My heart is not with food blogging these days. I eat, of course. This morning I stirred up some sourdough waffles with a side of bacon and a bowl of fresh peaches to feed my guitar-player and my mother and myself. I made him coffee, too, which he drinks black. Our routine is that he drinks what anyone has left in the carafe when we first come down to the kitchen in the morning and then I make him some more as needed, before or after I make my own single cup of decaf. For lunch I just ate a slice of a tomato tart I made yesterday by cooking up cornmeal mush, spreading it in a tart pan and layering on sliced fresh tomatoes, fresh corn, arugula and two kinds of cheese. The tart was okay, but nowhere near as good as David Lebowitz’s tomato tart that I discovered last year. With that I had a piece of cocoa cake with salted caramel frosting that came home with me from yesterday’s music potluck. The cake is a dense, moist, not-too-sweet cake with a little cinnamon in the batter; the salted caramel icing you could eat with a spoon and not miss the cake.
When Johnny left here this morning at 10:30 I came back and lay on my bed under the top cover, listening to music, sometimes dozing. I am lucky to be able to spend my Sundays dozing since he and I are in the infamous sleep-deprived state of early love, when we can think of a million things to say to each other, a million songs to sing and, as the song says, “better things to do, maybe nothing to say,”* when we aren’t running our mouths. He, the poor man, has to work, has to function, will be up in front of a crowd singing at an Obama benefit this evening in Oakland. The adrenaline of performing will get him through. I’ll be there to cheer him on and to hang around at the show, but all I have to do is get my body on a bus or two and manage not to fall asleep while staring out the window or listening to what Johnny calls the “internal jukebox,” the songs that play in my head on a constant basis: when I hit the kitchen to make waffle batter this morning, my mind tossed up Tommy Thompson’s “Hot Buttered Rum”: “In the dead of winter when the silent snowbirds come/You’re my sweet maple sugar, honey, hot buttered rum.”
We are far from the dead of winter at the moment, but it is solidly fall in the Bay Area with leaves turning on the liquid ambar trees, with blue sky days and the light fading just after seven in the evening. Mornings and afternoons can be brief and warm when our trademark fog is not taking a holiday. Clothes are negotiations between long-sleeved cotton T-shirts and fleece vests, with an extra layer tucked into a backpack for turning weather: yesterday I shucked both my beret and my fleece vest by the time I walked the half-dozen plus blocks to a house on a hidden lane in Bernal Heights in San Francisco. Johnny met me at the door and ushered me to a seat at the table where he sat with his red Telecaster and a small amp. We debuted a new song called “Clueless,” that I wrote about all of the missteps and misunderstandings of our courtship. We sang and played with old and new friends until 7 PM, at which time the falling light made people want to go home, get on the road.
Monardia and Green Figs. 6″ x 6″ watercolor pencil on paper. Sharyn Dimmick.
Yesterday’s Farmers’ Market was a busy one, lots of awnings set up to shield the produce from the bright morning sun. I bought three baskets of green figs and half a dozen Frog Hollow peaches, the last of the year as Frog Hollow Farm moves on to pears and the seasons turn. I bought a bouquet of monardia, its herbal fragrance and red violet flowers lighting up a corner of my room and a spot on the dining room table. I will try to make something with figs before the week is out — I bought three baskets because if I buy one or two I just eat them out of hand for snacks — this way I’ll have some left to put in a salad or a dessert — I should trawl through my hundreds of saved food blogs to see what I might like to make, or, better, bring a small stack of cookbooks to my cozy bed and see what other cooks have done with fresh figs. I’m imagining a sweet and savory salad with fresh corn and arugula and roasted figs, but I will not make that salad this evening.
Sourdough Waffles (adapted from a basic waffle recipe in the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook)
Separate 2 eggs, whites in a small bowl, yolks in a large one.
Whip the egg whites first. Set aside. Don’t bother to change the beaters or wash them — never do extra work unless it is getting you something good like flavor or texture.
Measure 2 cups milk into bowl with egg yolks.
Add 1 cup sourdough starter.
Add 2 cups flour, 4 tsp baking powder, a little kosher salt, sugar to taste (I use less than 1/4 cup)
Add 1/2 cap of vanilla extract and a grating of fresh nutmeg.
Blend egg yolk-milk-starter-flour-sugar with your electric mixer, a whisk or a wooden spoon.
Add 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) soft butter. Beat until just incorporated.
Fold egg whites into the waffle batter. Leave it lumpy and irregular.
Preheat waffle iron. Use the time to warm plates, melt butter, heat syrup, cut up fresh fruit, set table.
Brush waffle iron with melted butter, especially if it is a non-stick waffle iron. Our waffle iron takes one and half spoons of batter. Cook waffles according to your waffle iron’s instructions. Hold waffles in the oven or serve each one hot out of the iron with desired accompaniments. You can store leftover batter in the refrigerator for a few days, after which time you will have eaten it anyway.
Food Notes: Convert this to buttermilk sourdough waffles by using buttermilk or sour milk in place of sweet milk and adding 1 tsp baking soda.
Song Notes: * from Cheryl Wheeler’s “Miss You More Than I’m Mad.”
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