A Tribute To Home Cooking

I don't know what other secrets our friend Sharon has up her sleeve but she is quietly the best sour cherry pie baker in the world. It was sweet enough but not too sweet so that the flavor of the cherries- as intense as fake cherry candy flavor- could be bright and loud. The crust was flaky and tender and had no dairy in it so I don't want to know what she used for fat, but whatever it was made the perfect crust. It was the best pie I have ever eaten. It also happened to be the prettiest.

This pesto gnocchi made by our friend Mark is the only gnocchi I have ever enjoyed. It was a great revelation to me- the dumplings (made from potatoes and flour, usually) were tender and melted in our mouths. The pesto was creamy and rich without being too rich. (One must bear in mind that there is no such thing as "too rich" in my food vocabulary.)

I splurged on cheeses for our pot luck at my friend Chelsea's house. Seriously splurged. I fell for the colors and also for the tiny pert older French woman who was making me try every cheese she had that wasn't goat or sheep and it was amusing to watch her struggle with the fact that I could be such a difficult human being by not liking ALL her cheeses. She did make me taste a nasty olive. Chelsea liked it but I didn't. It was an olive that had little or not salt or vinegar in the curing so it was sweet. I don't eat olives for the sweet. Ick. However, do observe the gorgeousness of this cheese board and note that we ate some of them spread with a small amount of grape musk jam, a pleasant first for both of us.

These blueberry muffins are the best in the entire world. I'm not kidding. Nigella couldn't make them better. Neither could Julia Child. NO ONE MAKES BETTER BLUEBERRY MUFFINS THAN CHELSEA. I will get the recipe for them but we must all be warned that even with the recipe they will not be as good because Chelsea is magic and so is her food. If you eat one of these you will be spoiled for life because afterwards the gluey dense oily things you can buy in bakeries and cafes that call themselves "blueberry muffins" are really just fat blimps that stick in your throat and clog your spirit.

I think it's curious how we have only friends with food obsessions. I don't believe we have a single friend who are indifferent about what goes on their plates. Nearly all of them are excellent cooks or at the very least have one dish they make better than anyone else. We had better food at our friends' tables than we had out. Even when we went to D'Angelos in Mill Valley.

One meal I didn't get a picture of (and wish I had) was the pasta dish made by our friends Sid and Dennis. They made a pasta with sage from their garden that was superb. I am reminded of this because the pasta we had at D'Angelos (a winter squash ravioli with sage and butter sauce) pales in comparison to the pasta Sid and Dennis served which wasn't at all fancy or pretentious and was so good I can still taste it in my mouth now. It achieved, with half the ingredients, a purity and richness of flavor that was (I believe) the intention of the chefs at D'Angelos who ought to be taking lessons from my friends.

If I could open a restaurant (not a dream of mine, by the way) that served only food made from my friends' recipes it would be the best restaurant in the world. It pleases me that so many of the people I love take such great care and have such a passion for making food that goes beyond ordinary expectations. It is a constant inspiration to me in my own kitchen.

California

bad coffee does happen here

Melinda from Elements In Time wondered why I would complain about the heat wave in Oregon and then run off to California where it can only ever be worse. Good point. I don't miss the California heat and, frankly, I think Oregon has enough of it's own. We headed off to California to visit friends and family that we haven't seen in a year and a half. Friends' babies are losing teeth and turning into big kids. Pets have grown and/or died. Gardens are filling out. Homes are being remodeled...and it seemed that on the eve of starting a new exciting career as a Safeway checker, I had better get a vacation in because it's going to be very long time before we get to take one again.

So I managed to wing it which, as it turns out, is a very bad way to travel with a kid and a dog when most of the people you're visiting hate dogs and don't particularly care to do kid stuff. The air on the way down was heavy and hazy with smoke. The heat on the road was so uncomfortable that I wouldn't have minded having all my guts replaced with ice cubes.

This food, pictured above, is very fancy, very expensive, but not as tasty as it looks. We had it when we visited Mill Valley (more on that below) and ate at D'Angelo's, a Mill Valley institution. The food used to be a lot better than the decor, now the decor is a lot better than the food. That's what money can do for you.

When you are a delicate flower like I am you really need to have big hats and huge sunglasses. If I look suspiciously tired here it's because we slept in a very busy hotel room that (thankfully) allowed dogs but (sadly) made ours feel the need to alert us of strangers walking by every fifteen minutes through the night. It was a bit of a nerve wracking night due to the level of police activity and interrupting a very suspect scene near our hotel door in which snatches of conversation were heard. The kind of conversations that propel you into random kidnapping plots and violent crossfire.

Snatches of conversation liberally peppered with bits like "...well, he's dead now..." and "...we took the money from under the door..." do not fill one with the warm fuzzies. The truth is, we haven't heard a lot of gunfire since we moved to a small town. Coming back to Santa Rosa is like entering a real metropolis of darkness and fear compared to where we are now. The funny thing is that when we lived here we didn't feel quite as vulnerable as we do now that we've lived in a quieter place in which we rarely hear gunfire.

