Garden of Words

The Week (November 26 Through December 2)

If I needed a reminder that times neither the times or I have changed, last night's big show at Alley Katz might have been it. Action Patrol, those orange jumpsuit-festooned punk heroes of yesteryear, hosted a reunion show that drew hundreds of local scenesters of all ages (though mostly the under 30 set).

I guess one change is that I found out about the show via the Internet, and was reminded of it by email early yesterday evening. Back in the day, the Internet was a magical, exclusive club; I used to carry a 30-pound Mac SE home from my office at VCU just to play online text-based games on a 9300 baud modem.

But the similarities between 1994 and 2007 are eerie. My plans were to spend a cold evening being lazy, curled up with some hot chocolate and the latest Star Wars novel. Exactly like 1994, except that now I live in a house with heat and don't have to choose between groceries and a geeky science fiction novel. (My wife would probably argue otherwise.)

And then the punk rock gets in the way of my evening.

Because Action Patrol was so crazy, and they threw crowds in a frenzy like few others, I felt some odd obligation to pull a stocking cap around my ears and head downtown. I am so happy I didn't have to bike to the show -- ah, those were the days.

There is nothing like standing on a concrete floor in a smoke-filled nightclub by myself, swigging overpriced beer and scanning the crowd for familiar faces, to remind my introspective inner rocker just how much he hates going to shows. (My inner rocker has a similar experience seeing GWAR last winter.) I bumped into my old dance pal Laura Grace at the door; she made me feel significantly older when she exclaimed, "We've loved Action Patrol since almost before middle school!" She was in town for the weekend from her New York haunt, apparently just to rock out.

I didn't see too many other familiar faces -- Taylor Steele from Four Walls Falling, a waitress from Perly's, the sublime Becky, aka Becky Badass, and a few others. But I did get some rock in my blood -- the thunderous Brooklyn two-piece, Unipigeon, opened the show, followed by Richmond's anthem-esque Pink Razors. Action Patrol rocked the veritable roof off. (Check out Digital Defection's flickr set too see how hard they rocked.)

Then I came home and Nikole refused to come near me until I took a shower and put my smoke-contaminated clothes outside. I finished the Star Wars novel this morning.

The rest of the week was a bit less rock, a bit more work.

Monday: Did not leave work to see the presentation of the new Downtown Plan to the city's Planning Commission, but did print out the entire 187-page report. Came home. Fixed dinner. Read the Downtown Plan draft report and wrote way too much about it. (Here and here and here, in particular.)

Tuesday: I have no idea what I did on Tuesday.

Wednesday: Planning meeting for the Greater Richmond Challenge III, followed by a recruitment discussion for the Challenge with Stephanie Kirksey, followed by an impromptu chat with the Chamber's Jim Dunn about the Crupi Report. When I got home, Nikole wanted baked ziti. I figured Joe's Inn would have some. They didn't, which meant Nikole had chicken parmigiana and I had spaghetti. Basic, but good.

Thursday: Meetings. Meetings. Meetings. Drove to Greene County to chat with two participants in the monthly leadership development program I'm facilitating. Raced back to go to the Art 180 fundraiser, Art Karma, with Nikole (who just joined the Art 180 board). It was a splashy, but not flashy, event -- lots of art, lots of food, lots of familiar faces.

Friday: More meetings. A quick, but exciting, doctor's appointment with Nikole -- week 16 and everything is looking good. Guess who wanted baked ziti again? We made our own this time. We were supposed to go see the premiere of our friend Ed Tillet's documentary on Cuba, but my head was about to explode from a cold and I went to bed at 8:30.

Saturday: A day that my sinuses will remember forever -- first, we stopped by my mom's house in the morning only to discover that it was being repainted inside and almost asphyxiated us both. But the fun didn't stop there, because our next stop was a two-year-old's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese on Midlothian Turnpike. Could we get any closer to a germ factory than that? We came home and started cleaning, stirring up more dust and pet hair than we deserve. I ran errands -- Pet Smart, Barnes and Noble, the library, Fin and Feather. And then there was the smoke-filled night of rock.

