the woman on the hotel bed + the struggle in being faithful to one’s vision
Posted on May 20, 2013
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the stories we tell and how we need to tell them. After taking in Sarah Polley’s documentary aptly titled, Stories We Tell, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, and re-reading Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, I’ve been thinking about the convergence of art and life. How the rhythm in which an artist (and by artist I mean anyone who creates something new, challenging, ugly and beautiful) lives and sees the world, and how that movement juts up against the velocity of the world around them. The two are rarely, if ever, in synch, and often times the artist is left lost and confused. The artist wants to keep pace, but it’s a tricky thing when your work is seeing the world as it is, in its moment, breathing it in, altering it somehow, re-defining it, and then drawing the curtains, opening the barn doors to proudly share the harvest. By the time you’ve invited them in to see the world through your eyes, they’re on to something else. They’re playing with this shiny object over here, they’re fixated with this new glossy thing over there.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about balance. Someone presented me with a real, viable pragmatic opportunity. This offer would allow me to breathe a sigh of relief that the bills would be paid and the lights would remain, steadfastly, on, but as I thought about it I realized that taking this offer would put me back where I started nearly four years ago. I would relegate my art to the basement, it would be a grotesque thing, a changeling left to fend for itself in the dark, and the cycle would go on.
It’s a frightening thing to feel something within you grow. After years of having your heart be a desert to find that there is earth, there is a harvest waiting to be cultivated, that there are words ready for the bloom. So I knew in my heart that if I had to choose between writing this very difficult short story (a follow-up to this story) and working toward this very pragmatic opportunity, I will always choose the former. And so I did. And so the great fear of the unknown, of the financially unstable, continues. How to find a way to balance the art and the work. How to make room for all the children in the crib, as it were.
So this story is a little interesting. I’m deliberate with the tense, tone, and POV shifts. I’m also learning that I’m writing something that is not really about adultery or a family unraveling, but about hurt. Hurt that is intentional and non-intentional, physical and mental — how we are affected and in the line of fire, and how we get scorched on the sidelines. I kept that in mind as I was writing this. That hurt for these set of characters is not ephemeral, it’s a constant, and only the form of it mutates and changes shape. So here it is…
sweet potato soup with coriander, chipotle, and a side of circus
Posted on May 18, 2013
Everyone wants the circus act in 140 characters or less. You balance the beach ball on your head, cough up fire, and the applause is thunderous. You shimmy and shake and the crowd indulges their minor digressions, too. You’re envied, obsessed over, and given neat little platitudes whose meaning is small enough to fit on fortune cookies. Everyone’s got the shakes: they switch channels when they see displaced Syrians in tents or women holding up pictures of their loved ones still trapped under all that earth in Bangladesh. Instead, they self-medicate on gossip magazines and indoor sports that “allow you to get deeper,” but ticket collectors neglect to tell them that the floor is bottomless. The deep is whether these pants are a size 6 or if they’re a size 2. There’s already so much drama in my life, they mumble. The deep is wondering if they’re witty enough to keep up with the live-tweeting of television shows that all the “popular” bloggers do. The deep is that book that is moderately sad, but it’s a safe sad, a sad that only goes on for a few pages and then there’s the promise of idyll, that magical ending we all desire. The deep is telling other people they’re so brave, but failing to return their phone calls because they just can’t deal. The motley lot shuffle past and preach concern, but their ferocious blinking and marathon eating suggests yours is a deep for which they’re not properly equipped.
You are drowning and everyone takes pictures with their expensive phones of the water. They just want to hold you close, pat your back, and be on their way. They’ve done their charity; they’ve nodded in the right moments, but perhaps that water should be Lo-Fi or Mayfair?
And then you’re left with the empty peanut shells that cut your hands and feet, empty popcorn bags greasy with fingerprints, and a bill divided in two.
They skitter like frightened mice when you say the words, I am afraid. They muffle you quiet with pretty words like, “You’re so strong! You’ll always find your way!” Because they need a strong Felicia, their mentor, their comic relief, their guidance counselor, their human Rolodex. How would the world press on otherwise? We need our circus intact. We need the show to go on.
