sybarites

Now this is what I’m talkin’ ’bout:   Goat Cheese Ravioli with Bell Peppers and Brown Butter.

If I may be so bold as to resurrect the Continuum of Like, this recipe rates as a hands-down Super-Like (see below).   It was conceived at a restaurant called Bonne Soiree in  Chapel Hill, North Carolina which someone on the interweb compared to The French Laundry in the quality of its meals.  I have never heard of Chapel Hill, NC, but now it will forever have significance for me as the point of origin of one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.

Tangy-creamy, smothered in rich butter, floating like warm, little clouds on a wilty bed of peppers, slick with tart, vinegary dressing.   I don’t know if anyone is reading this blog anymore but if there is only one recipe that is attempted as a result of my humble recommendations over the past couple of years, THIS IS THE ONE to attempt.   Go the distance.   Be the ball.   Make the ravioli.  (Use the wonton wrappers.)

Now that we are both working from home, in our office/dining room/guest bedroom, we seem to have more opportunity for making an actual breakfast. I’ve long been an eater of breakfast but 90% of the time, it used to consist of plain oatmeal or whole wheat toast with just a suggestion of peanut butter, eaten at my desk at work. Marc used to stop at the Starbucks on his walking route to work for a slab of carrot cake, and this was breakfast. One of us was far too plain and sensible about this meal and one of us was arguably eating dessert first thing in the morning every day. Things are different, now.

The first thing that has made such a monumental difference in our lives is the lack of commute. Two hours a day has been reclaimed for things like sleep, and breakfast and dog walking and -somewhat regrettably- TV. Until we lived without the commute, I didn’t quite realize all the time saved from that aggravating part of the day. Hate traffic, hate cold, dark mornings. Now, we’re practically livin’ the dream, sleeping in until 7:30, starting the day with cappuccini, and working at least the first quarter of the day in our pj’s. And sometimes, if one of us is feeling particularly hungry, we launch into a full-fledged meal for breakfast.

One of my recent faves was the occasion on which we happened to have fresh raspberries and Marc decided to make Raspberry-Topped Lemon Muffins. These made me especially happy, having eaten them warm, sitting at the breakfast table/conference table in the sun with the pup at my feet. Turns out they also make an excellent conference call snack.

Once in a while, a truly decadent item makes its way into the office in the morning: Spiced Hot Chocolate. Wow. Wo-how. Nothing like drinking CREAM in the morning. This is so rich, I can only finish half a cup at a time, which is outrageous considering I’m not normally one to stop short on a dessert. Marc adds cardamom to this recipe too and I have to say that it makes it divine, a solid rush of sweet and aromatic flavours. This too, seems to make any conference call that much better. I’m not a fan of the conference call but good food can make any task better.

If I had lived on a farm in the days or yore, I would’ve lived in savoury anticipation of harvest season. In the pale sun of late morning, after breakfast, I would put on my warm wool sweater which I had knit last spring (in this history, I can knit, too) and my muddy boots to tramp out to my garden to collect ripe squash, onions, and firm, winy apples for a big farm lunch. The air is crisp and clean and smells like earth as I dig up some potatoes and start thinking about all the canning that needs to be done and the root cellar which I’ll soon fill. This morning’s bread is ready to go in the oven. Must think about starting the Christmas cake soon.

I feel I can make this definitive alternate-history prediction because of the way I look forward to fall and its vegetable bounty nowadays. There are certain recipes that I don’t make on purpose the rest of the year because if it’s not fall enough outside, they just don’t taste as good. It’s kind of like Christmas cookies, I guess- one could make them in July, but it wouldn’t be the same, wouldn’t be as special. My fall-only menu includes pretty much anything with butternut squash, rutabaga, turnips, shepherd’s pie, any kind of really dense and sticky dessert, and heavy, hearty casseroles. The weather all but demands it and as a result, I think I eat more during fall than any other time of the year, save Christmas. How can I resist? Not only does the kitchen now feel cozier for the oven, rather than stiflingly hot, the root vegetables are at their peak, the corn is here, the apples are dropping, and the mushrooms are at their musty best.

O, Mushooms! Nothing is more quintessentially fall than mushrooms. Wrinkly, dark, musty and aromatic, I will always favour a recipe in which they are involved. Divine in an omelette, earthy in a stew, dense in a salad; even a portebello can effectively masquerade as the patty in a burger. And my mushroom stems never go to waste as Sammy happily snarfs them up when offered.

