Landscaping My Life

KATHERINE TODAY.

We've just returned from a week in NYC.  Jim loves the city and loves the bustle and hurry and the restaurants and the museums and theaters.  He doesn't think people there walk fast enough.  He can walk down the street and no one notices him.  He fits into this landscape as though he was born there.

I loved our trip.  It was wonderful.  NYC is not my landscape though.  We walked from our Central Park Hotel out to the East Village for Nate's food tour.  Lots of folks stopped me and wanted to know if I wanted a "deal" for a bus tour, an Empire State Building tour, a MOMA early pass--things like that.  I was walking fast, looking straight ahead and yet they all knew I was an out-of-towner.  Even when we were separated by a mob by the Empire State Building, the barkers left Jim alone and honed in on me.  

I was pretty nervous the first two days.  I don't do maps well and the constant reminders from Nate and Jim about the wonderful NYC grid and how great it is (except where Nate lives, of course) and my constant sense of being lost made me edgy.  I like to know where I'm going and we were always going new places and all the buildings look alike from the ground and navigating by landmarks wasn't doing it for me.  I mean, when the only landmark you recognize is Central Park and you are always walking away from it and in all directions, well--a girl like me feels lost a lot.

I finally gave up and decided JIm would not lose me and just walked wherever he aimed us.  It was hard though.  Jim will tell you that I'm a girl who knows where's she going even if I don't know where I'm going.  Landmarks are wonderful things.

The whole experience has made me mull over my friends and the landscapes that call them and the landscapes that call me.

Barbara loves mountain valleys like up at Steamboat.  She grew up in Montana and there's certain rounded mountains surrounding a valley that just stop her.

I imagine Bud and Janet on some sort of old-fashioned movie set where they have a couple in a car with rolling scenery going by in the background.  They left yesterday for a month that covers Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and Bali.  Though they return to places, their best place is always the place they have never been.

I see Jerry driving between historical sites and then finishing the drive somewhere by the Pacific Ocean so Cindy can gaze at the ocean as she knits.  I'm not sure I'm right about this, but I'm pretty sure the Oklahoma and Texas landscapes do not call to them these days.

I like landmarks in my landscapes.  I like sky and mountains and oceans certainly work,  but it's the sun that calls me more than water usually.  I like the sun- I'd like to rationalize and say it's medicinal.  It helps my mood and some of my radiation caused skin issues, but the truth is that I've always loved the sun and the outdoors.  I like nature.

I appreciate NYC and I truly want to go back.  It is a landscape that I can see easing into better and better with each visit now, but I can't ever see it being home like Jim could.  It's one of the few things that if we had to make a choice. we might really disagree here.

There are a few landscapes I ease into that I feel like me still and that I'm in my own element.  These places call to me and I miss them when we haven't been there in a while.

First there is, of course, The Tetons and Bluebell Cabin at Jenny Lake Lodge.  I can sit on the porch and see Mount RockChuck and Jim can predict the exact time the sun will set.  I can walk from that porch to Lake Solitude and see, for me, the best Nature has to offer.  I love it when the timing is just perfect for an almost too-hot hike, but there is still snow next to the trail that I can put down my back as I walk the next stretch.  I can know before I leave Bluebell's porch if that will happen.  I know already there will be too much snow to hike up over Paintbrush Divide.  I love that I know this.

I am at home on the beaches and streets of San Pedro in Belize.  I can walk the beach from where we stay to town or out to the south end of the caye.  I can ride a bike the length of the island and I know all the spots I could stop for a beer if I wanted one.  There are no American restaurants.  The fried chicken at Elvie's Kitchen and breakfast at Estelle's and the fish at The Blue Water Grill are required for any visit. We really know a local fisherman and we go out with him each time we visit.  His name is Felipe and he is such a wonderful Zen-like little guy.  We are going back to Belize next year after a two year break.  It's been calling both Jim and I.

Though Jim doesn't love it the way I do,  Puerto Vallarta, Mexico is easy for me to fall into and enjoy.  We don't stay at a fancy place and the food ranges from okay to incredible in PV and there are awful smoggy days and incredibly clear sparkling days and the whole place is a juxtaposition between crap and beauty.  I can see a family fishing or a monster private yacht on our daily morning beach walk.  I love the bumpy busses and the street food and a great beachside restaurant we've found.  We've eaten at every Tino's Fish Place in the entire area--we might be the only Americans ever to have done that.  I love that an artist stopped me and told me I was beautiful.  I love walking the Malecon and looking at the human statues and the sand art and the stacked rocks and the colorful people and the art.  I love the art in PV.  The only thing I don't like is American stuff.  The Hooters there almost makes me cry.  At least The Hard Rock Cafe hit hard times and is no more.