Mill Valley is a place that Philip grew up in. I hate to malign it too much because the way it was when he was growing up was really wonderful and I don't want to be too negative about a place that was so good for him to grow up in. But it's changed in the last thirty years a lot. It's become a place of money and privilege. The cars are all shiny and new and sleek and very expensive. People do not engage in random acts of friendliness and most of the women have a very worked over appearance.

I have a lot fewer strong ties to California than I thought before we took this trip. I have a lot of unresolved feelings cropping up which is just about as annoying as drinking bad coffee in a land with good coffee leaking out of every crevice. I am uncomfortable traveling and am contemplating the attractive idea of NEVER LEAVING HOME AGAIN.

On the other hand, I just had a really nice day with old friends I love and superb cheeses from an excessively expensive grocery store so maybe there are benefits of travel after all. Plus we're staying in our friend's camper and it's like staying in a fort with good pillows. Now Philip, Max, and I all want one to park in our driveway so we can camp out together in it regularly and pretend to be in the woods. We are figuring out how we can create scenery to fix outside of the windows to simulate different places we might like to visit.

The charms of agoraphobia never shined so bright. Home is a great place to visit.

Travel
What You Bring Home

For most people the point of travel is to explore and find out what else is out there in the world. You see new things, you learn about other people, you try new foods, and explore new textures. Travel is a way we can understand more about the world than what is right outside our front door. Yet I believe that for many people travel is equally important for what you bring back with you. If you travel and return home with exactly the same perspective, ideas, and knowledge as when you left then it seems, (to me), that you have gone nowhere.

If this trip has taught me anything it's that my family and I don't actually really know each other that well. Which is a surprise to me because I believe we know each other better than most families do. It is clear that my family (yes, ALL of them) know me well enough to know that I'm a very specific person, that I'm a vegetarian, that I am stubborn...but they don't know much about what I've done and seen in the world and how it's shaped me. Equally true is that I have my own blind spots for all of them and what I've learned is that I must open my ears fresh to their stories and their viewpoint but without the kind of usual questioning I use on everyone that has a tendency to shut my family's communication down.

We are a prickly bunch and we seem to agree on the basics readily but lose each other endlessly in the details. I have discovered that I need to let my parents, my brother, and my sister tell me their experiences without letting my preconceived notions about who they are crust up my hearing. My preconceived ideas were formed years ago and so were theirs. I feel that this trip has given us a chance to review each other. To start a new chapter in our relationships with each other. Who else brought that home with them is yet to be seen.

I have spent a great many years feeling unseen by my family and I wonder if they have now seen something new in me.

Whenever I travel I always bring home with me new ideas for living. I can't help it. Even in a land where most of the food makes me burp endlessly and where I would sometimes prefer to get all my nutrition from Guinness than from more chips and sweet peppers there is always some new food inspiration I carry in my taste-buds. The wedding food was not particularly wonderful for me but there was one dish that, but for the fact that the cheese was very goaty, is haunting me and will continue to linger in my mouth memory until I try my own version of it.

It was a portabello mushroom thing. I don't even know what to call it. The base was a tender portabello mushroom (and how did they achieve the tenderness? I often know portabellos to be meatier and firmer than I find pleasing) that was baked with soft goat cheese on the top. Ring molds were used for keeping the cheese in place so I am tempted to call it a tartlet. The cheese was pleasingly creamy and if it weren't for the goat-hide flavor finish- it would have been sublime.

And yes, for the record, I did burp up goat-hide flavor along with the bell pepper flavor...ALL NIGHT LONG. I think it's a testament to my love for my dad and his new wife that I actually ate the whole dinner without complaint knowing I would pay for it for hours.

I also brought home with me a heightened sense of what I want my own home to feel like. It should feel like all the aspects of the best bed and breakfasts, but a little less tidy because the reality is that I'm not tidy. That doesn't mean I shouldn't try to arrange my house for comfort. The idea of a bed and breakfast is that it's homey but better than home. You always find nice baskets in the bathroom with little soaps and shampoos. Things are arranged in the most convenient way possible and there is luxury in the details even if the effect is simply to make you feel effortlessly comfortable.

It isn't about being perfect. It's about the little touches. Something I did in our last house that I haven't figured out how to do here (because of counter space issues) is to arrange my bath salts and bombs attractively on the counter in pretty containers so that you always feel invited to run a bath. It made going into the main bathroom feel more like a pleasant surprise. Plus, it smelled super good with the bombs out.

I would like the entrance to my house to feel like coming back to a favorite bed and breakfast ...every single time I come home. Look at the simple entrance to this tiny cottage. The tiny topiaries are so welcoming. I feel like this kind of detail is something I forget about. I achieved this feeling in my house on Beaver Street. My front yard was quite often a mess but the box hedges looked so nice and formal, even when they got a little hairy, and there was always something pretty blooming in the planted half barrels on the porch.

