Travel

Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be joining my friend Nini Ordoubadi of Tay Tea at The Alchemist's Kitchen in New York City this Saturday for a free tasting of her marvelous green teas. She's invited me to use them to create a couple of special non-alcoholic elixirs, so I'll be bringing some of my homemade ingredients, like wild rose petal syrup, pickled cherries and foraged chaga tincture. I would so love to see you there!

Stop by on Saturday, 3/18, from 1 to 4pm, at The Alchemist's Kitchen, 21 East 1st Street. 

On January 21, 2017, I joined nearly a million activists for the Women's March on Washington. With my husband (constantly photographed because of his "Feminist As Fuck" sweatshirt) and my 23-year-old niece, who was visiting the East Coast on her way back from a trip to Israel, I traveled to the nation's capital on a bus chartered from New York City with 50 fellow marchers. We marched for women's rights and a host of other causes, including immigration reform, health care reform, environmental protection, LGBTQIA rights, racial justice, freedom of religion and workers' rights. It was a historic day that took place on the heels of Trump's inauguration and overshadowed it in terms of scope and passionate support. It was an enormous, effusive, peaceful and uplifting event that echoed around the country, and the world, in more than 600 sister marches.

It's not news to you that I have been toiling away these last many months on a project near and dear to my heart. Fish & Bicycle, a bar/cafe and small grocery in the Western Catskills is inching towards its launch date, one pulse-elevating, sweat-inducing, thrill-delivering day at a time. (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...) We've garnered bank loans and grants, compiled our savings and delivered gallons of sweat equity, and we're still shy of the full amount we need to do a full build-out on the raw 1920s industrial building that will house our business. So we've launched a crowd-sourcing campaign to bring this labor of love on home. 

Another month has passed. Are you the same? I'm not. I feel my roots shifting and it's exciting and scary. My jaw sometimes feels weird when I wake up in the morning and I know I have been clenching my teeth as I sleep. Change is good but it can wreak havoc. I have started to emerge from behind my desk, making forays into the world beyond just sending my words out to be read. There I am, above, serving cocktails at an event created by And North; read about it here and check out the cocktail recipes here. Saying yes to many things also entails saying no a lot. Does that make any sense? Redefining your life is a process and I feel like I am approaching a tipping point.

Forgive me, dear reader, it's been seven weeks since my last expression. In that time, I've fostered six cats, flown to France, cooked a feast for 20 people, held two demos at the farmers market, created custom cocktails for an event and worked my regular job as a freelance writer. For these and all the wins of my life, I am truly...oh, never mind. The point is, I'm deeply sorry to have neglected my blog the last couple of months but I've been dancing as fast as I can. The good news? I'm going to catch you up with a series of mouth-watering photos. Starting with this one of Mouse, the sweetest, fluffiest kitten that ever lived. She was the runt of a litter of five born to Janet, a gorgeous black cat who came to our door in July, turned out to be preggers and asked for shelter. What ensued was generally chaos, but all turned out well, and we eventually found loving parents for every last one of those adorable interlopers (after they were weaned, ate us out of house and home and chewed everything in sight). I miss them like hell and am so glad they're gone. Another of life's endless paradoxes.

Traces of my recent trip to Greece still echo through my kitchen. The Greek salad simply does not grow old, and I now crave the strong herbal presence of fresh oregano, something I previously shunned. Another very particular flavor I discovered and adore is mastiha, "mastic" in English. This natural sap that weeps from the lentisc tree (Pistacia lentiscus), known as "the tears of Chios" (pronounced "hee-os"), is found only on that particular Greek island. Sun-dried into brittle, translucent bits of resin, mastiha becomes soft and gummy when chewed. In fact, its name derives from the Greek word meaning "to gnash the teeth," and is related to our "masticate." Used since antiquity for its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, mastic has a sharp, piney aroma that reminds me of the rosin string players use to treat their bows. Its flavor is equally pungent and strangely compelling.

In one month, I will celebrate six years of living full-time in Sullivan County. We bought our tiny cottage as a weekend place in December 2005 and I never could have envisioned the life we would make for ourselves in this area. My visits to the city are now mostly out of necessity and the only thing I really miss are my friends. (Talking on the telephone seems to be a thing of the past and for those of us who grew up during a time when marathon phone chats were a regular bonding activity, texting just doesn't cut it.) Five minutes from our little hamlet of Eldred is Barryville, a town on the Delaware River that is host to our farmers market every Saturday. This year, for the first time, the market is offering hands-on demos from local chefs and purveyors, and I was lucky enough to be invited to participate. 

A number of you expressed dismay when I mentioned the lack of fresh seafood in Greece, so I want to let you know that I did see a lot of beautiful fish, squid and octopus glistening on ice in the central market of Athens. I like nothing better than getting lost in one of these big foreign food markets (like this one, here and here; and this one) and Varvakios Agora did not disappoint. It was sprawling, bustling with shoppers and filled with what the locals eat every day. Worlds apart from an American grocery store, there was an intimacy—between the vendors and the buyers, between the people and the food—that was beautiful to behold. 

In many ways, Greece was as I had imagined it. Athens was hot and bustling, with the presence of the ancients hovering everywhere. (More about that soon.) Syros, a small island next to Mykonos, was even hotter, with quaint stone streets and sun-bleached buildings against the dazzling blue of the Aegean. What I didn't expect was an almost total lack of fresh seafood. Whether it's because tourist demand exceeds the supply, or the waters are regulated due to overfishing, we saw only frozen octopus and no fresh fish on the menus. Only once, when we were on Syros, did we enjoy wild mussels and red shrimp, which were truly wonderful.  So for much of our time in Greece, we stuck to a classic that never gets old: Greek Salad.

I've got so much to share with you, so many new discoveries and ideas and resources on my mind, that I've decided to try to post shorter pieces more frequently. Back in the early days of this blog, I used to post almost every day! And some people really liked that. We'll see how this works out.

This unusual plant is something I picked up from an herbalist in a very cool health food store in Athens. He described it as a "Jerusalem rose," but that's actually a different plant, more commonly known as Rose of Jericho (Anastatica), native to the Middle East and North Africa. This one is Selaginella lepidophylla, another type of "resurrection plant," so-called because it can survive almost total desiccation.