Santa Fe is calling and I think will be part of my set of landscapes.  I keep trying to figure out how to find the funds to get there for another opera this summer.  The light and the food and the opera and the art and the hotel we stay at--there are a lot that tells me I could be returning again and again.

I'm not sure what makes each of us adopt certain places as alternative homes.  I know Vail and Steamboat were places like this in my past and are no longer.  Vail grew corporate and big and doesn't even resemble the place I once loved so much.  My God--The Golden Bear moved.  Steamboat might still hold its magic.  We just haven't been that way in years and it's not nagging at the back of my mind the way other landscapes do.

I'm happy for Jim and how he felt in NYC.   I'm vowing that he gets to his landscapes more often.  Next up is our beloved Tetons.  I'm pretty sure that our love for those mountains is a good identifier for our long and happy marriage.  Another is that he always makes me coffee in the morning.  A good landscape always begins with a fellow bringing you a great cup of coffee.

I'll Take Manhattan

This being our third time, we were old hands at getting from La Guardia to the city.  I remembered a lot of the scenery as we drove over the Tri-Borough Bridge and down FDR Drive past Harlem and down to mid-town where our cabbie turned right and headed toward our hotel.  It was in the middle of rush hour at this point and we were stuck in 6:00 traffic, so I was too busy looking at the meter to really check out this part of the city.  Thirty-five dollars later we arrived at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, right where The Plaza Hotel and The Sherry Netherland (our place) share perhaps the most valuable intersection in the city.

Where The Plaza has hundreds of rooms for rent and condos for purchase, The Sherry Netherland is a boutique hotel with a tiny lobby and only fifty room for rent, the rest are mostly condos that take up entire floors.  We met one such condo owner at the main desk when we checked in.  We told the desk clerk that a friend of ours (David) had told us the place was wonderful, a little known treasure.  A distinguished grey haired gentlemen gathering his mail at the main desk overheard and assured us that it was a wonderful place.  He had been living there for the past seventeen years and he loved it.  Wow!  The thought of living in a swanky condo with jaw dropping views of the park for seventeen years!  We were impressed.

We were more impressed when we saw our room.  The lady at the desk proudly informed us that we had been upgraded, and we were!  The room took up about one third of the sixteenth floor,  had a huge living room, separate bar and kitchen, big, mosaic bathroom, and an equally huge bedroom all with views of the city, the disconcerting Apple cube that people kept disappearing into day and night directly below in the Bergdorf Goodman Plaza.  We unpacked--I have been in hotel rooms that were smaller than our walk in closet--and celebrated by going down to Cipriani's, the hotel's excellent restaurant and bar.  We figured we'd have a drink, make friends with the bar tender, and then decide where to eat that night.

Cipriani's is the place where the Bellini was created.  Not this Cipriani's, but the original one in Italy.  Obviously, Katherine had to order one and it was wonderful.  It should have been for $20 per flute.  I had a double scotch on the rocks and our first bar bell in NYC came to $55.  We decided to walk around and look for a different place to have dinner.

I remembered that Felidia's, Lydia Bastianich's place, was only a few blocks away on 58th somewhere between Park and Lexington.  We found it and begged the maitre' d to find us a table.  I knew we would get one without a problem because Katherine is simply impossible to resist in such situations.  We were seated immediately and dinner was sensational.  I'll spare you the details.

Nate and Ashley were performing and teaching classes that evening, so we had to hook up with them the next day in the Village at a place called Tea and Sympathy off Greenwich Avenue.  We walked all the way from our hotel (we're talking fifty blocks) and finally hooked up with the kids and proceeded to eat our way around lower Manhattan, mostly the East side.  There was a terrific tuna salad at a nearby sandwich place (don't expect me to remember names), awesome curried sausages and a fun conversation with friends in their acting/improv/filmmaking world, the world's best sandwich at Porchetta's, and soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai.  I remembered the names on the last two.  That should tell you something.