In Glasgow there is a lot of tearing down going on and I was enchanted with the exposed innards of other people's homes. Can you see the thick layers of paint that have gone on these walls for the last couple hundred years? Those were rooms that people lived in and they painted them to please themselves.

People in cities don't have a luxury of space unless they are very rich. Most people don't have a lot of space even if they live in towns. Many many people live in apartments. Or small homes. Or have decent sized homes with postage stamp yards.

I had the luxury of both a largish house and a very large yard and I moved to an equal sized house with a smaller yard. Being in Scotland reminded me of how much space I have in my house and even with a smaller yard it is still almost four times the average sized yard in Ayr. I spied glimpses into people's walled gardens and was amazed at what they've done with so little space to create a sense of miniature paradise. I now feel like I have so much and my previous obsession with having "property" feels greedy and silly. I'm not saying it's wrong to want or to have lots of space...just that I never really maximized the space I had so why was I so desperate to have more?

My plan is to maximize what I have. I have a lot.

I went to the nursery yesterday to see about getting another Elephant Heart plum tree because I waited too long to plant my other one and it died. While I was there I realized that I already had a Green Gage plum in a bag that still had leaves on it that desperately needed to get into the ground. I bought a couple of terra cotta pots that were expensive...when did terra cotta get so costly?! After I bought them I thought about all the containers I have at home that could be drilled with holes and used for planting the plants I need to repot.

Learning to assess what you really have and what you can do with it; learning to maximize the space you already have; learning to stop and think about what you're about to buy before doing it takes practice and time. I don't consider myself particularly materialistic or much of an obsessed shopper*, yet I realized that I had a ton of plants waiting to get in the ground at home and there I was ready to buy more.

I came home yesterday, yanked out my poor dead Elephant Heart plum tree, and planted the Green Gage. I potted up all of the pots I already have with flowers waiting for repotting. Today I will look around for more pots. I have some ideas and when I figure it all out, I will share it with you.

I always bring a lot home with me from trips but most of what I bring home is weightless and stays with me long after the trip has finally been paid for.

As much as I love traveling, I love being home much much more.

*I didn't do much shopping in Scotland. The one purchase I made for myself that I was totally excited about were two packets of seeds which the customs officer stole from me because seeds now require some special stamp on them to be in the country. I'd very much like to know what they are going to do with my seeds? Toss them in an incinerator? Throw them on a trash barge?

The Long Way Home

Glasgow is a working class city mostly featuring 19th century architecture. I like Glasgow because it has a really energetic and diverse feel to it. There's an edge here that is lacking in Edinburgh. This is the view from the window of the last hotel I stayed in which was a "Quality Inn" ensconced in a dilapidated Victorian building that must have had some sort of political use in the past (as a "chambers" perhaps?). It is huge and the Glasgow Central Train Station has been built onto it.

This may be my favorite picture of my gorgeous sister from the whole trip. A lot of Glasgow has a gritty feel to it but we took a walk through Kelvingrove Park and decided that we would live close to the park or on the West side of Glasgow which is where our walk landed us. The West Side is where you will find the University and, consequently, all the tattoo shops and student style cafes and it reminded us a lot of Brooklyn where my sister lived for a few years.

The East Side is where my brother found his favorite adventures. It's where all the Irish pubs are, it's rougher, it's grittier, it's louder, and you'd better be careful what colors you wear on the streets. I'd avoid wearing orange or green. If you have to wear one of them and prefer not to be stabbed or punched, I suggest you go with the green.

I have to admit that I got really tired. This was not, over all, a relaxing vacation. I did a lot of walking in Glasgow, til my feet hurt and my legs ached, and when the night fell on the last day I was not at all sorry to zone out on some British television and pack my bags for home.

Apparently, everyone in New Jersey craves steak, judging by the large presence it makes in the Newark Airport in which I spent six hours whiling away my time drinking Guinness and eyeballing queer giant chunks of flesh that are suppose to tempt weary travelers. In all it took 24 hours to get home. By the time I got on the plane to Portland I was fairly grumpy and desperate to see my guys and to nuzzle my nose into my kittens and my dog. It made the last plane ride seem interminable. A sensation very much heightened by my fellow passengers.

I sat in a window seat. Something I don't do anymore for several reasons, the main one being the diminutive size of my bladder and the deeply stressful psychological damage it has done to me: if I know I am in a situation where I cannot easily get to a bathroom I will instantly have to pee. I couldn't arrange to sit in the isle seat on this flight so I knew that every time I had to get up to pee I would have to disarrange two other people to do it. Knowing this made me feel like I had to pee for the entire interminable flight.