On one of our most recent sojourns to the Saturday market, we came upon the an irresistible bargain on chanterelle mushrooms at Far West Fungi. These guys know their way around the mushroom, but I usually feel a little intimidated by the staff, like if I were to ask a question about a type of mushroom, the answer would be preceded with a mild snort of derision as if to say “what- you mean you don’t know?” This time, however, I didn’t hestitate approach the counter and hand over the $5 for an orangey, little basket of these usually prohibitively expensive variety. Immediately, I began thinking that I would use them in an omelette following a Thomas Keller recipe I saw online somewhere. Unfortunately, search though I might, I couldn’t find it again and I don’t yet own The French Laundry Cookbook. However, I fortuitously connected with another intriguing recipe in Nigella’s book: Mushroom Ragout. Now this, was going to be outstanding because truly, ragout is all that is fall. This recipe – my mouth waters just thinking about it – is all about wild mushrooms and this is how I chose to honour the chanterelles. Sautéed in butter and herbs, deglazed with white wine, thickened with a little flour, some onions and parsley and then sloppily served over soft, polenta with parmesan. The mushroom were just this side of firm and could not have been better presented or more flavourfully offered than in such a ragout. I should’ve garnished the bowls with newly fallen leaves.

There are two items on this menu that sound…   intriguing.

Why would there need to be a vegan version?

This is a picture of birds waiting for the light to change at an intersection in The Mission:

Living in Calgary, one of my most favourite weekend activities was getting groceries. Usually, it was quite an episode and took up the better part of a day- we would start by creating a menu for the week, sifting through magazines and cookbooks and remembering meals prepared on TV that we wanted to re-create, and then building a shopping list from our menu. Because we generally had to ferret out a couple of “exotic” items like creme fraiche or medjool dates, it was not uncommon for us to drive around to make a stop at the butcher, the Cookbook company and Sunterra Market to get all the things that the Co-op didn’t carry. Having a car made quick work of this, of course; I suppose we technically could’ve walked to all these locations on separate trips but practically speaking, there was no way that would ever happen. 12 blocks is 11 blocks too many to carry a heavy week’s worth of food and I just couldn’t age myself 20 years and buy a trolley for the groceries. The closest we came to walking for groceries was hitting the cheese store a block away for a last minute added decadence to a meal. If it was a special grocery day and we were all out of wine, we would also make the trek south to the Real Canadian Superstore Liquor Store in order to get a discounted case of wine. This extension necessitated a stop at a Starbucks for pre-journey caffeination, an extra added bonus to the fun of grocery shopping.

Now that we’ve become settled once more, it didn’t take long for that routine to begin again, albeit with several modifications. For starters, we don’t hesitate to put a recipe on our menu if it calls for somewhat out-of-the-ordinary ingredients. Chances are that whatever it is that we haven’t heard of before exists in both organic and non-organic form at Rainbow Grocery. Secondly, it’s October and we dress in T-shirts to head out on our errands.

Thirdly – and this is a major modification- we do not have a car. Instead, we car-share now. We are card-carrying Zipcar members and yesterday, we shared our first car, a Prius. It’s so very California to drive a Prius and I have to admit that it was quite fun, startling pedestrians upon whom we sneaked up because we make no sound with our hybrid-electric. Ha ha!

Being as how this excursion was anticipated to last more than a couple of hours, we brought along our coffee mugs to make a stop along the way for organic (fourth modification) coffee, which is always available no matter how minute the coffee shop. Our plans were mildly foiled by the street fair in The Castro yesterday but we managed to snake through the steep backroads, skirting the affair and arriving back on Market street, thanks to Google Maps on the iPhone (fifth modification).