That night Nate and Ashley had more teaching to do and Katherine and I went to The Met to see "La Traviata" with Placido Domingo.  I can't imagine adding anything more evocative than that last sentence.  Priceless, although we froze our asses off waiting for a cab after the performance.

The next day we spent with Nate as Ashley had auditions and rehearsals all day.  The three of us had a wonderful reunion with Gavin Lodge (Nate was his Outdoor Lab Counselor) in his beautiful SoHo home.  Just like you always do when around a toddler, we spent the morning looking at Ellison be a kid.  Thanks for a wonderful time Gavin.  The rest of the day we spent at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, mostly glorying in the incredible space they use for their Modern stuff.  Andy Warhol's Mao!!!!

That night Nate and Ashley had more work--they're always performing somewhere--and we took a cab down to Chelsea and had an amazing dinner at Morimoto's.  Foodies will be impressed.  The rest of you could rightly give a shit.  In any event, I'll spare you the details.

We had reserved one afternoon for lunch with Joe and Carol Monaco, friends of our from Jenny Lake.  We met at Rosa Mexicana (I think), a terrific upscale Mexican joint across the street from Lincoln Center.  We spent three hours at the table drinking pomegranate margaritas, laughing, sharing stories, and feeling oh so adult.  Great afternoon.

The next night we met Nate in TriBeCa, had some pizza and walked to a local theatre to catch Ashley's musical improv group perform.  They have a terrific little combo on stage with them and get a title from someone in the audience and somehow manage to create a totally improvised musical.  They maintain it for over an hour.  Amazing!

The final night we had burgers at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park and caught Nate and Ashley's improv group (Big Black Car) at the PIT.  Another wonderful night watching my children perform.  We're lucky people.  As an added bonus Eliza Holland ventured all the way from Bed-Sty just to say hello.  It was an overwhelming night.

It was in fact an overwhelming trip, maybe the busiest and best we've ever taken.  Ciao.

My Favorite Things - IV

A Cooking Day

On those days when Katherine is off earning travel and health care money, I sometimes like to spend the day cooking something semi-complicated for that evening's dinner.  It's a little like June Cleaver making her special Beef Wellington to welcome Ward home from a hard day selling insurance and dispensing homilies.  I add writing to the process and this is what qualifies it as my fourth favorite thing.  

Yesterday with Katherine off to her first full day observing teachers since our return from New York, I got to spend the day alternating between cooking a killer duck recipe in the kitchen and working on the final scenes from my second soon to be unpublished novel.  I know, I know.  That sentence makes me sound like a smug asshole, but I don't feel like that at all.  Mostly, I find myself genuinely surprised by this and other little bursts of creativity.  We're going to take a brief time out before we get down to the serious business of recipes and I'm going to ruminate for a second on creativity.

Living with the likes of my wife and my children, I've always felt like something of a dolt on the creativity scale.  If you know them, you know what I mean.  I'm okay at creating balanced sentences (sometimes) and writing polemical essays, but I'm talking about creating something out of nothing.  Coming up with a new idea.  A new show.  A new routine.

We all have those little moments that gnaw away at us late at night when we can't sleep, or that come jarringly back at us at the slightest trigger.  I had one such moment with Nate when he was a senior at good old GMHS.  I had just come up with the infamous Job-JB small group assignment.  Past APEs will remember.  For those of you who have no clue what "past APE's" refers to, in the assignment in question I built small groups around "artists" I had identified in class and asked those groups to create a dramatically structured retelling of Job that would be like a sophisticated children's book.  The presentation would include cartoon scenes on the overhead (technologically a long time ago), a script, and two musical numbers.  It was a fun thing to do after a few intense weeks in class.  I based the idea on an old Tom Hanks' movie, NOTHING IN COMMON.

Nate was in the class when I explained the assignment to the mock (maybe serious) groaning of my students.  That night he told me what a cool assignment he thought it was.  "It sounds like something Kathie came up with," he said.  Don't worry, I got over it quickly.  But you see what I mean about me and creativity.

That's what has been so cool about my life since I've retired.  It's ironic, I know, but I feel more creative now than I ever did when I was in the classroom.  I'm creating stuff out of nothing.  And it is keeping me off the streets.  Look at Yesterday.

What follows is a great step by step recipe for a deconstructed duck with other things thrown in for good measure.