The person who sat next to me was a fascinating red-headed dread-locked guy who clearly had a cold (judging by his constant sniffling and occasional deep coughing fit) and had not heard of bathing or deodorant. I don't like the acrid smell of man-sweat. Five hours of the smell of man-sweat, nasty bad cheeseburgers (the Continental dinner), and canned air did a lot of damage to my already faded humor. I got the dude back good though by having to pee three times during the flight. That was out of kindness to him and my other row partner. I would have been much more comfortable if I had been free to pee at least six times.

At last I landed home. I could not have been happier to see my guys waiting for me than if I had just been given a million dollar check! Oh they were such a good sight! I love Portland. I love Oregon.

Right now I am stinky and in need of a shower but I'm enjoying my coffee and Pippa is purring in my lap. I am looking at my house and feeling so excited about all the things I can do in it. I am excited that I've brought home inspiration for decorating it and garden inspiration as well. It's raining today which makes me really happy too because it was warm for my whole trip and I need a break. I heard about the heat wave here and am so happy to have missed it!!!

Home is such a wonderful place to be. I might need to nap most of this day away.

St. Andrews Cathedral

I love cathedrals and old churches. I love religious music (organs, Catholic choir music, gospel) and I love religious art. I don't believe in God. Not as an entity that experiences jealousy, hate, has a gender, or a race. The best way I can explain my spirituality is that it is nature. Nature made us all. Nature is a force we are all a part of. It doesn't judge, it undulates through the cosmos, making new galaxies, planets, life forms...it is very large, so large you can never know the end of it and so small that you can't see it with your naked eye, and everything in between.

It is the cycle of life and death. It doesn't seek vengeance or punish us. We punish ourselves. Nature is simply the pull of the universe. Gravity. Balance. Nature seeks balance. When a species gets too plentiful to feed itself it will starve. If it learns to live on nothing, it will get diseases. Nature will find a way to keep the balance.

Therefore, if we ourselves put things out of balance, as we have, it will find a way to right itself. If there are too many people there will be some form of limitation to our survival. Not as a judgment, but as a way to keep all things healthier.

Religion is our way of trying to give voice and words to the forces at work. It is hard for people to imagine a force greater than themselves that isn't in their own image. I believe that we have formed ideas about God based on what we know of ourselves. The bible has it backwards. The bible says something about how god created man in his image. I think man imagined god in his.

What I love about churches is that here I see man seeking his best self. In the statuary, the saints, the beautiful architecture, the music...it is the human imagination trying to embrace something beyond self, something close to universal love. It's true that often man may leave church or synagogue or temple and go kill another man...but religion is his attempt to get beyond that to his best self. It is his effort to find and give acceptance.

Which is beautiful.

Many terrible atrocities have been committed in the name of god. Humans have often believed that god is on "their side". If your idea of god is that god takes sides then either your idea of god is dreadfully flawed or else god is not a good being and I can never side with him/it/her. Nature doesn't discriminate against races, gender, or class. We all die. Every last one of us. We all will have sorrows and troubles.

I take these thoughts into churches and while in the pews I meditate on how man is constantly tangled in his own muddle of spirituality. He cannot seem to get beyond his own image. His own reflection into the greater pool of life. I would like to see in the pool the light that is the opposite of the dark. I would like to see the life bubbling up in it and dragging itself onto the shore where I can know it. Or I would like to dive into the pool myself to see what is outside of myself.

I sat in the cathedral yesterday and experienced it as man's great inspiration, his attempts to get outside of his own skin and let the world in. One of the things I love about catholic churches are the votives. I think it's lovely to light a candle for someone. I think it's lovely to use candles as a request for prayers. There are always candles lit. I love to watch the candles and know that here are human cares being released. I added my own.

I lit (and paid for, thank you!) ten candles. I lit them for the following: for peace, for plenty, for healing, for mother, for father, for child, for sister, for brother, for the forgotten, and for the homeless.

I found another church, this time a Church Of Scotland, which wasn't open. However, they had this prayer tree. I added a prayer to it.

A prayer for peace. A prayer for my country to stop killing people in Iraq. A prayer to end the war. I don't think my prayer is going to be answered, but what's important is that I put my wishes out there and that I have in my heart those who are dying in war right now and keep hope lit in myself that a temporary peace may come.

I am fascinated by the catholic statuary. Very gory stuff. Yet beautiful too. It would be equally beautiful if it were modeled after dark Africans, olive Arabs, or pale Asians. Catholics are certainly responsible for a tremendous amount of bloodshed and while I can never embrace the religion for my own, just as I cannot embrace any organized religion for my own, I think they've also been responsible for some of the most incredible art, architecture, and music.

These feet of Christ make me think of the song Johnny Cash sings "Were you there?" which is all about Jesus being nailed to the cross.

I would like peace and plenty for us all.