Shopping at Rainbow is such a pleasure. The bulk foods section is larger than any I’ve seen anywhere and offers the choice of every spice under the sun (indeed, I could’ve bought 0.5-1.3% oil content cinnamon instead of the less expensive 3.4-4.2% oil content cinnamon that I selected), flours, nuts, pastas, dried fruits, granola, grains, pretty much anything that qualifies as dried goods. The produce is excellent- I once bought two organic peaches for five dollars that had been shipped to the store by trucks using bio-diesel fuel, whatever that is. Organic raisin bran, fair-trade coffee-flower honey, gourmet sparkling lemonade, cage-free, hormone-free organic eggs, these are all things we bought. I would go so far as to call this a unique San Francisco experience- it should be on the tourist route (though I’m glad it’s not). This part of our Sunday is indeed a modification from our former existence- not only is almost all of the stuff we buy organic, and vegetarian (no meat products at Rainbow) but it is also “exotic” and available at one place; we used to shop at a major grocery chain for everything save a few out-of the ordinary items, but now it is the reverse: we shop at the specialty grocery for everything save a few mundane things like tonic water and beef broth.

However, there is one thing that Rainbow can’t do, besides offer meat for sale: they can’t offer inexpensive organic stuff. I refuse to spend eleven dollars on organic tea-tree-oil shampoo if I don’t have to. But not to worry, there is a store just a few blocks further (all flat, so the Prius used only the battery for nearly the whole jaunt) that fills in that gap. Trader Joe’s is kind of an Everyman’s organic store. The idea is to offer cheap organic goods so that the average citizen can afford to take advantage of healthy, enviro-conscious stuff without spending half the rent money. Ergo, this is where we buy our butter, most of our meat (they even have organic, grass-fed beef), our shampoo and our cheap, discount-if-you-buy-12, wine. Occasionally, this results in hideous wine (see previous entry) but it’s worth the risk. So, what was that, the eighth modification to our previous routine? The ninth is the fact that we use our own shopping bags all of the time for groceries. In fact, I would feel out of place not using our own bags. If we use all our own bags at Trader Joe’s, we get to enter a contest to win $25-worth of groceries and if we use all our own bags at Rainbow, we don’t get the stink eye from the check-out person. Well worth the effort to bring the bags.

Though I really don’t have an element of our old routine to which to compare it, when we got home from our journey and unpacked all the groceries, we had just enough time to mix up some margaritas to go with our organic chips and salsa so that we have a snack on our roof top in sun while watching the Fleet Week Air Show over the bay. Gorgeous day, gorgeous margaritas, lovely salmon with balsamic vinaigrette and fennel salad for dinner.

Officially, this wine has no name. That, perhaps, should have been our first clue. The fact that it has a smiley face instead of a label, and that the description on the back speaks of the “flavour of happiness” should have warned me against buying it. I don’t know what I was thinking except that we needed two more bottles of wine in order to get the bulk discount at Trader Joe’s, this one was $5.99, and I was being lazy and silly. I have learned my lesson. Better to have been short a bottle and to not have gotten the discount rather than buy this swill and have to drain it down the sink. After the first puckering sip, I hoped that it just needed air but that was a fool’s hope. It was heinous. Not since Shanghai have we had to pour an entire bottle down the sink because the wine was simply awful.

Speaking of China, though, we ordered chinese take-out last night after we opened a fresh bottle. With a name like “Andy’s Chinese Cuisine”, what is one to expect? It’s kind of hard to know because the eponymy could be on purpose, giving the illusion of humble when it is really divine. Of course, it could be genuinely humble, a hole-in-the-wall with a greasy kitchen, mismatched tables and chairs and cheap, too-thin paper napkins. One cannot necessarily judge by the name or the look of the restaurant- the food from either could turn out to be a fabulous bargain or a disastrously bland, or MSG’d mistake. Sometimes, the nastiest of dives makes the tastiest of take-out and the places that look posh could serve sad, Americanized imitations of the original cuisine. It turns out that Andy’s is someplace in between. After Marc had placed our order, we noticed that our photocopied menu had been trying to tell us that Andy’s had been voted as the Best of the Bay for its Kung Pao chicken. Luckily, we had ordered it. I don’t exactly know what Kung Pao chicken is supposed to taste like (unless I count the version we ate while in China, but I can’t, really, because it was likely a tourist-ized version of the original), but Andy’s was pretty good: a little spicy, nicely oniony, lots of chicken. The best part about the meal was the take-out boxes. You just don’t see these in Canada where every place seems to use styrofoam containers. These are the classic Chinese take-out containers, the kind you see in the movies, the kind I thought were perpetuated only by movies and TV but were not actually in use anymore. How very quaint.