5 am:  Go to the kitchen to make coffee and tidy up from last night if I was too tired to clean up then. Be careful to avoid MORNING JOE.  Go to ESPN instead.  Put oatmeal on and read paper.

6 am:  Go to King Soopers to pick up a few things for the recipe.  Have to go this early because I forgot to boil the potatoes last night to let them cool all day.

6:30 am:  Steam 2 large idaho potatoes (if you want to impress a couple of friends and turn this into a dinner party for four, steam 3 large potatoes - but they MUST be Idahos) for about fifteen minutes.  You only want them partially cooked because you are going to grate and fry them up in a galette right before dinner.  If you aren't sure if you've cooked the potatoes enough, cut one in half.  If it is clear the central core of the potato is raw (it will be a different shade of potato), steam it a few more minutes.  Put the "cooked" potatoes in the icebox.

7 am:  Go to computer and reread yesterday's output.  Go back upstairs and hang out with Katherine (we watched a recording of the most recent Nuggets' game) until she has to go to schools.

9 am:  Say good bye to Katherine.  Turn "La Boheme" on full blast on the stereo.  Go downstairs and work on the final scene of BEEZUP which takes place during a llama obstacle course at the Estes Park Wool Festival.  Keep working until the opera is done, about two and a half hours.

Noon:  Clean and truss the duck.  Roast it at 350 for 30 minutes.  Don't panic, there will be more cooking to come.  No one is asking you to eat raw duck.

12:30 pm:  When the duck is out and still warm, take the skin off (Start by cutting a slit down the middle of the breast and peel with the help of a great knife from there).  Preserve the skin in as big a sections as you can to use for cracklings (Yum).  In your skin peeling mode, you will eventually get to the wings.  Take them off (you'll figure it out and besides who's looking?) and save them for duck stock  (Yum).  Do the same with the leg and thigh.  Separate the leg and thigh.  Set the legs and thighs aside.  Take the two breast halves off carefully.  So now you have two legs, two thighs and two breast halves. Take everything else and put in a stock pot, add some vegetables and seasonings, and make a duck stock.  Meanwhile, film a frying pan with duck fat or oil, slice the breast meat into reasonably thick slabs.  Put a bunch of chopped shallots in the bottom of the pan, fan the duck pieces on top, add more shallots, pour in half a cup of duck stock or chicken stock if you must (more stock obviously if you are using two ducks), pour in a little less than half a cup of port, season lightly with salt and pepper and set it aside until dinner time.

Next, take the legs and thighs, spread Grey Poupon mustard liberally over them and roll them in freshly made bread crumbs.  Arrange them in a small roasting pan and set aside until dinner time.

Take the duck skin and cut it into quarter inch strips and place in a 350 degree oven, turning frequently.  After about a half hour two things will happen:  you will have a lot of rendered duck fat and you will have cracklings.  Keep both for later.

There, now you are all done until a half an hour before dinner.

2 pm:  Go downstairs and copy edit that morning's production.  By the time I get done, Kathie is home and we hang out and talk until it is time for dinner.

5:30 pm:  Turn the oven to 400.  Open a bottle of Pinot Noir to let it breathe.  Put the legs and thighs in the oven when it reaches temperature.  They'll take about a half an hour.

Film a large frying pan with duck fat and heat up to medium high while you grate the two potatoes you were saving in the icebox.  Toss the grated potato lightly with salt and spread out in the frying pan to form a galette.  Keep pressing down every once in a while, but let the underside get nicely brown and substantial before you attempt to turn it (good luck flipping it, but that is all part of the fun).

Immediately before serving put the cracklings back in the oven and put the pan with the breasts on a medium high burner to lightly poach.

Putting it together:  Place the flipped over and perfectly done potato galette on a serving platter large enough to accommodate it.  Take the breast meat out of the pan and immediately turn the pan up to high in order to reduce the liquid to a nice syrupy sauce.  Fan the breast meat over part of the galette.  Take the legs and thighs out of the oven and place on the galette.  Ditto the cracklings.  Take your time so the sauce can reduce.  Pour the sauce over the breast meat and take to the table.

The great thing about this recipe is that it makes it possible for both the breast meat and the legs and thighs to be perfectly cooked.  The breast does not get dry.  The other great thing is that there is plenty of time to write in between steps.  Another one of my favorite things.