Scottish Food
a profile

Haggis in a can may not be your cup of tea but it's my opinion that never has a disgusting traditional food come in a prettier package. Plaid gets me every time. I've never seen new potatoes in a can and I'm not confident that I would like them but I love to see what food people are eating in a foreign country.

These jars of goose fat remind me of Riana. I've never seen it for sale in the states.

The Scottish love their mushy peas. Personally I think you should go ahead and call them split pea soup or pea puree...calling any food "mushy" makes me think of smashed bananas.


What Scottish people eat at home is not information that I'm privy to but I can tell you a lot about the food available to travelers and shoppers:

• If you want authentic Scottish food, "authentic" meaning what Scots eat when they go out for food, you will eat at a pub. Pub food is what the Scots eat. They eat plenty of curries as well but when you walk a city in Scotland it becomes immediately clear that chips must accompany a meal if it is to be considered meal food. I have eaten enough chips in the last six days to coat my arteries permanently.

• You must drink Ale with every meal. (or beer) Businesspeople drink a pint or two with lunch and then they have a pint or two with dinner. Then they go out with friends and have several more pints. This is a lifestyle I completely agree with.

• Scottish people love bell peppers. It is nearly impossible to get a salad without them. Sweet peppers come on sandwiches, in salad, in vegetable medleys, and in pasta. I'm a little surprised they don't garnish pints of ale with it. I have been burping nonstop since I have arrived and I have stopped trying to avoid the peppers because it's futile.

• Don't eat pannini here unless it is being made by actual Italians.

• Most traditional Scottish food includes a lot of blood, guts, and oats. Tara tried vegetarian Haggis and said it was like a nut loaf.

• Scotland is still grappling with the concept of vegetarianism. For the wedding dinner Tara and I* got sorbet and fruit instead of the salad everyone else got with melon, lettuce, cheese, and ham. I would have been happy with a pile of greens with vinaigrette. The sorbet was good but disconcerting. It was much better than the previous trip to Scotland when I got a "vegetarian" chicken potato leek soup. I have high hopes for Scottish food, however, because they do veggie burgers much better than most places in the states. In fact, I've never had a lentil-spinach veggie patty before today and it was super good!!

That's it for tonight. It's 3:13 pm your time but it's just after 11pm for me. Zeke and Tara are out sampling the loud Glasgow nightlife and I have some television to watch. I haven't watched nearly enough yet and I don't have any at home. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow but I can tell you one thing for sure: I'll be eating chips, fried food, and bell peppers in one form or another. I raise my Guinness to you all and hope some of you are eating something wonderful!



*The only two vegetarians in attendance. When I tell more wedding stories I will have to describe the main course too. Very interesting. I promise it involved lots of bell peppers.

It's All Blue Sky In Ayrshire

There are a few things I didn't bring with me: sunscreen, a hat, sandals, or tank tops for the excellent reason that the sun isn't supposed to shine in Scotland. Everyone says it. Everyone complains about it. Just like in Oregon. Since I've never been to Scotland when it wasn't winter I had to go with the common belief that it is always cold and overcast. I've forgotten that people routinely exaggerate about "poor" weather and that what might be cold to one person might actually kill another one with heat exhaustion.

It has been nothing but blue skies and warm weather until just today. I don't completely mind except for the constant discomfort I've been feeling from the warmth* and being in cars where people don't want the windows down.

This grassy verge is a lovely spot on the Culzean Castle grounds that looks out over the sea and is, in fact, a great spot to sit and kill other people with cannon fire. I know this because it was hilled up and lined with cannons a few hundred years ago and the cannons are still there. But forget about war for just a minute. Forget about history and people and be alone in your mind, just for a few minutes. The sky is clear blue for miles, the air up here is whipping your hair up and cooling your head, and the grass is speckled with the sweetest English daisies. If you sit here and forget all the fussing and clamoring of your family, your friends, your many many loved ones, I think all your troubles will slip away here.

You look out over the sea and in the distance you can see the shadow of the mainland. But who cares about the mainland when you are in the sweetest spot on the Isle of Aaron? Time can go to hell because there is almost music here. The daisies smile up at you like children who have yet to discover that life is not going to provide them with endless summer ice-cream cones. You can imagine that it's always early summer here. Before it gets unbearably hot. When there's still a freshening breeze. While we are still all thinking that the months are going to last forever.

I have had very little time to myself on this trip. I knew that would be the case since it's really not a trip that's about me. I accompanied a very large group of family and friends to Culzean Castle. I walked with them through the actual castle but as soon as I broke free of the antiquities within I went off by myself. I walked through an orangery filled with the intoxicating perfume of citrus blossoms. I walked fast across vast lawns and slowly along stone walls covered in tiny ferns and other unidentified pretty creepers. I ate a mediocre lunch at the cafe by myself and bought two Bronte books in the used bookstore on the grounds.

