Jennifer Jeffrey, Writer & Editor

The Invisible Recipe in Heidi Swanson's Cookbook

Like everyone else who has paged through its beautiful photos and recipes, I quickly fell in love with Heidi Swanson’s new cookbook. So many bloggers have written about her recipes that I wasn’t planning on blogging about it myself – until last week, when I discovered a Secret Recipe written in Invisible Ink.

Here’s how I made the discovery: I was paging through the cookbook to find inspiration for dinner, and was entranced by Heidi’s description of Bellwether Farms Crescenza Cheese in the recipe head notes for Quinoa and Crescenza on page 55, which she describes as “little pillows…of tangy, triple-cream cow’s milk cheese.”

In case you don’t know already: me love cheese. Me love cheese like Tarzan love Jane. When I read Heidi’s comments about the Crescenza, I knew I had to make the recipe.

Problem is, while I was dreamily browsing through the cookbook, I also read the recipe for Risotto-Style Barley. Yum, I thought. That sounds amazing.

A couple of days later, I was wandering through Whole Foods, trying to remember what I needed for The Recipe. I put a “little pillow” of Bellwether Farms Crescenza in my cart, along with a bag of pearled barley. I had bundle of gorgeous hot-pink-ribbed chard and a knot of purple-red spring onions from Star Route Farms at home; I had decided to use those in place of the arugula and yellow onion that Heidi called for in the risotto recipe. Over and over throughout the book, she suggests that readers swap one in-season ingredient for the other, and so I felt perfectly comfortable with this.

Then I got home and realized my mistake: the Crescenza was for the quinoa recipe on page 55. The barley was for the barley risotto on page 68. The chard was neither here nor there. Oops. Ah, well. I had barley; I had cheese. I was going to make the Heidi-inspired dish that WASN’T in the cookbook.

This is What Sunshine Tastes Like

It rained yesterday morning, and they say it's going to rain again on Saturday, but today dawned sunny and bright, and that was excuse enough for me to brew 2007's inaugural batch of iced tea. We drink a lot of iced tea around here between April and September. Pitchers and pitchers of it.

Black tea with wildflower honey. Rooibos tea with malty-sweet demerara sugar. Green tea with a touch of rice syrup. Always sweetened while the tea is hot, so as not to create grainy, separated sweet notes.

Sometimes accompanied by fat lemon wedges, sometimes not. Frequently spiked with fresh green herbs like pineapple sage or lemon thyme or mint to add an extra dimension of flavor.

Occasionally enjoyed with dinner, but more frequently sipped slowly in the mid-afternoon or early evening, while sitting outside on the deck, finishing "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" by Alexandra Fuller, and listening to the squabbling of the birds and the rasp of crickets.

Always hits the spot.

This is Why I Love Spring: Ode to Joy

From the Thursday Farmer's Market in San Rafael.

Bacon & Eggs with Wild Women on the Side

As a freelancer, my workload ebbs and flows. When one project finishes, sometimes another one is ready to take its place; other times, I have to hunt the next one down. A couple of weeks ago, I sent back the copyedit on the cookbook and completed a couple of proofreading projects, and then suddenly: my desk was clear. It’s been a long while since that has happened.

A sense of space opened up around me when I realized that nothing was due; it felt so nice. Even more delightful was the fact that the sun was streaming through the windows, and the earth was starting to wake up from a cold winter slumber. I felt as if I was waking up too, responding to the sudden influx of light and warmth. Perhaps because I was born in March, I always feel like this month is when the calendar truly flips over.

And so, because I can, I’ve devoted the last few weeks to clearing my head. I’ve been rolling out my yoga mat several times a week. Petra and I have been walking for miles, searching out green grass and signs of spring, and we’ve found plenty of both; the back of my neck is pink from the sun. In the moments that I have been at my desk, I’ve been on the hunt. Sending out e-mails to prospective clients; meeting with people, talking. A few days ago, it occurred to me that I was actually having fun with it. Not dreading it; not worrying myself sick over it. Having fun!

