Rose Syrup, or Failed Rose Jelly

"Before"

Or: rose jam gone awry. My “Fragrant Cloud” is blooming more than ever before, and because of her quadruple-f (high fragrance rating according to Vintage Gardens nursery) I decided to try to capture it.

Soaked a tubful of the fresh petals in water overnight, boiled them in the (two cups) water for about five or ten minutes over at my friend Joan’s place, threw in about 2 c. sugar and a packet of pectin and a squeeze of lemon. Stirred. Waited.

It was pretty, and according to the recipe you’re supposed to strain out the petals, but excuse me: they are the source of the fragrance.
THe recipe had also called for cutting off the paled  “bitter” tip of each petal, the part that secures it to the center of the flower…Dream on!
OK, so I got some of the tastiest imaginable syrup, full of these floating rags of “wet blue jeans” according to one bloggist. To me they were edible shreds of Eden.

Joan got a couple small very beautiful pink jars, and I kept a quart.  Breakfast looked like the third picture.

Dribble it on your cream cheese toast

During

Another year, another meal

Marcie’s Birthday Menu

June 16, 2011

Taj Mahovel

Sauteed organic mixed mushrooms on sesame crackers

Thin coins of black radish—note spiral pattern!

Tahini spiked with chipotle puree

Tomato soup a la Wombat

Almost Vegan Potato Salad

Ice Cream w/raspberries

Black tea

Assorted rice crackers

champagne

Frazzled

In the last few months I did a couple of foolish moves to simplify my life: close a bank account that charges monthly fee, without remembering that there were a couple of checks out in the econosphere I’d written the previous week. Like me, the recipients probably didn’t just toss them in the bank the same day.
Hence, impressive overdraft fees, and a cascade of other  consequences like my  Visa card (I was the last person on earth to get one, since I’m aware how idiots like me end up spending a decade paying off the INTEREST ALONE on this predatory bit of plastic) being dunned for insufficient funds..

It’s like banking is a many-part math problem that I am paying insufficent attention to.

Tomorrow I’ll go to two banks and ask if they will consider waiving the punitive fee because I’ve never racked up an overdraft in 30 years there…it’s worth a try.

Speaking of frazzled, Jef Mallet’s cartoon a math problem that involves shopping, a bicycle, and velocity. Today I got a couple hundred bucks worth of food for CC (I don’t shop for me, remember? I forage like a rat, it’s so much more exciting) and wobbled home at about 3 mph….the picture of errand efficiency.
Kid at the Good Earth gave me a spontaneous shoulder-pat, saying “You’re great!” as I bagged up the groceries, baby bok choi on the bottom, 10-lb sack of potatoes on top).

He said he was Patrick and no, he didn’t know me. Just a spontaneous outburst of esteem, the kind of thing that makes Fairfax so bloody fair.

I had admired two different women’s outfits on my way into town: one was an Edward Gorey masterpiece in dark Victorian hues, topped with a grand black hat, and the other was a Bo-Peep frilled pantatlette vision in sheperdess pulchritude, set off atop black and white striped Pippi longstockings.

Man, life is good.

But you do have to pay bills, not just swan around town admiring the well-dressed denizens, and grabbing clothes from free boxes for future (2015 A.D at the earliest) ‘projects’.

Here’s my resume for receptionist at the extremely snooty Bay Club Day Spa.  I figured that their ad in Craig’s List meant they would be hip enough to read between the lines in my resume.

Never heard back, so I called three times to follow up the paper resume I’d wowed them with , and the contents of which are set forth below:

Jacquie Phelan 540 Dogbark Drive Fairfax CA 94930 415-459-etc.

Spa Receptionist

 

Key Skills

• Customer attunement
• Adept verbal/written skills in MS Office, Filemaker, WordPress
• Personable, attractive, impeccable memory for names, faces and voices.
• Telephonic talent, sales wizardry.
• Computer skills : Word, Excel, Power Point, Photoshop

 

Professional  Experience

 

Freelance writer, fitness topics Pacific Sun 1994-present
Professional Bicycle Racer 1983-1994

Women’s Fitness Center receptionist and trainer,  Fairfax CA 1984-1986

Solarius Fitness Center receptionist and trainer, San Francisco, CA 1980-1984

Adept first-point-of-contact person

Commended for ability to pacify the impossible, and solve member’s difficulties.