Eventually I made it to the one thing I was most keen on seeing. I realize now that I ought to have gone there first. The walled garden. It's beautiful. I wanted to lie down in the shade on the grass and count apple blossoms. I wanted to crawl through the borders to inspect the roses not yet in bloom and sniff at the peonies that were. I didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked. I love walled gardens. I want to build a wall around mine. I have a fence but fences rot and rotting fences don't feel as permanent as stone or brick walls.

I snore. I'm not happy about it. My sister couldn't sleep. Neither could I for worrying about her not being able to sleep. So I got myself a room next door at the Daviot where my brother had a room. This ceiling detail is at the Burnside Guest House. The Daviot had some of these wonderful plasters but not as many. Can I put some in my own house?

This is the staircase next door at the Daviot. Very pretty, isn't it? It became the treacherous stairs I later almost killed myself on. I swear I wasn't drunk. I slipped and I can't say it's done wonders for my back. I have some bruised bits as well.

What do you think of the carpet? I happen to be plaid happy. I put industrial plaid carpeting in our finished attic in the Beaver Street house. It always makes me happy to see it because you have to really have a sense of play to have something so bold. I loath the usual beige pile carpet so popular everywhere. I have to tell you that in the old houses here there is a lot of colorful carpet. The first place I've seen much beige is in the hotel we're in now.

Not super happy with self at the moment, however, I love this self portrait because details are washed out by the damn sunshine that has a special affinity for me and follows me where ever I go like a sad little Chihuahua that can't leave alone the one person in the room that doesn't like Chihuahua. Go away bright rays! Although, if it can erase all my flaws like this, maybe I should find a way to enjoy it more.

Rust is everywhere here because they use stone and metal for fences a lot more than they use wood. You must keep metal painted in a wet climate or it will rust. So much here is touched by age and decay and somehow when you use such sturdy materials it weathers more beautifully.

I don't know what this plant is but it was creeping up the garden walls at Culzean Castle and I love it. It looks similar to heather and yet prettier, plus it creeps up the wall and so doesn't take up valuable space as a clump.

I would like to be a black bird. This guy was hanging close to the cafe at Culzean Castle hoping for crumbs. On the other side of the battlements here is a big cliff and below it the sea.

The soldier's view. This is for Max because I so much wished he was there with me to see what a soldier with cannons would have seen. This piece of metal has blown holes in ships. Probably in flesh as well.

The wedding was yesterday. We are now in Glasgow in an apartment with two bedrooms a living room, bathroom, and kitchenette. We have left charming decor and entered the city life of business-man from the 80's taste**. everything is black and white (leather couches and dining room chairs) black curtains and white walls. It's pretty nice but is missing all the charm of the bed and breakfasts.

I'm tired. Very tired. I'm tired of talking to people I don't know. I need down time and alone time. I'm wishing I could extend my vacation by a couple more days so I can fully decompress from people. The wedding was lovely but it was long and it exhausted my reserves completely. My brother and sister are tired as well. None of us have had much sleep. None of us have been free to just do as we please. That's what the next two days are about.

I miss my Philip and wish he was here with me to just walk and take it all in. I wish he was here so we could talk about everything and I could enjoy his perspective. It's less work talking with him and being with him than with anyone else I know. I miss my Max too. I wish he had been with me when I found the giant bug on the iron fence opening into the walled garden. I took a picture, but if he had been there we could have entered into a lively discussion about his possible dangerousness. It was HUGE. I wish Max was with me to see the wall covered in weapons at Culzean Castle: an entire room covered in pistols and swords and rifles arranged artfully. It was amazing. I wasn't allowed to take pictures. I love you guys!

Most of you are awake now. My evening is in progress. Soon we'll head out to find food. All of us are planning to turn in on the early side.



*Perhaps it's hot flashes? An early menopause?

**This hotel is located in the business district, right downtown, across the street from the central train station so it caters to the business people.

In The Fitting Room

It's a little uncanny how much I look like my Grandfather in this picture. I have got identical jowls to his! I'm impressed that I have been able to cultivate them by the age of 38, it took him at least 60 years to get his going in full swing. Glorious! This picture is for Emma from the blog "My Three Loves" who knitted and felted this most amazing scooter scarf for me. It's super long so I can wrap it around many times and has bobbles on it. She knitted it for me in exchange for a jar of my vanilla pears.

Yes, the pears are THAT good.

But, for the record, I paid for the yarn. It was labor for labor. This scarf is now my security scarf. I own two extraordinary knitted/felted items now, both made by friends: my felted purse with the green glitter handles that Lisa E. made for me, and this scarf. I will have to photograph both for you more attractively, but not today. Too much to do.

This week has been about shopping for clothes. It's something I loath doing. I would have preferred to make clothes but I honestly don't have time for it and I finally realized it a couple of days ago. I always wait until it gets really dire. I was down to three pairs of pants (though only two of them were truly comfortable) and no unholy socks (Most of my socks are four or five years old) and three or four shirts that fit. Which means I do a lot of laundry to keep in clothes.