All these years you give, and this is the kind you’re likely to get.
It makes you tired, shut in, desperate for blooms and hot soup. It creates a need to press the mute button on the world and everyone in it. So there’s soup, oceans of it.
INGREDIENTS: Recipe adapted from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good. I’m GOOP’ing her book so you don’t have to.
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil*
1 large red onion, finely diced (about 1 1/2 cups)**
2 garlic cloves – minced
5 springs of cilantro, leaves reserved for garnish***
3/4 teaspoon cumin
Course sea salt
1 1/2 teaspoons chipotle in adobo
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced (about 6 cups)
6 cups (1 qt) vegetable stock
DIRECTIONS
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, cilantro sprigs, cumin, and a heavy pinch of salt and cook, stirring now and then, until softened but not browned, 10 minutes. While the soup base is cooking, I used this time to peel and chop the sweet potatoes. Add the chipotle and the sweet potatoes and stir to combine. Add the vegetable stock to the pot and turn up the heat. Once the soup comes to a boil, lower the heat and simmer until the sweet potatoes are very soft, about 30 minutes. Remove and discard the cilantro. Carefully puree the soup in a powerful blender. I’ve an immersion blender, which is honestly the best gadget investment I’ve made for the kitchen. I’ve had it for years and I can still get a delicious puree. If you want a really refined, smooth texture, you can pass the pureed soup through a fine-mesh strainer. Garnish each bowl with a few of the reserved cilantro leaves.
Notes in the Margins
Overall, the soup was pretty extraordinary. A bit spicy for my taste, as I chopped up a whole chipotle and added it with the adobe sauce for measurement. However, if you love spicy this is definitely for you. If you don’t, use 1/2 a pepper and some of the sauce it’s steeped in and the soup will be perfection. What I love about this soup is the consistency. You get the velvet, creaminess that is indicative of most cream (or white potato) based soups, but without the dairy, fat and wasteful calories. And no, I’m not counting calories as I had a huge rosemary roll slathered with Irish butter to accompany my small bowl of soup. Just executing some carb strat, guys.
*Gwyneth is truly high if she thinks that onions and garlic won’t brown on medium heat with two tablespoons of olive oil over a period of ten minutes. I added another 1/2 tbsp into the mix and kicked the heat down to medium/low after five minutes, and all was well with the world. You may want to go safe and add 3 tbsp. This soup is enough for four.
**I abhor red onions in a way that you can’t understand. Instead, I used a small yellow onion and it did the job just fine.
***If your hatred of coriander (translation: cilantro), it’s cool, I won’t judge. You can definitely use basil or sage. Think of the sort of herbs you’d add with squash, as you’re getting a similar sort of flavor play here.
a week of eats in grams
Posted on May 16, 2013
1. La Pizza Fresca, Chelsea 2. Bar Toto, Park Slope 3. Sweet Revenge, West Village 4. Quintessence, East Village 5/6. Milk Bar, Prospect Heights
notes in the margins: the interior of a short story
Posted on May 16, 2013
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much one gives. How one can reveal themselves, in measured degrees, in the words they write, the photos the post and the things they choose to share. While much of my writing is personal in this space, I’m extraordinarily guarded. The stories are demonstrably vague, friends are blurred in the pictures — I need it to be this way because part of my world needs to be preserved, protected, and wholly mine. And yet… I struggle with this even amidst the tacit rules I’ve set for myself (e.g. don’t talk about relationships, don’t give the innards of your professional life, don’t get too deep into politics, etc, etc). I tend to be loud online about the things that matter, but I give you a peripheral view rather than painting a whole picture.
But there’s something real in those innards. Of a body turned inside out, exposed. There is some real truth in that worth sharing. There’s truth in the struggle, the unknown and the uncertain. And after attending a panel last night, where I had the privilege of listening to extraordinary food bloggers, editors and businesswomen, did I think of a notion of notes in margins.