Understands the value of word-of-mouth membership referrals.

Able to create  reports, swab down machinery and locker rooms, attend to whirlpool details and always have a stack of fresh towels at the ready, with one hand tied behind my back.

”Jacquie’s role in cycling  bicycle culture assured that a much larger population (and more diverse, both age and genderwise) enjoys the outdoors in Marin. She is sure to be an asset to the Bay Club as the  Sanctuary Spa receptionist.”
Marilyn Price

Trips For Kids

info@tripsforkids.org 415-454-1389

“You’d be good for the Bay Club”

Bonnie Phippen

Mill Valley, Bay Club Marin member

415-383-ETC&

And then, of course, the cover letter:

Bay Club Marin

220 Corte Madera Town Center

Corte Madera CA 94926

March 19, 2011

Dear Stacy

I’m interested in applying for the job listed in Craiglist for Sanctuary Spa receptionist.

 

Please let me know if there is anything more  you’d like to know about me and my employment history. I’ve been self-employed most of my life but as the ‘gate person’ for novice mountain biking women for the last twenty five years, I think I know a little bit about the role of receptionist.

I know a lot about healing mud.
Feel free to call if you are interested in interviewing me in person.
I’d really relish the chance to serve the legendary Bay Club in this vital capacity. Sincerely,    Jacquie Phelan

Dear reader/rider

 

 

 

Bread Pudding & Sage Brown Butter

Today I get a visit from Swiss bikeshop owner and fierce vintage bike collector Peter Stutz.
Since I like to feed folks, I added a layer of finesse to my staple, savory  bread pudd.
Sage brown butter caught my attention a few years ago, and when I make pasta and don’t want to bother with sauce, I saute some sage leaves.
This is an actual sauce (the bread pudd was drier than usual).

Check ‘er out:

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 8 sage leaves or a couple TB of sage bits
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1/4 cup grated hard cheese

Directions

Melt butter in a  heavy bottom  skillet until golden brown. Add sage leaves (SIZZZLE!)  and turn down heat. Add lemon juice , some stock (today I used water from cooked dried beans),  cheese, stir. Don’t let the stove catch on fire (hot butter scares me this way).
The smoke was thick, I had to open up doors. In winter this means house gets cool, which when I’m fixing food is a blessing.

The bread pudding was simple: chopped stale sourdough (3 cups), four eggs beaten with a cup of milk (should have been two) and a pint of ricotta. Lay bread in oiled or parchmented baking dish, chop up VERY FINELY a half onion, several leaves of kale, any sort, and a couple stalks of celery. Alternate: saute the celery & onions but not the kale) in butter, then mix with egg slurry).

Pour it all over the  bread, bake at 350 for 45 min.

Pour brown scary butter sauce over it.

Black Mountain Cycles Afternoon

After ten days home, twas time to make someone do the nasty job of resurrecting my poor touring bike from the near-dead.

I’d put away most of my exploded luggage

I re-learned how to make a fire in the Jotul. The Clean Way.

I”d deferred maintenance long enough. But I don’t LIKE working on bikes.
Geoff H. was going to go out to the Best Shop In The County (and best-hidden!), aka Black Mountain Cycles, so he let me and pieces-of-Bruiser come along.
My 1995 Breezer Lightening used to go by the name of  “Steal This Bike”,  since it was mass produced, and not my size.

(Spoiled Woman Alert!)

Too-long top tube, icky seat angle, wrong stem, bars, etc.. everything in need of  mollification. All the tweaks Charlie performed (read “investment of time”)  make “Steal” impossible to let go of.  Not even the crushing, ripping damage inflicted by that pickup truck (the one I left my bike lying in front of, out of view) three years ago was able to kill ol’  STB.

