Go Places & Eat Things

Post Lost and Found

Here's a post I wrote at the beginning of the year that got lost on my desktop. Time for a little cleanup there, I guess.

Happy as a clam?

We went with friends to a local seafood restaurant for dinner on New Year’s Eve. As I studied the menu, which included lobster and oysters and New England clam chowder, it struck me that I don’t know beans about fish and seafood.

Growing up in Illinois, the fish we ate most often was breaded cod in stick form and tuna from a can. As an adult, I ordered shrimp and calamari and crab in local restaurants and generally enjoyed the flavors but, with no frame of reference, I often wondered what I really knew about how they should or could taste and how much better such a meal would have been several hundred miles closer to the source, fresh from the icy sea.

One of my favorite food memories is of an order of scallops I enjoyed in a restaurant in Aix-en-Provence.  I almost didn’t order them, however, because of a bad experience with some frozen scallops my mother served one Christmas Eve when I was young.  Once, in Nice, I watched two friends devour a tower of frutti de mare and wondered if I could ever eat those things, let alone with such obvious enjoyment.

Well, I’m going to set a challenge for myself. We’re moving soon to New England, and I plan to devote considerable time and energy to creating a new frame of reference for the enjoyment of seafood. On a recent trip to my future home, I went to my first clambake. As people all around me consumed bags full of the things, I tried one.  Clearly I’ll need to taste a lot more clams before I can fully appreciate their flavorful charms – but I’m game!

I’m looking forward to this relocation for a number of reasons. After living in the same suburban area for all but the first two years of my life, I think it’s time for a change. I anticipate that moving several hundreds miles away from home will bring about a new awareness and appreciation of my surroundings and day-to-day activities. Everything will be new.

You know how you say aloud sometimes “I’ve been driving this same route so often my car knows the way,” or words to that effect? I’m ready to shake free from that feeling that I’ve done all this before.

I’m looking forward to trying all kinds of new foods, and familiar foods in new ways, and creating some new food memories. New England, here I come.

All Things Considered, A Season to Remember

Like so many others, I find myself with some unexpected free time this year  – more time off from work, in fact, than I’ve had since college. And as I come to grips with my altered circumstances, I have been careful to enjoy myself a little. I am becoming reacquainted with the community I’ve called home since I was a little girl, when my family moved out of the city because of a job and found a quiet that was at first disquieting but quickly became part of what we loved about the place. The peaceful small town of my childhood, located on a busy commuter train line, has grown into a city alive with culture and home to a number of notable restaurants and chefs in tune with a new dining dynamic.

At the weekly growers’ markets, I followed the season from the first tender offerings to late summer’s more robust flavors, carried home cheeses and peppers and ripe berries, bought my first duck eggs and tasted pesto made from garlic scape. It is amazing how wonderful the humblest green beans and tomatoes taste when you can talk to the folks who sow and tend and harvest them. Food becomes infinitely more special when you can see on the growers’ faces that the cool, wet summer has delayed the ripening and the harvest and a bit of their livelihood.

As I pondered the short-term future of my own livelihood, trips out of town created welcome diversions. With friends I discovered new favorite places, drank local wines, and enjoyed outdoor concerts where even the simplest picnic fare tasted special simply because it was eaten outdoors! Country drives led to antiques treasure hunts and new restaurant discoveries. A high-speed Interstate drive ended at a tranquil lakeshore where someone had carefully commemorated summer 2009 with rocks worn smooth by the waves. The simple tribute won’t have lasted the night, as fleeting a thing (we hope!) as a struggling economy, the juicy ripeness of a summer melon and the season itself.