Sunday: More cleaning. Dragged Rilo to the tub and scrubbed her good. Went into the office for a few hours, and then met Nikole at Costco which I now hate more than life itself. Or, as much.

SUMMER'S START

Summer arrives this Thursday, as the day's reach peaks in its longest stretch for the year and slowly begins to recede toward autumn. The old-timers on the web pish-posh Thursday, knowing full-well that June 25 (next Monday) is the historical midsummer. It's time to figure out how to spend all of those extra hours of sunlight, since we're not engaged in the practice of sustainable agriculture and dragging hundreds of pounds of tomatoes into the kitchen to be canned.

Green Grow the Rushes
Okay, so we don't have 40 acres and a mule. I have, however, made the mistake of reading the enjoyable, informative and mouth-watering new book by Barbara Kingsolver. "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" tracks a year of local harvesting in her family's life -- eating with the seasons, using food harvested within 100 miles or so of their southwest Virginia home. We're not going to such extremes, but there are a number of small sustainable steps we'll take this summer, starting with our own 300-square-foot garden.

1. We expect to pull in a steady stream of vegetables from our backyard this summer, and have already enjoyed a small boatload of radishes, lettuces, spinach and green beans. It looks like we'll be eating green beans for several more weeks, and the zucchini are beginning to produce. Just around the corner -- squash, two types of cucumber, six different heirloom tomato varietals and carrots. The peppers are running a bit late, and we hope to pull some beets and sweet potatoes from the dirt at the end of the summer. Nikole is very excited about her Thelma Sanders Squash.
2. Now that Nikole is selling jewelry at the 17th Street Farmer's Market, I have expectations of Thursday evenings becoming a sort of harvest celebration -- unwrapping bundles of free-range eggs, local honey and exotic local produce.
3. We're still in love with the Byrd House Market in Oregon Hill, and expect to spend at least a few Tuesday nights this summer browsing the local fare -- produce and eggs, fresh bread, crafts.
4. Last year, we overextended ourselves at the Westmoreland Berry Farm. This year, we expect a repeat performance.
5. Outside of what we eat, we both enjoy hanging out in the yard enjoying the explosion of color that our flower beds create week after week. During the spring, there was a lot of purple, pink and red emerging in the yard from roses and peonies and tulips and lilac. As summer arrives, the yard has turned yellow and orange, predominantly -- tickseed, daisies and mile after mile of daylilies (mostly the orange variety, but we have a wide range of pink, white, several shades of yellow and some deep red lilies from my father's yard).

On the Road Again and Again
To offset the good things we do on the food front, we will be on the road a bit this summer -- burning fossil fuels and contributing to global warming.

1. We'll be spending a week at Nikole's grandfather's house in Deltaville this summer, engaged in a bit of familial indentured servitude. His house sits on the water, facing the Chesapeake Bay, the Rappahanock River and Broad Creek (depending on which window you're peering through) and was a bit battered several years ago by a series of storms. Nikole's brother and I have coordinated our schedules -- and invited a large handful of hard-working friends -- to rebuild the pier, pull out an old jetty, repair another old jetty and begin repairing a wall that keeps the back of the property from collapsing into the Stingray Point Marina.
2. Our second week on the water will be a return to Cape Cod for another Cape Cod Institute workshop. Last year, I was mesmerized by and fell in love with Charlie and Edie Seashore; this year, I'll be studying at the feet of leadership guru Meg Wheatley. In between workshop sessions, Nikole and I will enjoy the Cape in slightly warmer weather -- August instead of early July.
3. We're also hoping to get to West Virginia for a long weekend, although now that summer is here we may wait until the slightly cooler weather of September to head for the hills. It's been a while since we've been to our friends' cabin above Franklin, and we'll try to figure out the right combination of friends to invite along for the weekend.
4. We've managed to not get down to Atlanta to visit Nikole's brother and his wife since they moved there last year, but are looking at a September trip to see their house and explore the bustling southern metropolis.
5. We really want to see the gardens at Monticello, but suspect that -- like most places on the East Coast -- we'll enjoy them better after the heat and the summer tourist crowds vanish. So, a day-trip to Charlottesville is probably going to be a post-Labor Day excursion.