Speaking of “quaint” and “dive”, it turns out that a purveyor of food can be both. A couple of weeks ago, we took the car in to have its smog emission test which left us with about 20 minutes of waiting time in a gas station. Rather than sit at the picnic table in the parking lot, we wandered off for a snack and went into the first shop we saw that served coffee: The 5 Star Truffle Cafe. It’s a small, dark place with an old espresso machine, an ancient glass display case and a guy making a mountain of truffles behind the counter. It’s the truffle store next to the gas station on Divisadero. While we waited for the guy in front of us to have his order for 60 truffles filled, we perused the flavours: mocha, cognac, coconut, espresso, hazelnut, orange… there were at least 10 or 12 different kinds. The man in the front of us asked to taste the Earl Grey truffle; when he nodded and held up 10 fingers, I concluded it was good and said as much. He continued to nod and rolled his eyes to say it was fantastic. I joked he must be the most popular guy at his office to bring in so many truffles, but he corrected me, saying that his partner had just died and that he was collecting some of his favourite foods for the celebration of his life taking place that afternoon. Wasn’t really expecting to hear sad news, but I guess it means that at least these truffles were somebody’s favourite. We ordered 20. They were exquisite, especially the Earl Grey.

Sometimes, I just can’t help taking pictures of beautiful ingredients.

There is hardly a purpose in doing so, it’s almost as bad as taking pictures of something on TV or taking pictures of the stars. The only thing that saves this activity from being completely pointless is that I suppose one might possibly categorize it as art.

Take these radishes, for example. This picture is only one of about 15 that I took of these radishes. Yes, 15. I piled them all into a white plastic container and with their pretty colours and rough shapes , the little sprigs of green stem with the white light filtering in around them, I had to grab the camera. Then I arranged them on a plate to pose for a few shots, and then tossed them along the edge of the cutting board for the last few photos. I could’ve gone on, but had to stop myself from getting carried away and to carry on making supper.

Recently, I made us a big batch of moussaka. It was one of those long-winded recipes with lots of classical preparation details and which intimates that every bowl, pot and pan in the kitchen will be employed in its making. Indeed, this was the case: I started making this at 2:30 one afternoon and we didn’t eat until 8:30. It baked for over 2 hours, but still- 6 hours?! Part of that may have extended longer than necessary due to the still-life sessions in which I was obliged to partake. Just look at these shiny, glowing pieces of yellow pepper, practically golden, mirrored on the side of the stainless steel bowl and tell me they aren’t gorgeous.

And the currants, dark and shadowed, they look like they taste sticky and sweet. I admit that perhaps the grain of the bamboo cutting board is part of what makes the image of the currants so appealing to me, but really, it was unusual in that I only took 4 or 5 photos of them.

The dark, dark purple skin of the sliced eggplant with the pale inside was irresistible. Since I already had the camera in the kitchen, I thought I might as well snap off a few rounds in between slicing. This one was not posed, taken just as they slid off the knife and were piled up to be cut in half. No make-up, no lights, just naturally photogenic.

And finally, the pièce de resistance, the result of 6 hours of kitchen labour, The Moussaka. Which, incidentally, was exceptionally good, with its savory-sweet, cheesy, starchy meatiness.

Here’s something odd and rather gruesome: list of last meal requests in Texas.

How or why this information was compiled and posted is curious; it certainly peaks the curiosity. What does a person choose for their last meal on earth, the last thing that will pass the lips, the last thing, arguably, to give pleasure before the end? It seems that Dr.Pepper, Coke, cheeseburgers, fried chicken, chef’s salad, steak, eggs and bacon are the foods of choice for many of the condemned, though there were definitely some interesting requests: “Cool Whip and a bowl of cherries”, “One bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers”, “Mexican Dish with all the fixings”, “1 jar of dill pickles”, “Eucharist”, “1 apple, 1 orange, 1 banana, coconut and peaches”. (Seriously, fruit? That’s your choice for last meal?) Clearly alcohol was off limits. And what about the people that requested no meal at all? Perhaps food isn’t high on the list of priorities at that point in time but I can’t even really speculate. Out loud, I wondered what Marc thought this list might contain if it were another country, like France, before I remembered that they don’t employ capital punishment… You can be sure there’d be lobster, though. And plenty of foie gras, wine and cheese. Zero cheeseburgers.

