Where's Home, Mastiha?

As I've been packing up my apartment this week in anticipation of moving, I've been thinking a lot about comfort food. Some food is comforting to eat, such as mashed potatoes, or chicken pot pie or warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice-cream. Textures and temperatures that calm a frazzled spirit. But other foods are comforting to make—my favorite of all being granola. I used to make granola as part of my "dorm-duty" in college. I lived in a co-op where we all took turns cooking, cleaning, and bossing each-other around and one of the roles that a person could have for the semester was 'granola-maker' where, once a week you were expected to make a huge 30-pound batch of granola for the entire co-op to enjoy for breakfast or late-night study sessions.

Quick! Green Garlic

This week I can barely put together full sentences. Spring fever has me in its jaws and everything seems to race forward like something tumbling down the stairs. I can't catch my breath. Here are the lilacs, now beginning to brown, and the violets, almost buried by tall grass, and green garlic, which if you don't catch it, will be gone in an instant, turned into big old real garlic heads with the fierce attitude of a Boston driver on a Friday afternoon. Green garlic can be found at farmer's markets right now, and is often the result of farmers thinning their garlic patch, but the tall thin stalks have a gentle, sweet and rich flavor that is so delicious and versatile. It doesn't have the bite of mature garlic, so it can be used raw; the other night I just mashed up the white part in my mortar and pestle and spread it over salmon before broiling it in the oven. just so good.

In addition to green garlic and salmon here is a list of other good things i've been loving lately:

Asafoetida, Earth and Space

It's Sunday night and I'm eating popcorn in bed in my underwear.

I just got home from having drinks with a friend at one of my favorite bar/restaurants here in Somerville called Highland Kitchen, where you can sit in the window and, now that's it's still light out, watch the airplanes rise into the air out of Logan. There goes Aer Lingus and Swiss Air and United. I've always had a fascination with airplanes (dad would say it's in my blood), and to this day I still get teary during take-off when the plane breaks through the clouds and I look out into the ethereal topography of the sky contrasted with the earth below and realize that for a few hours I can leave everything behind.

Verbena & the Winning Orb

So much to celebrate on this first Saturday in May. First off, it's my niece Mirabelle's birthday—Happy Birthday Ms. Mirabelle! This completes her first full year on planet Earth. Secondly, a horse named "Orb" won the Kentucky Derby in the splattering mud, and thirdly, I discovered that lemon verbena has a way of clearing and reviving the tired mind.