Yesterday Philip dropped me off at Macy's to shop. I've already scoured my local second hand shop, Ross, and our local fat lady clothes shop with the stupid name "The Fashion Bug". I failed to find a fancy shirt to wear to my Dad's wedding. It's black tie. I tried on some dresses and couldn't possibly have looked more dismally like Divine...what's depressing is that I actually looked WORSE than Divine...I really could have used some over the top make up. Dresses and skirts are OUT for me. I found a nice pair of pin-striped, cuffed, knee length pants that could be dressed up for a wedding. Clearly I'm not going to pull off a real black tie ensemble but one of my few true talents is dressing up casual clothes to look fancy enough to meet a queen in.

So all I needed was to find a fancy top to go with it. Something really dressy. Or else a tux style top. I found some white cotton tuxedo style tops but they made me look like a super-frump. After a mere two hours of trying on all kinds of tops meant to make large ladies look like stuffed deli meat, I finally found a lovely teal colored semi-fitted lacy top. I knew it was going to work when I didn't want to smash the mirror in the dressing room.

Of course it wasn't on sale.

What is it with all the giant fake jewels they put on clothes for plus size people? It insults me that designers assume that all large ladies are tacky. Most of them are also covered in crazy-bright patterns, real Pucci-esque numbers in bubblegum pink, apple green, bright yellow, and royal blue. I would never have dressed in such bejeweled patterns when I was a regular sized person, why would increasing my body mass make me more likely to adorn myself in such hideosity?

There's probably a psychology there but I don't feel like working that angle.

So what I need now is the perfect red lipstick, some really sparkly chandelier earrings and I need to transform a couple of red velvet millinery roses into hair ornaments. I plan to wear red forties-style platform sandals and paint my toenails red too. I'll look so fancy all the people in long gowns will wonder how it is they ended up looking so casual. Of course, they'll also think I'm a fat freak, but that won't matter.

Macy's always pulls through for me. I love Macy's. The one I went to in Portland doesn't have a MAC counter though and I found that quite distressing.

This is a nine day trip.

I haven't been out of the country since January of 2000. I have my passport, but what else do I need? Plug converters for the camera battery chargers and the laptop (Philip says we have one already and he saw it recently), my portable CD player with MP3's that Philip is making for me, notebooks, cameras, a book (I'll have to get one), but what else? Help me make my list! I'm usually quite a good packer. I rarely over pack. I'll bring two pairs of shoes, one for every day use and the fancy pair for the wedding. I always bring enough underwear to get me through the trip and socks too. But I'll only bring two or three pairs of pants, plus three or four tops (not including the wedding outfit). I'll do one load of laundry while there.

I rarely bring more than the basics in makeup and jewelry and other sundries. I keep it simple.

The last time we traveled we used our ATM to get cash, the machines automatically convert the currency and the rate was better than when going into the bank. Has anyone got thoughts on whether it's best to get traveler's checks or to just get money as needed from atms? What do you usually do?

I will make a list later in the day. Right now it's time to shower and get dressed. Philip is going to learn to brew beer today with his good friend Richard who's coming over soon. I'm still in my jammies. I think it's time to get dressed so I can go play Legos with Max as I promised him I would do.

Please, share your thoughts on travel necessities!

I Wonder If Jesus Ate Pita Bread

I'll bet he did. And I'll bet he liked it too. Jesus was a Mediterranean guy, after all. One might even speculate that he was part Arab. How likely would it have been for him to be purely of European descent? Philip is telling me that the area in which Jesus lived was, by his lifetime, a real crossroads of cultures already. There were Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Phoenicians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Turks (for a start). Does it still bother some Christians to imagine that Jesus was probably not really white?

I like to imagine him as a blend of ethnicities. Though it would be deeply ironic if there was ever proof that he was of Northern African or Arab ethnicity. How that would make some millions of American and European Christians uncomfortable. Not that it's my life ambition to make anyone uncomfortable.

I like to think about what I brought back with me from my trip to Israel* to visit my father, his wonderful wife, and my half brother. I brought back with me, as souvenirs, a much sharper political understanding of the region, a deeper respect for the diversity of culture and the educational sophistication of that nation, some amazing cheesy Christian holy water and Jesus relic souvenirs which have sadly been lost in the fire, time spent with family which was both wonderful as well as raggedly emotional, and the best thing of all?

The experience of eating pita bread as it is eaten by the people who have been making it for a thousand years at least. It is not a pocket bread as Americans generally think of it. It's a flat bread that is used to scoop food up with. You tear it into pieces and use it to scoop up your meze dishes like Baba ghanoush or lebneh drizzled with olive oil, and maybe you use it to slop up some of the juices from your inevitable lamb dishes.

