Game On!

I couldn't believe it! "oh, no! You didn't just go there," I almost screamed as I looked out my kitchen window while rinsing my empty morning coffee cup.

A second later, and now I did scream, throwing the sopping sponge in the sink, "Oh, it is so on! Hell no, you didn't just go there!"as I ran toward the door, grabbed the key, unlocked the safety screen and ran outside to stop the offenders from doing any more damage to my tomatoes. I finally had the smoking gun, flat-out busted the culprits - mystery and paranoia laid, at last, to rest.

For a few weeks now, when my tomatoes ripened, I'd go out to harvest them for a nice salad, sandwich or guidsado, or whatever, only to find that the beautiful, perfectly ripened tomato I saw from my kitchen window, was entirely demolished and picked over on the opposite side.

For a while I suspected my neighbors. Since I'd fallen out of favor with some of them for insisting that more care be taken with their pets on my portion of the shared yard; I suspected retribution was at hand; going to the heart of me by attacking my tomatoes - when my back was turned!

I decided to work on the virtue of patience and pay more attention. I watched as I wrote at the dining room window, started taking a few extra breaks from my desk, whether writing or working, to check on the tomatoes, or while enjoying my coffee - just checking for any clues or signs of the offenders. Nothing.

All through the green phase, nothing. Perfectly content little verdent tomatoes - untouched. When I saw that they were ripe, good enough to bring in, I'd leave them a little bit longer to taste the true meaning of 'vine ripened' tomatoes. That's when I'd discover the horror! It was in that moments on the vine - just a moment too long, when the tragedy strikes.

This morning, I'm washing my coffee cup and look outside and notice the content birds who've come down in search for seeds. There's this new bird - larger than a sparrow and more solid - resting on my tomato plant. He looks like a Chickadee and is always off somewhere in the yard by himself, often on the patio chair near my tomato plant. He comes nearly every morning lately "aaaah, how sweet, he's using my plant as reprieve," I thought, happy that I've been able to create a bit of a refuge of sorts for the birds. I'm thinking all this just a second before he took a hearty peck into the tomato.

Then a mockingbird joined in! Ahrghhhh... the damn door is jammed again. Normally the jiggling of the door scares away the birds feeding on the seeds, not these two. They were so into my tomato that they didn't care how close I might be to actually opening the damn thing! Maybe they knew it would take me long enough for them to get a couple of good chunks out. Kind of like a criminal who knows just how long he can hang around the scene of a crime before the cops arrive.

I finally open it up and shoo them away. My tomato was nearly ruined. Bastards! How can you do this. After I've been so good to you (until the pigeons). I'd been holding back on everyday feedings because of the pigeon uprising -numbers were increasing from 2 to 5 on some days...that's a few short of a revolution when it comes to pigeons - and my small yard - and some days I'd forget to put it out - plus, I mixed in seed for finches. The majority seems to be poo pooing this mix, so I figured, stupidly, when you're hungry enough, 'you'll eat the mixture and be you'll be happy to get it. The birds, they had other ideas.

Too proud, and too determined, to let my tomatoes get ransacked by these little invaders, I harvest them anyway. I cut away the pecked side - they clearly had been at it for a while - and enjoyed them chopped, folded into browned onions and scrambled eggs - a simple and especially pleasing breakfast.

My birds have good taste. Now I now what I'm up against and what I have to do to protect my right to eat what plant and grow. I'll get back on my schedule of feeding the birds their seeds - pigeons be damned - and harvest a little earlier than I had been. Birds, I've found out, are not color blind. They knew when my tomatoes where at their reddest, at their most ripened. They're no fools, and they have impeccable taste. I feel kinda proud of that, in a geeky sort of way.

Remembering Padua, Italy

I was out feeding my birds this morning (yes, my birds now...even though I don't have them caged, the relationship has become special, exclusive - I feed them, they entertain and make me happy - a fair relationship) and the cloud cover made me think of Italy, of Padua.

The picture on my blog was taken in an open air market the morning I arrived in Padua. It wasn't necessarily the nicest market I'd been to, but it absolutely was the most exciting. That day was similar to today. I stopped at a fruit stand first. I remembered being struck by the gloss of the skin of the berries. I'd never seen such deep, intense colors on berries like that - and glossy. Beautiful, untreated and organic. I was stunned too, by the variety. I'm not used to this. I'm used to seeing the usual two suspects at my supermarket. I was stupified. I found myself taking picture after picture of these beautiful berries...in the heart of Padua.