 

Hobby Horse
As always, I have quite the list of things I'd like to do this summer -- many of them things left undone from previous lists.

1. Yoga classes with Kelly Trask. I had been such a dedicated student, regularly showing up week after week from the spring of 2000 until late 2005. Since then, I've been a relatively fickle yoga devotee and feel a strong need to get back into the rhythm of things.
2. Modern dance classes with Starr Foster. My dance debut last October was more an exposure to dancers and an exercise in movement for me, and I'd like to explore a different way of getting connected to my body (and pulling muscles).
3. Kayaking on the Chesapeake Bay. Before we start building a pier, I am heading to Mathews County's Bay Trail Outfitters for a kayak tour of Winter Harbor.
4. Build a community weblog. Nikole and I have decided to launch the North Richmond News, a local weblog focused primarily on Lakeside, Ginter Park and Bellevue (and adjacent communities). Several of our neighborhood friends have expressed an interest in collaborating with us on this project, and the Johnny Appleseed of neighborhood blog's, John Murden, went gangbusters last week building the site.

SOUP AND BREAD

In the footsteps of Brandon, whose review of Richmond's best breads made me salivate, I picked up a loaf of Metro Bakery's fresh rosemary bread this afternoon at Ellwood-Thompson's. I was in the midst of inventing a pot of soup and knew we'd need something to go with it -- or to eat alone if the soup was a disaster.

As it turned out, the soup was not bad. I had frozen a chicken carcass -- remnants of a baked chicken -- and thought that a rainy day would be perfect for some soup making. A quick review of our refrigerator showed lean pickings -- a bag of baby spinach. We also had some brown rice and tons of garlic. On the store run, I picked up a can of white beans, an onion and a large carrot. Recipe solved.

After boiling the chicken, I chopped a head of garlic, a small onion and a large carrot and tossed them in a saute pan with some olive oil, salt and pepper. I added the garlic, onion and carrot to my poor man's soup stock -- having removed the chicken to pick clean. In went the brown rice, the beans and the chopped chicken. I set it on simmer and we took the pup for a long walk. When we returned, I added three cups of chopped spinach, let it simmer for a few moments and sat down to eat.

The soup was good. The bread... the bread was outstanding.

THE INTERSECTION OF DANCE & COOKIES

When I kicked off my shoes and entered the doorway of the main studio at Shuffles Dance Center, a flurry of dancers came sweeping across the floor toward me. For a moment, I wondered if their delight was because they hadn't seen me in four months, or if they knew I had a plate of fresh-baked cookies in my hand. Since they still seemed glad to see me after all of the cookies were gone, I'm going to tell myself they missed me.

Several times this winter, I'd run into Laura Grace and Meghan at Baker's Crust, where they wait tables and I habitually drag coworkers for lunch meetings. Laura Grace dances with the Starr Foster Dance Company; Meghan dances with my friend Julie's company, Dim Sum Dance. A few weeks ago, Laura Grace insisted I stop by one of the SFDP's weekend rehearsals. I said I'd bring cookies.

It's a corner of my own creation, this cookie baking. During the weeks leading to my big dance debut -- and the rest of the company's major fall production -- I'd show up at rehearsal with a plate of cookies. We went through plates of chocolate-cranberry oatmeal cookies, chocolate-orange cookies, ginger-molasses cookies, gingerbread cookies and whatever the bakery at Joe's Market had on hand. I learned long ago that dancers thrive on at least one of three vices -- they're compulsive cigarette smokers, heavy drinkers or utter sugar addicts. I've fallen in with a group that trends toward the sugar fetish.

After the hugs -- and after the cookies miraculously vanished from the plate -- I lounged on the floor as the dancers whirled through three of the five pieces they'll be performing in April at the Firehouse Theater. (April 5, 6 and 7 for you early planners.) An hour later, during a break, I slipped out -- though not before telling Starr that she'd better find a spot for me in the October production...

ITALIAN SOUP IS GOOD FOOD

I've been wanting to make an Italian pasta e fagioli -- literally, pasta and beans -- for some time now. Plans to tackle it earlier in February were impeded by the plumbing disaster. Last night, I combined several different recipes for this traditional Italian soup with excellent results. As a result of my recipe meandering, where I landed was somewhere between classic pasta e fagioli and Minestrone alla Romagnola, a traditional vegetable soup.