That may not sound like a shocker, but it’s a new day for me. I usually dread making calls to drum up new work; my heart pounds, my palms itch, and the words: hey, do you need any writing help? stick in my throat. You might not guess it from the way I have my name boldly scrawled across the top of this page, but I’ve historically been terrified to market myself.

That the willies are subsiding is partly due to the gentle passage of time, but it also has something to do with a group of wild women.

I met said women in 2001, not long after the “dot-conomy” bubble burst, and I had closed the doors for the last time at my software company in San Jose. As I was scrambling to figure out what to do next, someone invited me to join the Wild Women of Wonder. Go ahead, giggle - I did. “The wild what?” I responded, while I entertained some rather uncharitable thoughts about the ridiculousness of the name.

Get Thyself to Napa

Have you seen the weekend weather forecast? Did you notice that temperatures in some places are going to slide past the 70º degree mark? Did you happen to note that Napa might reach 79ºF on Friday and Saturday?

The message is clear: this is the day to play hooky and get out of the office early. Go ahead; you know you want to. You’re sitting at your desk, staring out at an impossibly blue sky. After weeks of cold, it’s actually approaching t-shirt weather out there. But it won’t last long; the clouds are going to roll back in on Sunday and the rain might return by mid-week.

Hurry! Escape! Locate your giant sunglasses, the ones you bought last summer, put the convertible top down, and head straight for wine country.

On your way, dial Swanson Vineyards (707-967-3500) and make a wine tasting appointment. No, silly, this isn’t one of those places that looks like a faux-McBurgundy mansion. It doesn’t have artfully distressed stones or intentionally scratched floors. The tasting room is pink. Yes, pink. It’s decorated with seashells and flowers. The paper they wrap the bottles in has tiny little hearts printed on it!

Does the name “Swanson” sound familiar? Might it conjure memories of yellow cardboard boxes filled with frozen fish sticks? This is the same family. They’ve come a long way. If you leaf through your collection of old 7x7 Magazines, you’ll notice that one of the Swansons appears in the glossy social scene section nearly every month; her name is Alexis (now Alexis Swanson Traina, as she recently married Trevor), and you’ll also find her name on one of Swanson’s best offerings, a proprietary blend of Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah.

Tea for Two

When I moved to San Francisco seven years ago, the rental market was a mob scene.  Apartment showings were flooded with prospects, and people whispered stories about slipping landlords cash on the sly or paying six months rent in advance to secure a place.

I was lucky; I got the second apartment I looked at. It was in a gorgeous old building on Jackson Street, and let me tell you: every time I walked into the lobby, I felt like Holly Golightly. I had to pinch myself when I stepped inside the elevator and the wrought iron cage whisked shut behind me. I loved everything about my apartment: the gleaming hardwood floors, the tile work in the bathroom, the intricate crown moldings that graced the ceiling.

Several months after I moved in, I was standing in the lobby when a man walked through the door. He was tall and handsome, with a devastating smile and an accent that made my ears tingle. We got into the elevator together, only to discover that we were going to the same floor. By the time the doors opened, we had learned that we were neighbors. In fact, we shared a wall.

I walked away from our meeting feeling… intrigued. The next morning, I opened my door to find a delicate white orchid plant sitting outside. A tiny card was attached. “Welcome to the building,” it said, with his signature. My heart skipped a beat.

The Morocco Journals: Ksar Char-Bagh

We found Ksar Char-Bagh on the recommendation of a friend who is building an enormous maison just outside Marrakech.

“This place is something to see,” she told us, describing a small, exclusive palace outside Marrakech that functions as both hotel and restaurant. “You must go.” We agreed, and she made dinner reservations for the following night. When we asked for directions, she narrowed her eyes. “What kind of car do you have?”

A Clio, we told her. She shook her head dismissively. “You’ll never make it in that. You need a quatre quatre.” She explained that only way to get there was an unpaved dirt road, with no streetlights or signs to guide the way. She was adamant that we couldn’t make it on our own, and arranged to have her driver pick us up.