I was in Italy to study the language -at this point, my vocabulary was still limited. I had a million questions crashing into each other in my head, but I couldn't get them to leave my lips - so I took pictures instead. The vendor and I could only smile at each other after "buon giorno." He'd smile, I'd smile back. In the early part of my stay in Italy, I had plenty of smiles - they work wonders in a pinch. But he knew. After enough pictures, and I was done, I couldn't wait to say it: "arrivederci!" After several 'arrivederci's and ciao's - I was off. I'm not usually very good with good-bye's, but in Italian, a good-bye can sound so sweet.

The cheese shop was also amazing; small and quaint with character and personality busting out of every nook and cranny. The cheese monger inviting me in, tantalizing me with a piece of cheese (looked to me like Fontina) at the end of a cheese fork. Being on a budget I was afraid I'd get myself in trouble if I set one foot in there - buying more than I needed, all that my eyes were taking in, and more than my stomach could handle. So I waved at him from the door...'buon giorno' and dreamed of Fontina with bread and vino for lunch. And that was exactly what I had - cheese, bread and vino, followed by coffee and the sound of lilting Italian conversations all around me.

I was so excited by the slower pace - but I like slow! (it was after all August, when many Italians themselves are on holiday), the aromas, the sounds. I felt like I had the place to myself - at least it's what it felt like, Like Italy was there just for me...silly, blissfully contented me.

After spending most of the day in the market, it was on to find music. I was on a mission - which is always part of my travels: finding food ideas and music to bring back. I bring back music from every place I've ever visited, in CD's or in my memory. The music gives me a sound-track, helps me create places I can escape to, and replay them when I need to once I'm back home.

I also take music with me to leave behind. When I befriend the locals, and once I'm being invited to houses for dinner and celebrations (I'm so fortunate that this invariably happens, with the exception of London - not my best holiday - but there was a bright spot in Stratford Upon Avon, but that's another story) I share music and leave what my hosts enjoyed - I like leaving memories as well as bringing some back.

But back to Padua. Padua has one of the oldest universities in existence, the first law school to award a dottore di giurizprudenza - juris doctor degree – to a woman, and the first, and still operating, coffee house - of course it was smartly placed within walking distance of the several other universities in the central part of the city. Padua was also the home of Francesco Petrarch, inventor of the Italian Sonnet form and Mr. Shakespeare's counterpart. If you’ve ever read romantic Italian literature, or sonnets of unattainable love, then you no doubt know Petrarch. These things say a lot about Padua – a city ages ahead of the curve.

On the one hand, I'm happy that Padua wasn't infested with tourists like, say Venice or Verona - even in August. Padua was, and is, a cultural center. Unless you’re due for your annual pilgrims visit to la Basilica di Sant' Antonio, or checking out historic universities, law schools, old coffee houses, art (collection of works by Giotto) is your idea of getting your world rocked, your not likely to make your way to this Veneto gem. On the other hand, I wish more people could enjoy what Padua does have to offer - which is a lot.

It just occurred to me that I've been in the birth place of both Petrarch and Shakespeare - have probably walked on paths they walked, touched buildings they touched, picked up stones they tossed (okay, okay, highly improbable, but this is my daydream) stood in the very spot they stood in when each looked to the heavens and prayed, 'please, just one good line, one true sentence...it doesn't even have to be a beginning, or even an end - just one good line...'

Feeding my birds this morning, enjoying the quiet of the day, brought all this back. I think this is what that guy, the one who said the thing about '...two birds with one stone' really meant.

A Free Write Recipe: Good food, friends and vino

Dusk. Good food. vino e miei amici.

The only thing I would want to be different was the temperature in my house. Aside from the heat, I was able to treat my closest friends to a nice evening of dishes I learned to make in Italy, some proseco and a dessert I reinvented from a heard, and barely recalled, recipe.

This is the stuff life is made of. These are the moments life is for. I was nervous because some details were off: my napkins and place-setting were lost - misplaced, in my move into this house last year. I had to rethink settings, had to run out for more. I forgot about great thing about the wonderful friends I have, and the wonderful to entertaining and not being governed by etiquette rules - break them, make the evening work for you, and if it comes from your heart, it can't be wrong.

My friends are amazingly versatile women who adapt to any situation - they dealt with my casual, country-side, in-door sit-down meal - and my forgetting to put out the red vino after our initial toast with proseco.