The best versions of either soup can be found in Marcella Hazen's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, one of the few indespensible cookbooks on our kitchen shelf. Hazen is to classic Italian cooking what Julia Child was to classic French cooking.

I started by perusing a handful of recipes -- Hazen has several versions in her cookbook, but I also looked at a few online recipes. Next stop: the grocery store.

I have a bad habit of cooking through some ridiculous balance of research and whimsy. I'll leaf through a half-dozen different interpretations of the same recipe, and then wing it. So it went yesterday. Wandering the produce department, I decided to give the soup a heartier, late winter flavor with a head of green cabbage and a handful of turnips. Garlic, onion, carrots and red pepper would round out the taste.

Given the length of Hazen's recipe for Minestrone alla Romagnola, the soup itself was rather easy to make. It helps that I didn't follow the rules.

Heating a few dashes of olive oil in a large pot, I quickly minced eight cloves of garlic and a small onion. When they hit the oil, I turned to the carrots and red pepper. I shredded the carrots, rather than chopping them, thinking I wanted them to cook down and not be too much of an anchor in the final product; unfortunately, I made the same decision with the red peppers. Shredded or pureed, it's all the same for the poor peppers, which quickly vanished in the melange of vegetables simmering away in the pot. I might as well have skipped the $2.99 organic bugger.

I let the olive oil, garlic, onion, carrots and red pepper simmer for about 10 minutes. I shredded the small head of green cabbage -- maybe three or four cups, total -- and chopped the turnips into long chunks. Unlike the carrots, I wanted the turnips to provide some heft, and a bit of bite to complement the cabbage. In went the cabbage and turnips.

Another five minutes or so of simmering, and I added a large can of organic crushed tomatoes and a box of organic vegetable broth. Bringing the liquid up to a boil, I added three of the last four ingredients: a sachet of herbs (thyme, rosemary and sage), a can of white beans and two cups of chopped chicken (salvaged, and frozen, last month from a roasted chicken).

I lowered the heat to simmer, plopped on the top and let it cook down a bit and thicken. A few minutes before we were ready to eat -- in went four handfuls of teensy, bow-tie pasta. Perfecto!

Check out my altered recipe for Minestrone alla Romagnola after the jump.

THE PERFECT PIZZA

I've stumbled upon the recipe for the perfect spinach pizza, after years of just throwing spinach, garlic and cheese on a crust.

Throw eight cloves of garlic; a quarter cup of olive oil; three handfuls of fresh spinach; and a dash or two of salt, pepper and oregano into a food processor and process until smooth. Evenly spread the "pesto" onto the crust (we tend to use whole wheat Boboli crusts).

Finely dice one red pepper and spread over the pesto mixture. Coarsely chop half a pound of spinach and add to pizza. Top with Parmesan cheese. Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes, or until cheese is lightly browned and beginning to bubble.

Alternately, call Superstars Pizza.

2006: IT'S A WRAP

It's not entirely impossible to summarize the year with a brief slate of high and low points, but the year was thick with significance, change and excitement so let's just roam around a bit. In no particular order, here are the significant slices of my 2006 calendar:

Beirut in the Spring
My brief excursion to Beirut at the end of March was too short, by far. In addition to a slew of posts chronicling my March 30 through April 4 trip to visit a friend before he shipped off to his next assignment, I also captured my trip in film. I was amazed by the explosive growth taking place in the Mediterranean city emerging from a decades-long civil war; two months after I left, the construction ceased and the city found itself paralyzed by strife and warfare again. The one hint I had that Lebanon remained a hub of political tension (outside of the countless reminders of the 2005 political assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri) was my discovery that Hamas and Hizbollah were holding a conference in my hotel while I was there.

Miscarriage
After a some tough experiences late in 2005, Nikole and I were both excited in late May when we learned that we were very likely going to be ringing in 2007 with a new baby in our lives. Not three weeks later, our hearts simply broke when there was, suddenly, nothing. I wrote some about the silence that suddenly enveloped our lives, and  about my own challenges found in mourning. Finally, three poems I've written about miscarriages.