When you bring home new food ideas from trips abroad they stay with you a lot longer than trinkets do. I came home, found a recipe for home made pita from Deborah Madison's book, and I've been making it for the last twelve years. Every time I make it I think of Israel. I think of my father, his wonderful wife who is beautifully practical and yet also creative, and I think of my half brother who grew up knowing he had at least a brother and a sister but was raised alone. He's a full grown man now and I wish I could have grown up nearer to him so we could have gotten to know each other. Every time I make pita I feel like telling him that I have not smoked a cigarette in over four years now.

Every time I make pita bread I also think about the Arab restaurants where I had this exquisite flat bread and experienced the meze table for the first time. It makes me think of how textured and rich the Arab culture is. It makes me sad that my country is busy gunning it down right now. As though all Arabs were savages. Our government is restricting the seed saving rights of the Arab people we are currently occupying. The seeds we grow say a lot about the culture we nurture just as the bread we make and eat does. You take that kind of autonomy away from a people and you destroy who they are.

I make pita and remember that Arabs, like all other people on earth, have a lot in common with me on a cellular level. They have traditions that are meaningful to them; they have a rich history; they have an amazing culture which deserves to be respected by us all.

I feel confident that even if Jesus wasn't part Arab himself, he most likely ate lots of pita and no Wonderbread. I'm not really into Jesus from a religious perspective, but I'm fascinated by the stories about him and the times he lived in and endlessly riveted by the clash between who he apparently was and how so many Christians are so personally worried about me believing in him but then they ignore everything he supposedly stood for. It's like watching a silent film in which Jesus is doing all manner of peaceful things but the dialog stills are putting these words in his mouth:

"Ye Arabs are hoarding oil and God hates you for that so I am going to bomb your asses until you give it all to me!!!!"

I like to think that bringing pieces of culinary and cultural knowledge home with us from our travels helps us all connect with each other and helps to foster a greater respect for each other across the globe.

An Inferno Not Unlike Hell Itself

These are beautiful beets I bought at the farmer's market. Some of them were kind of bitter though. Golden beets and Chioggias.


I almost always take my vacations to cold places in the winter time. This says a lot about me. I've been to Scotland twice but never seen it in the warm weather when every tourist attraction is open. When I go it's pouring icy rain or snowing. It's cold and makes your cheeks pink after you've walked all the cobbled streets of Edinburgh's old town. Pints of beer taste wonderfully invigorating after taking a long walk up in the icy rocky hills of the highlands where you had a little bit of a staring contest with a ram who wore very sharp horns.

When I was seven months pregnant in the summertime of 2000, we broke my rule of travel and visited my cousins in Wisconsin where I got bloody noses and almost passed out from the heat. In seven years I have not made this mistake again.

Angelina + Heat = Imbecilic Cranky Puddle Of Human

Not a pretty sight. If I had the energy I would lash out at the heat in anger. But I don't. Heat drains the life out of me. It gives me headaches, heat rashes, bloody noses, and sometimes nausea. Even when I'm not pregnant in it.

I woke up too late to water my garden freely without harming my plants. You have to water in the early morning to avoid sunburning your plant's leaves. If you water their leaves when a hot sun is shining directly down on their green lusciousness the leaves will wilt and turn brown where the water hit them. So when you wake up too late on a day like this you have two choices:

1) You can let all your plants die because you failed to water them the previous day

or 2) You can get your lazy ass out there with the hose and very carefully water only at the base of all the plants so they get the water without the burn. This is tedious work. Especially in a garden the size of mine. This is why smart people install a drip system before the middle of summer.

I did it because I have not nurtured that vegetable garden every day for two months only to let it expire on the first triple digit day of summer.

I joined the gym yesterday and fully intended to go for the first time today. But the thought of going there to purposely cause myself to perspire a lake's worth of sweat sounds so unappealing I think maybe I prefer to stay fat. I can perspire quite enough just by working on my apron for the apron book. I have to force myself to go. MUST KILL SELF WITH OWN SWEAT.

Speaking of aprons and patterns... I have to say that the most challenging thing about coming up with a pattern for other people to use is coming up with instructions that actually make sense. It's very difficult to describe actions that you have taken for granted such as how to make pin-tucks to people who may not know how to do them already. Along with my finished pattern I must furnish instructions for any of the less obvious parts of the apron construction. This tests my brain in a whole new way and it's good to get practice because I'm going to produce an apron pattern for a quilt shop in Washington to sell and it's important to me that anyone who buys it will have a positive experience making my apron.

The day is just getting away from me in spite of the fact that I can't move except in slow motion. I better go get on with what needs doing. I hope all of you are finding shelter from the heat!

For those of you purposely seeking the heat in order to sit under the light and bake yourselves into the color of a roast turkey: You are way weirder than me if you think cooked bird flesh is prettier than your natural glow. WAY WEIRDER. (Yeah, I realize most of you out there disagree and are happy to roast...I love you anyway.)