Laughter and teasing about how they had no idea I was so into cooking - and pleased with the result, we relaxed into the living room. The truth is, cooking for my friends is something I always wanted to do, but entertaining in my old apartment was out of the question. As much as I wanted to do it, the place didn't have space enough for a nice dinner for two, let alone a group. It was a large single unit - a bachelor pad if you will (or bachelorette, if you won't.)

I often dreamed of cooking for my friends and family, for my soul. The sound of cooking utensils on ceramic, or cutting boards and on pots and pans, is one of the most comforting sounds for me - just like the sound of stirring a cup of coffee - soft clinking of a demitasse spoon against ceramic or china, the soft scrape, scrape, scraping when you hit the La Perruche cane sugar cube (my favorite) at the bottom of the cup; the memories and feelings stirred in me by this ritual are the reasons I won't give up coffee. I'm far too ritualistic to give that up.

After prepping six different appetizer's and all the rest of the meal-- garlic bread, pasta alle oglio e peperoncino - and cherry pomodori e prosciutto, garden greens salad with balsamic vinaigrette; cleaning the back-yard, running around, searching for a good replacement for my choice of starter wine (when after tasting my tester bottle, I discovered that the wine was corked. I was too nervous to risk that my second bottle was also corked - thank the wine gods for BevMo!) and picking up my wonderful pots from Three Chihuahua Pottery to decorate my 'garden' (more on Three Chihuahua's later, but I'll say this, if you want care paid to you, and your choices in garden pottery, you've got to visit Daniel - he's fantastic and has the most beautiful, sweet eyes!) -- I was afraid I'd be too tired to enjoy the evening. That was all laid to rest when I welcomed my friends - seeing them lifted my spirits got me through a four course dinner. It was one of my best evenings since moving into this new house.

Good food, friends and wine - how could a spirit do anything other than soar?

Yeah, it's kinda like that...

Sunday, yesterday, just before dusk, I was looking out at my 'garden' and felt content. It was a good day spent at the Farmer's Market, discovering new vegetables - well, old ones but I'd never tried some of them, so they're new to me - and making new acquaintances. I bought some organic Fingerling potatoes - mostly because they were so small and so cute. Tasted some of the best summer fruit I've had since childhood, when fruit tasted like fruit and it was a blast to eat.

Later, after putting away my farmer's market catch and sampling the plums again (over the sink, letting the juice run down my fingers and all over my hand, like when I was kid) I listened to some fantastic straight-ahead jazz (check out pandoraradio.com - seriously!) and did a little bit more work. Needing a break from work, I made a quick run to my Pilates class.

Back home again, I put on some more jazz. I stood at my kitchen door - content. Maybe it was the effect of a good work-out, I don't know, but gazing from my kitchen door, watching the day go from bright a sharp silver, to a gentle, shimmering gold, I reflected on my day and thought, it was really good. I realized I have everything I need, everything I'd been wanting for some time: a quiet home (okay, so I don't own it - so what), a yard, trees, a patch of dirt to grow flowers and vegetables, a variety of bird songs (instead of the constant, day and night of rubber on asphalt, and accompanying screeching and exhaust - and the fire engines). My street is quiet. Often, the loudest is the late afternoon exercised chatter of the birds; for some reason it always happens about four-thirty in the early evening. I don't know what that's about. I can feel the season in my present state of things.

That's what I was doing at my door yesterday, just before dusk, though lamenting the fact that hummingbirds seem to have stopped coming by. I hadn't seen one in over two weeks; I started considered taking down the feeder. Maybe they don't like the feed? Bad mix? Not sweet enough? Better feed or flowers in someone else's garden? What ever the reason, I really missed them in mine.

As I lamented their absence, a female hummingbird appeared suddenly, from out of nowhere, and headed straight to the feeder. She hovered about for a bit - the softening light of the sun dancing on her back. She had no idea I was just on the other side of the screen. If the screen wasn't there, and I was just maybe a little bit faster, I swear I could have touched her. Amazing - she had no idea what she just did for me. Yeah, I thought, I have everything I want.

Dusk. My favorite time of day. I feel more at dusk. I think it's because the softening sunlight softens me up, makes it so I can be still, clearer about the details of my day, able to reconsider nuances, blessings previously overlooked; a second chance. A gift - dusk is like that.

Soy, candles and a few of my favorite things

These are a few of the staples in the life of many Mexicans: menudo, pan dulce, tortillas de maize, La Virgen de Guadalupe and veladoras (candles) - not necessarily in that order.