Cape Cod
A weeklong seminar in Cape Cod came at the perfect time for both of us -- several weeks after Nikole's miscarriage. It was important for us to be in a space together without much in the way of demands; and since my mornings were consumed with the machinations of genius facilitators Edie and Charlie Seashore, Nikole also had some equally important space to herself. We got on the road on July 1 -- headed for Avalon, New Jersey, to see our friends Judy Anderson and Tom Poe who were on the Jersey shore with their family for the opening of Judy's art show -- and returned to Richmond a week later. We spent some wonderful, quiet time together; ate some great food; explored some curious places; and I learned tons from the Seashores. A slew of photos that capture the week have been pulled together, as well.

Greater Richmond Challenge
Why go month-by-month. Between Beirut and Cape Cod, I took a two-day vacation in my own city. The Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce's Richmond Challenge was a great way for me -- and a hundred other people -- to explore the Metro Richmond area, to learn more about some serious issues facing the region, to meet some amazing people committed to making a difference, and to learn how we could make an impact. My team focused on affordable housing, and a handful of us have continued to be engaged around the topic -- meeting with affordable housing advocates, speaking at a Times-Dispatch public forum on the topic, and kicking off the Chamber's November forum. My involvement in the Challenge also introduced me to a small handful of Richmonders who I might never have met, and who have grown to be good friends and great catalysts in my life.

Dinner with the Stanley's
I didn't write much about it on my site, but one of the more significant events of the year was a simple dinner. We joined a small group of loosely connected friends and the parents of our mutual friend, India Mara Stanley, for dinner at Edo's Squid. India died at the end of October, 2004; she was 34 years old. India's mother recently sent me a small photo album filled with wonderful photos of my old friend; we're hoping to visit the Stanley's in New York this spring.

Coffee with Richmond's Journalatees
This was the year when I found myself having coffee, typing out email exchanges and participating in panel discussions with an odd assortment of Richmond publishers, editors, reporters and webloggers. There is a small element of ego at play here, but more than anything I simply enjoyed getting to know some media professionals (and quasi-professionals) whose work I've followed, cursed, admired and appreciated over the years. I've also broadened my own understanding of some of the decisions various publications have made recently that left me scratching my head. Apparently, my passion for journalism and news have not vanished after all these years out of the business.

The Garden
Would it be a year at our house if I didn't note the power of the garden in our lives. We didn't do anything dramatic in the yard this year -- outside of watching a dozen new shrubs wither and die in the summer heat -- but the rabbits, the vegetables and the flowers filled our days with small moments of purpose and delight. And then the rabbits ate all of the vegetables and filled me with angst. And then we planted a rabbit-proof fall garden (which was crushed by an early freeze).

Garrett's Death
The sudden and unexpected death of Nikole's stepbrother is still fresh. Garrett Price was only 24 when he died on December 10. It's been very difficult watching her family deal with the grief, knowing that there is very little I am able to do but support her, and them.

Alice
My unexpected participation in the Starr Foster Dance Company's production of "Alice" was a real delight. Throwing myself, as best I could, into the world of dance was just plain exciting -- and periodically nerve-wracking. But I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything, and have begun to cajole Starr to find a space for me in an upcoming production.

Garden Recipe: Let's Salsa!

We just made the world's simplest salsa recipe. Puree a medium purple tomato and two medium red tomatoes. Finely chop about a dozen or so yellow grape tomatoes. Mince half a purple onion and half a head of garlic. Chop some yellow squash. Salt. Pepper. A splash of beer.

Serve with blue corn tortilla chips, or pile atop some corn, black beans and chicken.

Garden Recipe: Toss and Bake

Let's pretend for kicks that the sugar snap peas are from our garden, and not from Ellwood-Thompson's. The casserole, on the other hand, is a hearty blend of begged, borrowed and bought root vegetables -- two layers of organic potatoes from our friends the Grauers, an onion, two turnips, a golden beet and a red beet (all sliced medium and layered with salt, pepper and olive oil). Squished in between it all, a thick layer of chard from our garden. A dash of cheese on top. Cover in foil and bake at 400 until you're tired of waiting.