On the panel, Faith of The Ktchn offered how much more fascinating it would be for writers to review recipes instead of simply adapting them. Amanda Hesser talked about the thousands of recipes she’d received from readers of The New York Times, and how her readers had made the paper’s recipes their own. Scribbling notes in the margins, as such. I thought about that on my way home, and I was thinking about how interesting it might be to share some of that with you. To bring you the process I go through to write a story — what I read and how I plot out the stories, create images and characters. To bring you the innards of making that pretty salad come to life (the shopping, the cutting, the decoding of the recipe). I’m thinking that all that interior might be worthwhile to share with you.
I’m wondering if you feel the same? Whether it’s the stories I create or the meals I cook, I’d like to show you the interior.
Lately, I’ve been working on a series of stories about two families affected by an affair. On the surface, the rub is adultery, mental illness, but after thinking about these characters I realized I’m writing about hurt — intentional, unintentional, mental and physical, and the domino effect of a hurt, namely, the people who get hurt on the way to the end, those on the periphery, etc. And suddenly the stakes got higher and the stories became interesting in a way they hadn’t been before. I spend hours, literally HOURS, on unpacking images, and in order for me to write five pages I have to immerse myself in art, literature, music to get me there. So as I truck along, I thought it might be helpful to have you take a look at what’s going on in my head.
Mario Sorrenti’s Draw Blood for Proof for the art and the name. I plan on ripping off this title (or a derivative of it) for a story. It’s raw, visceral, and I like it. | Nick Flynn’s The Re-enactments in understanding fluid novel structures | Goethe’s Faust in using poetry and imagery to ferret out our basest selves — helping me with Jonah, one of my characters | Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs in helping me shape the exterior and interior selves and write rage on the page. Read her great interview here on how she manages this balancing act. | Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem on how to make the small extraordinary and the meaning of white space and repetition | Peter Buchanan-Smith’s singular vision for keeping focus | Radiohead’s Pyramid Song, on repeat. I tend to write to music. Silence freaks me out and too much noise freaks me out, and a song allows me to go under, get deep. And I love this haunting song because it’s the antithesis of what I’m working on. Or so I think. Or, perhaps, it simply allows me to slip deeper into the dark, allows my mind to go places where I’m frightened for it to go to create the characters and words I need to create. | The Shining. I’ve been watching this film since I was five, but the use of mirrors and inversions and repetitions and time manipulation is allowing me to see this movie in a way I hadn’t been, and now it’s even more frightening. My story doesn’t seem time as something that is chronological, rather, it’s a nuisance that must be tended to like a garden. | Photos of the actor, Kyle Gallner, as I think of Jonah as him. It helps to get a picture in your head of the character and he is Jonah. | Interview’s Winona Ryder interview for some reason made me think about her hair, and hair is an odd component to my stories. {don’t ask} | and on it goes…
a moveable feast: mango, avocados, greens + guac!
Posted on May 14, 2013
To say that every day I wake to a typhoon or a circus or something in between would be a grand understatement. The past few months have been exhilarating, thrilling, frightening and magical all at once. Not only did I have a chance to explore unknown cities, I’ve had the luxury of rediscovering art, finding it, having it find me, and somewhere along the way I’ve managed to create a little bit of art of my own. I’m starting to learn who I can trust and who I can’t. I’ve become weary of the intensity of people, and am now drawn to the quietness and calm of others. I say Good Morning, I read Faust, I write longer emails to friends (from one line to a paragraph!). I don’t know what I want next, but I think I do. Every day is a stutter, a series of starts and stops, and the constant, the satisfying threadline through all of this has been food. Always the food.
I had a dear friend come round this weekend, and I prepared a feast that made us swoon. Verdant, flavorful and bright, it was a delicious melange of texture and taste, and not for a moment did we feel we were missing something because it was vegetarian and virtuous (or at least, semi-virtuous, as we had a heaping of fried millet falafel). Rather, we were sated, full, and excited to dive into my stash of French dark chocolates.
We spent four hours trading stories about our respective experiences the past few months, and it occurred to me that the other crucial threadline, perhaps one that supersedes food, are friends. Those great, magical people who are always there, who talk you off ledges, who encourage you to climb new ones, and those who tell you that although the millet falafels are far from attractive, they are DAMN GOOD.