Indeed, while reading the list, it was hard to miss the fact that so many people chose some form of hamburger as their last meal, though the details varied: double meat hamburger, “all the way” (everything on it?), bacon double cheeseburger, old fashioned cheeseburger. So with all the variations on the burger, would one be allowed to specify how, or by whom, it was prepared? I mean, could one request a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or a Whopper or “one what like my Ma used to make”? How disappointing would it be if your request for a last meal, to which one might look forward with a least a little relish, was unobtainable or fell entirely short of expectations? Like the guy who asked for “Shrimp and Salad. Shrimp not available. Served cheeseburger, french fries and cola.” I guess there’s no justice on death row.

From this chain of thought, I recalled our recent, and first ever, journey into Northern California wine country, with Geoff and his girlfriend, Lucinda. I know that seems a little off topic, but it was because we stopped for lunch at the In ‘N Out Burger at Lucinda’s request- dare I say insistence? It’s been awhile since she has visited California and a visit to the In ‘N Out is a mandatory item on her Golden State To Do list. Nobody in the car argued, because they do make a fine burger. So fine, in fact, that I think that might be what Lucinda would specify as her last meal- it would have to be In ‘N Out. That is, if she chose a cheeseburger, and if she were on Death Row, both of which seem pretty unlikely.

Visiting a few vineyards in Dry Creek on a hot, sunny afternoon was a pretty sweet way to spend a Monday afternoon. I was more than a little surprised that we had such a successful day because a) it was Labour Day and surely we were not the only people inclined to drink, I mean taste, our way through the afternoon, b) we left when the city in the afternoon, and c) the Bay Bridge was closed for construction which meant the traffic on the Golden Gate was more concentrated than ever. It turned out that none of these things posed any kind of an obstacle and we happily sampled more wines than I can recall. Arguably, our favourite was the 2004 Unti Syrah, which we brought home and have since drunk with relish (but no mustard or ketchup). We had enjoyed the 2003 Syrah the night before at Saha, a Yemeni restaurant where we met Geoff & Lucinda, her Aunt Kate and mom, Ellen and thought we would be so clever to visit the winery the next day. Indeed, Lucinda was clever enough to arrange the whole thing, including the In ‘N Out luncheon.

Years ago I read somewhere that of the smells that humans find most pleasing, roast chicken is number one. It beat the smell of bread baking, lavender, vanilla, freshly cut grass, strawberries, everything. I can’t deny that the smell of roasting chicken is divine, but I don’t know if I would necessarily agree that it is The Best; it has to do with context. When hungry, sure, the best smell in the world is probably roasting chicken, but when sleepy, the best smell might be the smell of lavender or of freshly washed sheets. On the same token, I don’t want to be smellin’ chicken when I’m in bed and I don’t want to smell laundry soap in the kitchen, but in the right context, each is equally as pleasurable. Vanilla, in its iced and creamy form, is lovely but doesn’t precisely evoke the pleasure of a summer day, where freshly cut grass would gain more points. Grass + ice cream = repulsive. But if you talk to someone who is allergic to grass, vanilla will rate higher in their book every time. Or what about someone from a non-western culture: cardamom might beat out vanilla; garlic might beat out bread. Smell, it must be acknowledged, is perhaps the most subjective sense of all and as such, how can anyone hope to rate one scent higher than another? Maybe instead of rating smells, it would be better to apply a verb or adjective. What does hungry smell like? What is the scent of learning? How does luxurious smell? (BTW, if you want to know what “cute” smells like, smell a puppy.)

So we roasted a chicken. We have yet to find a butcher here so were obliged to obtain our subject from the Andronico’s market down the street. They actually have pretty good meat- good selection, good quality, less than good price… But the best organically raised, free-range chickens cost good money because they gave up their sweet existence so that we may swoon with content at the smell of their roasting flesh. And swoon we did, especially one of us (the one with four legs) who guarded the oven closely while the bird was in the oven. I was inspired to make this because of Nigella’s description of her roast chicken in How To Eat. The way she writes makes my mouth water; I can practically see her licking the butter off her fingers as she adds it to the gravy. And then she describes the variations on leftovers than can be created from the remains of a roasted bird with words like “unctuous” and “melting” and “relish” that it’s hard to resist racing into the kitchen to cook whatever’s on the page. This was the case with the chicken and it did roast its way to brilliance, with, thanks to her advice, extra crispy skin and extra gravy.