The next evening, the driver picked us up from our hotel, as arranged. Safely ensconced in the 4x4, we quickly left the paved streets for a pitted, dusty track that led straight into the desert. The headlights revealed the ridged trunks of palm trees all around us; small rocks pinged the windshield. I gripped my jaw to keep my teeth from clacking.

"Just you wait," the driver told us as we bounced about. "Next time you come to visit, this track will be paved, and all this land will have houses on it."

Twenty minutes later, reached a high wall lit with lanterns. A guard opened the enormous wooden door, and we stepped through onto sand-colored gravel that crunched beneath our feet. A small grove of olive trees led to a series of broad stone steps lit with candles. We walked up the steps to another door, this one made of dark wood decorated with silver studs. The door swung open just seconds before we reached it, this time by a man dressed in a flowing white jellaba and a red cap.

Fresh Cotton Sheets and Roast Chicken

After the stress of the last week, things are starting to get back to normal around here. Petra is slowly regaining the weight she lost during her ordeal, thanks to creamy cottage cheese, steamed chicken breast and peanut butter “truffles.” Her ouchies are beginning to heal, but she still has enough bumps and bruises that I’m dressing her in a  moss-green coat before we go out walking, lest people think she's being abused.

Our bodies are finally back on West Coast  time, and we’re sleeping through the night.  At mealtimes, we’re craving comfort food.

We’ve been back at our favorite stools at the counter at Ten Ichi, feasting on uni and saba and hot, spicy soup laced with kim chee and tofu. The chef that took Kazu’s place is a young man named Johnny. He’s bright and eager, and loves to try his hand at new things. He obviously paid close attention as Kazu’s right-hand man over the past couple of years; he’s doing great work, and we gobbled his creations down as fast as he set them in front of us.

On the Way to Marrakech

We've been on a whirlwind tour of Morocco. We're only halfway through, and already I'm sorting through so many thoughts and impressions that I can't possibly sum them all up just yet.  The juxtaposition of past and present here is so intense as to be almost painful. We've spent the past couple of days in Casablanca, where the streets are a chaotic tangle of cars, bicycles, motorcycles and people, with the occasional burro thrown in for good measure. I saw a man balancing a crate full of live chickens on his moped yesterday morning.

The air is thick as chowder with diesel fumes and smoke - this in January, when the temperatures are still relatively cool. I can't imagine how it must be in the summertime. Traffic lights and street dividers are mere suggestions. There is no such thing as a pedestrian crosswalk; people stream across the streets at random, playing cat and mouse with the vehicles. Several times, I had the urge to fish my sleeping mask out of my bag and strap it on so as not to keep clutching the armrest in abject terror.

And yet, amid the mayhem, there is great beauty. We toured the jewel of the city, the  Hassan II mosque, built literally over the top of the Atlantic Ocean. Gorgeous. I wished, yet again, that I was a better photographer. We left Casablanca around noon today and began the drive to Marrakech, about 210 kilometers south.

It was quite a drive.

Waking from an Arctic Dream

I’m about to gush about the Ice Hotel, and I’m finding it somewhat difficult to begin. I don’t often gush about places I go or meals I eat. I’m not sure why; perhaps I like to keep my peak experiences to myself, to reflect upon in quiet moments. Perhaps I feel like the best things should be kept under wraps, in order to keep them special. It's silly, I know. The best things should be shared, not kept secret.

But the Ice Hotel isn’t a secret. It has been covered in documentaries and written about in destination magazines so many times that it has long ceased to be news. Everyone has heard of it. Been there, done that.

Perhaps that’s why I was so blown away; I honestly did not expect it to be so exceptional. I thought it would be like so many other things: overrated.

Only it wasn’t. It was a sumptuous feast for the senses, from start to finish. Taste, touch, sight, smell… the Ice Hotel engaged my entire body, and I was dazzled on every count.

For the sake of brevity (ha!), I'll just list three: