So much to catch up on!

First of all, this is my 250th post!  As with every other blog milestone that I have surpassed, I’m not sure how I got here or how it happened so quickly.  I’m just grateful that you are all here along for the ride.  It was so wonderful to hear from so many readers who don’t usually comment.  Thank you all and please know I cherish those comments so don’t hesitate to leave one if you are moved to do so.  I also loved reading about everyone’s most cherished cooking tool.  It seems that simple tools are the things that people can’t live without – wooden spoons, whisks, spatulas, zesters, tongs, chef knives.  Quite a few of you need your Kitchen Aid mixers (I understand) and Nancy can’t live without her wine opener – amen Nancy!  I want to cook with you!

Graham picked #44 which was Tammy who loves her apple slicer.  Tammy,  please email me at danatreat {at} gmail {dot} com so I can get your address to send you the Japanese knife, shears and paring knife combo, and the $25 gift card.  From the conference, I also have a voucher to mail in for a Cuisinart mini food processor.  I already have one so Graham picked #31, Lesley who loves her tongs, as a second prize winner.  Lesley, please email me so I can send you the voucher.

So, New York.  Wow.  I had so many memories being in that city.  Because both of my parents are from there, I grew up going back East at least once a year.  At first we went to visit family and then, as my extended family became more and more estranged, we went just because we wanted to.  When my dad moved our little family to Seattle in 1972, there was not much going on here and it was hard for my mom to leave the Italian food, the theatre, shopping, and the culture.  He appeased her with one family trip and one trip just for the two of them each year.

I went to college in Connecticut and would take the train down to the City a couple of times a semester.  My mom’s cousin and her husband still live on Staten Island and I would stay the weekend with them.  From time to time, I would also take the art history bus in just for the day.  I went in my 20′s before I met my first husband, I went with him just after we were married, and I went with him as our marriage was completely falling apart.  I went with Randy right before we were married, and again while we were living in London, and then this past trip.  New York is a city that I keep coming back to and while it does change, parts of it are refreshingly always the same to an admiring visitor.

One of the first questions I got from people when I told them I would be visiting is, “Where are you going to eat?”  We had three nights and, because there were other people involved besides just myself and Randy, I only got to plan one of those nights.  I chose WD-50 because I have heard so many incredible things about it and because I am fascinated by that type (molecular gastronomy) of cooking.  Years ago, Randy and I were lucky enough to eat at The Fat Duck just outside of London.  It had just been awarded it’s third Michelin star and the 17 courses we ate were by far the best food of our life.  Not only did they make all of mine vegetarian, Randy thought my food was even better than his.

I had heard that WD-50 could do a vegetarian tasting menu for me as well and so I encouraged our table of five to go that route rather than ordering off the à la carte menu.  The guys’ food was clever and innovative (including a play on bagel and lox where the “everything bagel” was bagel shaped ice cream) but mine was a little ho hum.  Out of nine savory courses, three of them were soups and four of them were fried.  I started off tweeting was I was eating and as they all started to blur together, I stopped.  Still, twelve courses of vegetarian food is always a treat and the mere fact that they offer it (and that they also offer a vegan tasting menu) makes me appreciate the restaurant.

If you watch Top Chef, you probably would recognize the chef, Wylie Dufresne.  He has been a guest judge and competed in Top Chef Masters.  He has kind of stringy 70′s era hair and pseudo mutton chops.  In other words, he is instantly recognizable.  As we walked in to the restaurant and I could see into the kitchen, I was impressed to notice he was in there cooking.  I love that a well-known chef is still doing his job.  At the end of the night, he was sitting at the bar with some friends and while I got my coat on, my husband thanked him for a great meal.  I walked up and told him how much I appreciated the thoughtfulness that went into my menu and that we vegetarians usually get the short end of the restaurant stick.  He said, “Well, I’m sorry you are a vegetarian.  If you ever change your mind, come back and I’ll buy you dinner.”  Given that I haven’t eaten meat in 23 years, it’s not likely that I will wake up one day and decide to start eating meat, but if I do – I’m hopping on an Eastbound plane.

The other two dinners we had were good but nothing to write on my blog about.  I had the good fortune to meet Stacey from Stacey Snacks for lunch at the Standard Grille and while the food was good, the company was the most delicious part.  She is gorgeous, funny, and we have about a million things in common.  I knew just from reading her blog and her emails that we would get along but I had no idea that it would be so much fun.  I was also able to see my friend Victoria which was wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time.  She had just gotten some not-so-terrific news and was still handling it like a champ.  If you have a spare second, please send a good vibe to her.

Friends, I’m feeling a little guilty.  And lucky.  And thankful.

I’m heading to New York on the red-eye flight tonight.  I’m meeting my husband who is there (again) for work.  I am leaving my sweet boys in the care of our most trusted and loved babysitter Erika.  When Randy took this most recent job, he thought that the travel would be minimal when it fact it has been maximal.  (I know that’s not a word, but shouldn’t it be?)  As the trips began piling up in the calendar, he asked me when I would like to go to New York with him.  He knows I love it there and I haven’t been in six years.  My favorite time of year anywhere is the fall, so we settled on October.

I am reminded that six years ago, Randy and I were just settling in to our year in London.  His sister planned an October wedding in Richmond, VA and we were scheduled to fly in for it.  She was kind enough to invite my parents and we decided to meet up first in New York so that I could have a little more time with them instead of just the wedding weekend.  My parents are both from New York – Dad from the Lower East Side and Mom from Long Island – so I have lots of memories of time spent in the City with them.

Just a month before we were set to meet, I got an unthinkable phone call from my dad.  He was having some strange symptoms and when he went to get checked out, they found that he had a tumor on his bladder.  Subsequent appointments showed that it would not be possible to remove the tumor safely and they would have to actually remove his bladder, hope that they got all the cancer, and construct a new bladder for him out of a part of his own intestine.  He decided to schedule the surgery for after the trip to the East coast – he was so looking forward to the trip and his doctors didn’t think waiting a few weeks would matter.  I made the decision to return to Seattle for a few weeks after the wedding to help him and my mom out.

Those days we spent in New York were wonderful.  The weather was perfect, we ate well, we shopped, we walked, we sat in the park, we saw a show.  We could forget for moments the scary thing that awaited all of us after the fun was over.  It was the most bittersweet vacation of my life.  As we traveled south to Richmond and the surgery loomed closer, it was harder to pretend that we weren’t nervous.

I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that this story has a happy ending.  My dad had a rough recovery initially but recover he did, and he has been cancer free these six years.  He is as incredibly active as he was before the surgery and has continued to work as an oncologist helping people with their own cancer diagnoses and treatments in the warmest and most human way possible.

Ironically, as I am about to get on a plane to New York, I got word that my college roommate and friend Victoria has just had surgery for invasive breast cancer.  I haven’t seen her in years and have only been in touch with her via Facebook.  She lives in New York and she has a baby girl and she has an unfathomably tough road ahead of her.  The first thing I did when I talked to her yesterday (after telling her how sorry I am) was to offer up a conversation with my dad.  He has walked along the breast cancer road with countless patients, some even younger than the 39 years of my dear friend, and I so hope that he can be a resource, or even just a comfort to her.  I hope that I can see her and hug her and meet her baby.  I wish I could cook for her.

So, I’m feeling guilty.  Guilty that less than two weeks ago I was in San Francisco and tonight I head off to another world class city.  I’m feeling lucky that I live a life where travel like this is possible.  I feel thankful for my health, my family, my family’s health, and all the other things that make my life blessed.

I didn’t grow up going to the beach.  Oh, we have beach here in Washington state.  Miles and miles of it.  Contrary to what some people might think, Seattle is not actually on the coast.  I like to think of our state in the shape of a square root sign.  Seattle is in the “v” of that sign on Puget Sound.  If you want to get to the ocean,  you have to drive south and then west across the Olympic peninsula.  After about 2 1/2 hours, you reach the Pacific Ocean.  It’s beautiful and it’s cold.

The towns out there aren’t all that nice so when we would go to the coast, we would actually head to Oregon.  The entire coast line of that gigantic state is public beach and it is absolutely breathtaking.  You may have seen photographs of Haystack Rock, a 235 foot monolith sitting just a few feet from the shore – that’s in Cannon Beach and that is where my family usually stayed.  We went there for the beauty, we went for long walks on the beach, we didn’t go there to swim.

One year my brother Alex was in a small sailboat that tipped over in Puget Sound.  He had on a life jacket and was rescued about 20 minutes after he went in.  He got hypothermia.  This was in August.  If the water in the Sound is that cold, imagine the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean.  No, we don’t swim out here on this coast.

My mom always says one of the hardest things about leaving New York to move to Seattle was not going to the beach in the summer.  Jones Beach was a big part of her childhood.  In my childhood, aside from a few trips to Hawaii, most of our warm weather vacations involved a pool.  Actually, come to think of it, most of our vacations were spent skiing.  Not a lot of beach when you are skiing.

In contrast, Randy and his family would head to the Maryland shore every summer.  Almost his entire extended family (and they are Catholic so there are a lot of them) lives in Baltimore and they would all descend on Ocean City for the week around July 4th to rent various houses.  Randy’s immediate family didn’t live in the area, so this was a chance for them to all reconnect.  Randy doesn’t have much of a memory, but there are lots of things he remembers about going to the beach.  He feels strongly that we go every few years so our children can build some of these same memories.

I’m happy to go.  I love this large extended family.  I love how his uncle Dan goes down early in the morning and stakes out territory with all kinds of umbrellas and fancy folding chairs.  This year we were 55 people so that is a lot of space to stake out.  I love the warm sun and the sea air.  I can’t say I love the sand, but I’m getting used to it.  I love the lazy day that involves nothing more than meals and walking to and from the beach.  Happy hour starts early and the nights go late.  There is always singing and guitar playing involved which creates some anxiety for me, but once I get my first song over with, I’m usually ready to sing more.  It’s a really nice vacation.  Before we left, we were thinking we would go every third year.  Once we got there (we were at Bethany Beach which is actually in Delaware), I told Randy I thought we should make it every other year.  I’m already looking forward to next time.

A word about the above photo.  My mother-in-law likes to have photos.  Not just a snapshot, although she likes those as well.  There are lots of photos of Randy and his sisters growing up posed in their Sunday finest.  It’s actually very sweet.  Somehow I didn’t get the memo that there would be a photo this year so I didn’t pack appropriate clothes for the boys.  Actually, I don’t even know if I have appropriate clothes for the boys – we live in Seattle after all.  So, while I was out sunning myself, Randy took the boys to a cute shop in town and bought them these super preppy and totally adorable outfits.  He never ceases to amaze me.

For those of you who are wondering when-oh-when I will get back to talking about food…soon, I promise.  Just need to shake the sand out of my suitcase.