Of these, I love candles best (tortillas are a close second). I love the tender memories they call up. Candles reserved for La Virgen were especially sacred in my home. The time around lighting one, and the care in keeping it lit (whether for La Virgen, or one of the other saints my mom often prayed to) was sacred. I loved watching my mom pray as she touched the flame to the candle, then pause and recited a prayer known only to her. Then I'd watch her silently do the sign of the cross. Her prayers were always just under her breath. I knew the pattern, where she would pause and take a breath, the length of each recitation, but I could never make out what she recited. Then of course, the glow from the candle - which made my mom all the more stunning - like the beauties in the Mexican calendars.

The memories candles hold for me, needless to say, are of the comforting sort. They've been as constant in my life as breathing and remembering (though remembering menudo is, hands down, my least favorite memory, if you get my drift).

So, imagine my elation when I find a high quality candle, with a perfect scent balance of essential oil, with La Virgen already on it. In my book, that's a pretty big deal. In other circles, that would be called a trifecta. On the other hand, I'm lucky that doesn't happen too often because I pay the price for it - sometimes, more than any veladora lovin' Mexicana should have to bare. Reverence and comfort do not come cheaply.

With all the candles I burn, I've known for a while that it would be wise for me to learn to make my own. I always said it's something I should learn, but I never did anything about it. Mostly because I thought it would be a complicated process - like making your own butter, furniture or dirt.

As much as I enjoy my candles, I admit there were times when I'd stare at the dancing flame and think "dear god, what is that doing to my lungs," when I'd catch a wisp of black soot gently floating, ascending into the air I would later be breathing, binding itself to my space - and my lungs. But like any good addict, I kept on keeping on.

Then there's the ridiculous price on a quality candle these days (I stopped with the votive candles for ninety-nine cents at Food For Less or Michi's Liquor Store a long, long time ago). With the price of fuel sucking the life out of the economy (and me), it's almost embarrassing to buy any one of my favorite Archipelago candles -for the price of one Archipelago candle, I can buy two or three gallons of gas, depending on the boutique. I couldn't hardly rationalize the expense anymore. Still, I yearned for their exquisite essential oil scent, even though they aren't 100% soy. (My Kingdom for one Havana, Demeter or Luna Archipelago - literally.)

So I decided it was time I learned to make my own, but I didn't really know where to start, I mean, who makes their own candles anymore. Then several weeks ago I met this fabulous woman, Kathleen, who in addition to selling her candles, teaches her passion for making candles - using 100% soy instead of that uncool, unhealthy, un-green burning wax and paraffin - or any blends.

Kathleen is a fabulous, kind and patient woman. You can usually find her selling her candles at the Long Beach Arts and Craft fair - immediately adjacent to the Sunday Farmer's Market in the Marina (at 2nd near PCH). I say usually because she'll be on hiatus for the next year. But you can find out more about her and her 'joy of soy' candles at www.sealightsoy.com. And as the saying goes, Good Things Come To Those Who Light Candles: last night I was finally able to make it to one of her candle-making classes.

What a night it was. I was prepared for difficult, I was prepared for a confusion, I was prepared for anything buy how easy it was to have fun with this. I was especially not prepared for the bonding effect of candle-making. It's nice to know that there are activities that parents and children can do together, involve each other have fun: a single mom with her two boys, were part of the evening. I don't know if it was the 'science' of blending scent and color just right, or the act melting the soy over fire (electric heating element), reminiscent of grilling, but these boys seemed to be enjoying it more than anyone else. At the end of the evening, they proudly showed off their several creations - each echoing their personalities, which was fun to see develop.

It was good for me to get out among people too; this working from home is really isolating (more on that some other day). No matter what else came, or needed my attention, it wasn't going to keep me - I was going to make it to this class. I'm so glad I did. At the end of two hours, I had one large decorative candle, one votive and three tea light candles of my own blood, sweat and tears - of course, without the blood, sweat and tears.

I think I'll always buy Archipelago -they're great candles with excellent grade essential oils- but not anywhere near as often. I think I'll probably be making most of my own from now on. They burn so much longer, and cleaner, than any other candle out there. Knowing the care and ingredients that go into each one, I can't think of a better way to pay my respect to La Virgen than with one of my own candles - and a prayer. Now all I need is my my very own graphic artist for my labels and Virgen artwork. Maybe I should light one of my very own candles and ask for a graphic artist to come my way.

With all the money I'll be saving, maybe now I can take that extended trip to Mexico I've been wanting to take, leaving soy candles in my wake for other candle ritual practitioners. Me, a soy veladora missionary - I mean, who knows, it couldn't hurt.

Now, all I need is my cafe con leche y pan dulce to get started.