Living With Poetry | On the Coast Near Malibu

The last time I apologized for a poem was in January 2011. It was my first post on Eat This Poem, and Louise Gluck struck a somewhat melancholy note to begin the year. 

I won't apologize for this brief stanza from Robert Hass, but I will say that things are strange. On Christmas Eve, we found out that Andrew's parents were both recovering from the flu, so we postponed our visit until the weekend. That left us with no plans for Christmas day, and with such little notice, I didn't have time to cobble together a plan like I normally do.

So we drove to Malibu. With few provisions to make a picnic, I threw together a sturdy kale salad dressed with lemon and studded with almonds. It was packed in glass jars, and we drove, unobstructed by traffic and long lights, to the coast.

It was not the coast of Sausalito, but I thought of this poem just the same. Robert Hass is like me, a Californian, and his poems often draw from the landscape of our rugged and beautiful state.

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from On the Coast Near Sausalito

by Robert Hass

I.

I won't say much for the sea,
except that it was, almost,
the color of sour milk.
The sun in that clear
unmenacing sky was low,
angled off the gray fissure of the cliffs,
hills dark green with manzanita.

Low tide: slimmed rocks
mottled brown and thick with kelp
merged with the gray stone
of the breakwater, sliding off
to antediluvian depths.
The old story: here filthy life begins.

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Yes, life begins. In January, we feel it. Life is tugging, gnawing, requesting refreshment, and I'm grateful to have had a couple of weeks to retreat from my routine, read cookbooks, make plans, and rest before 2014 began.

I didn't manage to put together a retrospective post on Eat This Poem for 2013. In fact, I had a near meltdown on New Year's Eve when I couldn't find grass fed short ribs for the traditional meal Andrew and I share (served under a bed of celery root risotto), so I was feeling out of sorts the entire week. But we found a way through (Andrew called three butchers before finding one that had what I needed) and our meal was salvaged. In fact, it was spectacular. We set goals, ate cheese, drank one of our best bottles of red wine, and I managed to stay up until midnight.

Here we go. 

Living With Poetry: The Keepers of Language

During my one free day in New York this past October, I went for a walk.

It was a long walk, straight down Fifth Avenue from 49th Street to Washington Square Park near NYU. I needed the air, and the two mile stroll in crisp but not too cold weather helped me let go of a month that I called from the beginning "the month to get through." October wore me down, and this walk was the start of an approximately two-week process of letting go and reconnecting with myself. 

I was on my way to meet a friend. Fellow literary food blogger Nicole Villeneuve from Paper and Salt happens to live in New York, and we planned to attend a poetry reading and go to dinner. which meant I had several hours to roam. Along the way I stopped at the New York Public Library. Have you been? It's such a charming place, and before I wrapped my scarf around my neck again, decided to buy a copy of Annie Dillard's The Writing Life from the bookstore. A coffee shop was in my future, and I thought this slim meditation on writing would be a perfect accompaniment to my cup of tea.

Tucked in a corner table at Think Coffee with a hot mug of chamomile steeping, I read. I underlined a lot of the book, and one passage in particular provided a gentle reminder that writing isn't a race. Sometimes it's an easy fact to forget.

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“Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.” 
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

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With that, I closed the book. The sun had set, and I walked a few blocks over to the Skirball Center. It happened to be the weekend of the Academy of American Poets annual conference, and it felt serendipitous that the chancellor's reading was held on my one free evening in the city. The reading was filled with words from some of the country's biggest names in poetry, like Edward Hirsch and one of my personal favorites, Jane Hirshfield. I couldn't have been happier.

Next, we dined at The Smile, a rustic little cafe a few blocks away and shared a ricotta crostini with saffron cauliflower that I thought about for three days. On my flight the next morning, I considered all the meals I shared in New York, and the idea of bringing home recipes as souvenirs. I used to buy postcards and key chains, but now whenever I travel, I'm making notes for what I want to recreate in my kitchen upon returning home.

If you'd like to know more about this, visit Life & Thyme. I recently contributed an essay to this lovely site, and am sharing a recipe for spicy tomato soup, too. 

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Before the reading began, the woman introducing the event said that "poets are the keepers of language." They give meaning to the mundane and provide words for the unspeakable. I was practically giddy, sitting in a room full of people who love poetry, and count it as an hour well spent. Poetry is restorative. The way a massage or dip in the hot springs relaxes your body, poetry does the same work for your soul.

Living With Poetry | Recipes and Repetition

Living with Poetry is an occasional series where we explore how poetry infuses our everyday lives. Catch up with past features here.

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I've always held on to the belief that recipes and poems are not very different from one another. They both begin with building blocks like a turn of phrase or the turn of a whisk in a mixing bowl. A recipe cooked in my kitchen might look slightly different than in your kitchen, even if we use the same ingredients. A poem read today might resonate more when read again in six months. All of this is to say that I've been thinking about how recipes become part of you, the same way a poem might burrow itself under your skin when you've read it enough times and memorized a line or two. It's about turning over and over.

When we had friends over for dinner a few weeks ago, I set out to make pumpkin mac and cheese as a nod to the new season. I didn't use a recipe, because I've made mac and cheese so many times before that I knew it by heart. This is a time when the kitchen becomes a more magical place, because you're freed from standing over the counter, pointing with one finger at the list of ingredients before grating the cheese. You just move in one fluid motion from grating to whisking to stirring to boiling, and the meal comes together because you're steady.

Also, because you've likely made a mistake or two in the past.

You burnt the chocolate or smudged a word with an eraser. You boiled the pasta for two minutes too long or couldn't conceive of the right word to end the line. You learn. You grow. Wendell Berry puts it well in his poem "The Sycamore."

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"Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the wrap and bending of its long growth. 
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose."

-Wendell Berry, from "The Sycamore" 

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It has gathered all accidents into its purpose. I repeat this line again and again and think of writing, of cooking, of relationships, of false starts or wrong turns. It's a powerful reminder that there is a reason for everything.

For its part in this lesson, pumpkin has arrived. It's presence is why I didn't look at a recipe, and instead added a few heaping spoonfuls into the pot and whisked and whisked, and why I found myself realizing that all the recipes and repetition have become something else entirely. The recipes do not live on paper alone. They exist for us to make something of them, to know them, to become something we can trust and love and hold on to.

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PUMPKIN MAC AND CHEESE WITH SAGE BREADCRUMBS

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3 cups whole milk
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly cracked pepper
1 pound pasta
8 ounces gruyere, grated
4 ounces aged cheddar, grated
1/2 a baguette, torn into large pieces
4 to 5 sage leaves
2-3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Melt the butter in a large stock pot over medium heat and whisk in the flour to combine. Cook for 30 seconds, then slowly whisk in the milk. Cook, whisking occasionally, until the sauce has thickened and can coat the back of a spoon, about 10 minutes. Off the heat, whisk in the pumpkin, nutmeg, salt, and a few cracks of freshly cracked pepper. Whisk in the cheese.

While the sauce thickens, bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta for 6 minutes. (You want the noodles to be slightly undercooked; they'll finish cooking in the oven.) Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.

Add the pasta to the sauce and stir to combine. You'll hear a gooey, satisfying sound as the sauce begins clinging to the noodles. Pour the pasta into a large baking dish and set off to make the breadcrumbs.

Pulse the bread and sage in a food processor until small crumbs form. Add a pinch of salt, then drizzle in the oil until evenly coated. Spread the crumbs over the pasta.

You can prepare everything earlier in the day and keep the dish in the fridge until ready to bake. Before serving, bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and the breadcrumbs are golden brown.