INGREDIENTS
For the salad
2 cups packed baby kale
1 cup packed spinach
1 cup packed arugula
1/2 cup cashews, toasted in a dry pan
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
2 oz soft cheese of your choice (I used a truffled cow’s milk cheese that had the texture of brie, however, you can use goat, brie, or gorgonzola)
1/4 sundried tomatoes, packed in olive oil
1 tbsp olive oil
Sea salt/cracked pepper to taste
For the mango + avocado salad, dressed in a lime balsamic vinaigrette: Recipe adapted from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good
2 ripe mangoes, peeled, pitted, and thinly sliced
2 ripe avocados, peeled, pitted, and thinly sliced
Coarse sea salt
1 batch Balsamic-Lime Vinaigrette (we didn’t use all of the dressing, but used about 1/4 of it. That might have also been the case because I knocked over the dressing and spilled it all over the table.)
A small handful of fresh basil leaves
For the basil-lime vinaigrette
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp brown rice syrup
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
¼ cup plus 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Coarse sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
For the guacamole
1 ripe avocado
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
2 stalks of scallions, fine dice (all parts: white, green, light green)
juice + zest of half a lime
Sea salt + pepper to taste
DIRECTIONS
For the salad: Toss all of the ingredients above. Only add the olive oil when you’re about to serve, as the leaves will wilt.
For the mango + lime salad + vinaigrette: Whisk the vinegar, brown rice syrup, and lime juice together in a mixing bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Keeps well in a jar in the fridge for up to a week. Alternate slices of mango and avocado on a serving platter and scatter with a pinch of sea salt. Drizzle with the Balsamic-Lime vinaigrette; tear the basil leaves and sprinkle them over the top. Serve immediately.
For the guacamole: Cut + core the avocado and crush the meat with the tines of your fork. Add in all of the ingredients and serve with carrots, chips, or strips of red bell peppers.
re-engineering a classic: coconut blueberry banana loaf
Posted on May 13, 2013
Believe me when I say that this loaf has seen more transformations than Madonna in the 90s. One morning in 2009, I searched for a simple banana bread recipe, and after baking said loaf, finding it just okay, I decided to tinker with it. Over the years, I’ve had tremendous triumphs: the nutella banana loaf, the banana chocolate chip nutella loaf, the pistachio coconut banana loaf, and on it goes. However, nothing awakens my cold, dead heart than a smattering of blueberries, a pile of bananas and sweet coconut.
In this go-around, I decided to begin the slow transformation from a loaf that is heavy with white flour and sugar to something richer, something more complex. I’ve made many flour substitutions, which have ended violently (read: me tossing the wreckage in the bin, me wailing in front of a hot oven, me wondering what was I thinking when I decided to incorporate quinoa flour? WHAT WAS I THINKING?!), so I’m going slow with this. So far, I’ve swapped out the oils, reduced the sugar (rationalizing that the coconuts and blueberries will help), and added in agave. I’m moving toward brown rice syrups, honey (in my heart I KNOW honey will make this loaf SING), and coconut, tapioca and almond flours. I’ll keep you posted on all my attempts (and inevitable failures), along the way.
For now, know that this is the sort of loaf that will wake you up at night. The sort of loaf that I’m carrying, right now, so I can pawn off to someone else. Simply put: this kid is DANGEROUS.
INGREDIENTS (makes two loaves)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup cane sugar
1/2 cup agave
3/4 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup ripe mashed banana (about 2 medium)
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cups almond milk
Nonstick coconut oil cooking spray
DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat two 9×5 inch loaf pans with cooking spray; set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs, sugar, agave and coconut oil on medium-low speed until combined. Beat in the flour mixture. Add the vanilla, banana, coconut, almond milk, and beat just to combine. Fold in the blueberries.
Divide batter evenly between prepared pans; smooth with an offset spatula. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the centers comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes. Remove loaves from pans and let cool completely. Bread can be kept at room temperature, wrapped well in plastic, for up to 1 week, or frozen for up to 3 months. But honestly, are you going to do this? Shove a delicious loaf in the freezer and abandon it so cruelly? Hardly. You’re going to end up cutting small slices in the middle of the night, and eat this, standing up, in the kitchen, in the DARK.