For the first time ever, in the history of my existence, I did not make mashed potatoes to go with roasted meat. Travesty. If there’s any possibility of gravy, mashed potatoes must be on hand to pick up the slack, to sop up the jus as it runs off the meat and threatens to flood the vegetables. However, this time, not only did we not do potatoes, we did not do a traditional veg. Imagine! Instead, we had roasted garlic and shallots and Marc made some bright, chickpea salad. I’m almost convinced that a legume is the perfect halfway point between green and starchy; it went very well with the roasted meat but didn’t encourage gluttony, as a legume cannot hold onto gravy nearly as well as a mass of potato mixed with butter. I am almost convinced. I could never abandon starch.

And so, à propos of nothing, here is my Impromtu Top 10 Subjective List of Best Smells, When Smelled in Context:

10. puppy
9. fresh laundry
8. lilacs
7. peaches
6. sun-warmed forest
5. frying bacon, with coffee in the background
4. frying onions, with garlic in the background
3. roasting meat
2. rain
1. fresh baked bread

This weekend I re-read Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes for about the hundredth time. Reading that book, her writing almost poetry, is like wrapping a warm and comforting blanket around me. I had seriously considered bringing that book with me when we travelled because of its ability to distract, comfort and calm. (As it turns out, there was absolutely no room for the book and I had much less need for it than I had anticipated.) There is a quote that I came across on Sunday that now seems more poignant than when I last read it 18 months ago,

“Setting off to see another country, I set off to see what is more grandly other- whole cultures, geographies, languages. Who am I in the new place? And who are they who live there?

If you settle in, even for two weeks, live in a house not a hotel, and you buy figs and soap at the local places, sit in cafes and restaurants, go to a local concert or church service, you cannot help but open to the resonance of a place and the deeper you go, the stranger the people become because they’re like you and they’re not.”

How true! How exactly, perfectly, succinctly true. I read that and instantly thought of Istanbul, how when we were there, we rented a flat for two weeks and indeed shopped for figs and soap at local markets, played backgammon and drank tea at local cafes. There’s no question that we still stood out as the stupid foreigners we were, there was hardly any chance of us blending in, but going for groceries, or visiting the hardware store, or briefly getting to know the patterns of our neighbours and internalizing the Ramazan drumming at dawn to the point where we were no longer woken up by it, made me feel like I was just slightly less tourist and very slightly more a resident. The difference is the thickness of a strand of hair but it made me happy to carry a jug of milk instead of a camera and to think that the people who saw me perhaps thought “There is a foreigner who lives here” rather then “Look, another tourist”.

A little of that feeling remains now that we are living in the United States. I am barely noticeable as a Canadian; until we speak in metric or use the word “toque” or have to show someone our ID, we are the Canadians that walk unnoticed amongst them. Most of the time, we are easily mistaken as Americans and I’m glad to blend in, the same way I was glad to blend in a shred in Turkey. I’m always especially pleased to be able to offer someone directions, and I’m asked often enough while walking the dog in the more touristy areas of town. Surely he makes me appear more a resident and occasionally, I am actually able to respond to a question in such a way that sustains the illusion; I wish I never had to say “Sorry, I’m not from around here…” and then not even be able to direct a visitor to a gas station for directions. But the longer we stay, and the more exploratory walks we take, the closer we will come to resemble San Franciscans, though I doubt we’ll ever shake the metric.

Meanwhile, in an effort to rekindle some of the travel vibe, and to use some of our souvenirs, we made a splendid curry. While in Udaipur, a man that we met, Krishna, set us up with a private cooking tutorial which involved an early-morning trip to the market and a lesson by his grandmother’s neighbour, a woman who cooked in a tiny, concrete kitchen tacked onto the rooftop courtyard of her building. After our lesson, Krishna obtained two sets of spices for us; we had told him we were not married so he had assumed that we lived apart and would, therefore, each require our own samples of curry, turmeric, cardamom and saffron. As a result, we have alot of spices to go through, a pleasant enough chore. This curry ploughed through a fair portion of the turmeric but we used whole cinnamon, bay leaves and cardamom pods. We also used two burners, which is one more than Krishna’s grandmother’s neighbour had. There’s no way we could’ve remembered and/or duplicated the chapatis she taught us to make- that will take an afternoon of patience and practice someday, an afternoon when we can invoke some travel memories of what it was like to cook in someone else’s kitchen.