and Dennis said he thought I was "weird."

Calling a 13-year old girl "weird" is probably one of the most cruel and inhumane things you can ever do. I was crushed and humiliated. I think that was the turning point at which I decided that under no circumstances would I ever be "weird" again. I devoted the rest of my high school and college years, and probably most of my twenties, to being as normal as possible. Often to the detriment of my creative side.

For some reason, that all changed for me over the last few years. Suddenly, I think "weird" is the highest compliment. I love my weirdest friends the most. "Weird" to me means eccentric, creative, doesn't-care-what-people-think. Some of my favorite people are just really weird. The weirder, the better.

By the way, Dennis? I ran into him a few years after high school. He was the manager at our local small town McDonald's. Not judging, just saying.

(For those of you that aren't up on your latest DSM manual, S.A.D. stands for 'Seasonal Affective Disorder'. I have that, for sure. Most seasons.)

There is nothing as comforting as making soup on a gloomy Fall day. I think I'm the only person I've ever met whose least favorite season is Autumn. Days getting shorter and chillier, flip flop season over, and the looming threat of depressing holidays.... never quite got what there is to love about this time of year. I worship hot tea and cozy scarves as much as the next person, but living in San Francisco, they are a year-round thing.

Here's what's not depressing: walking to the farmers market, buying fresh, local, organic veggies and seasonal heirloom beans, and cooking up a big ol' vat of hot, nutritious soup.

My favorite things about soup:

1. You can eat it out of a bowl.
2. It lasts for days on the stovetop.
3. It's pretty hard to fuck up.
4. It reminds me of one of my favorite children's books, The Maggie B. (About a girl and her little brother who live on a boat and have their own garden, toucan and everything else they could possibly need. When I was growing up, I used to pretend that my trundle bed was the Maggie B. and refuse to get out of it.)

Today I went to the San Rafael farmers market with Bria, Joseph and Anna and got the ingredients for minestrone soup. Here's a really basic, pretty-much-made-up recipe that I want to share. You can, of course, substitute anything you want for these things.

Directions and Ingredients:

• Sauté fresh red onion bulbs, chopped really fine, in EVOO until they're clear.
• Add minced garlic and a jalapeno for about another 30 seconds.
• Add chopped carrots and potatoes.
• Add chopped plum tomatoes.
• Add some spices. I used salt, thyme and basil.
• A can of crushed tomatoes (or you can use whole tomatoes and crush them).
• A whole lotta stock. I used beef-flavored Better Than Bouillon dissolved in boiling water. You can also get fresh stock, make your own stock or just use regular bouillon.
• Fresh-shelled cranberry beans. These are in season (at least in California) right now and are a specialty heirloom bean. Much more nutritive value than canned beans. And you're supporting your local farmer!
• Boil it, then turn it down and let it simmer for a long time. Like, maybe an hour.
• At some point during this time, add chopped zucchini and small pieces of kale.
• At the very end, sauté some beef sausage and add it to the soup.

My mom is a chef, so she is probably cringing reading my hack directions. Judith, feel free to chime in here and correct me!