Now  I call it  Bruiser. Bruiser sallied forth onto delightfully technical trails of New Zealand with a shrug and a rattle, but never a complaint.  Em  (Power Girl) Miazga doted Bruiser’s “prowess”  when we did Coppermine ride outside of Nelson, a body-slammer of a descent.

Home grown french fries+silk skirt=bad idea?

Serious heft

The only thing I felt like doing today was reading cool stuff on the web.

First, a few words from a women’s publication I’d never heard of: BITCH magazine.   In it,  Joshunda Saunders writes “Eat, Pray, Spend” , a critical look at “priv/lit”, which is self-help writing/preaching to  the choir (upper middle class women readers).  This is  a hundred and thirty year tradition: advice that spurs sales of products that ‘fix’ problems both real and created. Products that coincidentally are advertised in the magazine being read by the self-help seekress.

Saunders mentions a more credible, less ‘subsidized’  writer (Eat Pray Love‘s year was underwritten by a book publisher!) . I’d never heard of the more scrupulous writer–Paige Williams)– so had to read HER stuff…dig up her website (she’s a journalist/writing professor), which catapulted me  into her article about a woman my age who’d written “Possum Living“  35 years ago. “Dolly Freed” (cute pseudonym) was 18 at the time, and successfully sold some publisher her anything-but-humble instructions on living the good life outside the money economy.
The only thing I could do after all this reading was :

a) write a fan note to Ms. Williams and

b) dig around in the potato patch and flip some compost.

Results: unrealistic hopes of a return note, a good appetite, and one  monster potato  mortally wounded with the shovel.  We can’t eat the potatoes fast enough, and often let potatoes sprout. This ‘reaching out’ reminds you to eat ‘em.    I had to cook my prize out of compassion– it’s injured… I’ll make oven fries and end its misery…. I might even notice this ‘same-day freshness’ thing everyone obsesses about. I’m so happy with third-rate dumpster produce, I forget that the real deal is twenty feet away, if I’d just go grub it up.

Feast for one: brew, fries, and very hot collard kimchee

While it was  baking, I pulled out an iridescent orange/pink  silk  wiggle skirt I’d found , probably hurled by some 110-lb  style junkie.  It looks like it’s about three months out of fashion. Orange is still hot , you know. Toyed with the idea of cutting it up and making a splendid tea cozy, but then thought about the slave labor that went into creating the garment–the zipper, the hem, the slit up the side, the facing on the waist…how dare I slash such skilled handiwork?

Charlie took pictures after I’d packed myself into it…you  decide: does that plate of french fries make my butt look fat?

Can you say: "Chorizo"?

Me and my size Naan Jimmy Chews

in-sole-ent behavior

We had a guest yesterday, the fast-growing Patrick Farrell, who first visited us as a pup still at UC School o’ Journalism, writing a story on the politics of mountain biking.

He’s a Nebraska boy who now–five years  after that interview–has been to Kyrgistan, Africa, and Milpitas to write about things ranging from table tennis prodigies to geopolitics to young urban subsistence hunters.
It was too damp to muddy up my bikes (I’m unwilling to do a minute of maintenance per minute of riding) so I proposed having lunch in the Habitat.
“I’ve got some nice insoles” I told him.

“Plus two kinds of soup: sweet potato health glop and chicken soup with all the bones left in.”

Nothing but the best for my guests!

Passionfruit in December!

flower

droop!

While waiting for a Christmas concert to start in freezing Sausalito, I loitered in the SBC church basement of  when a singer came in waving a fistful of  pink flowers.

This late in the year, it’s rare to see pink, and I had her tell me precisely how to find her parking spot on Harrison street, up seven flights of stairs above the church.

At home, CC and I polished off a few of the fruit I’d found lying in the gutter …THEN we looked it up on the web.

In our research, CC and I turned up the amazing Jackie French, an Australian writer of 80 books, one of which I own (“Diary of a Wombat”, illustrated by Bruce___).

Turns out Ms. French keeps a gorgeous house, and has a garden that among many other things features precisely the unusual, droopy fruit with gorgeous pink-purple flower that Julie stole from a hedge last night.

In case the flower and fruit prove to be too excitingly delicious, the antidote is conveniently located in the vine’s three-lobed leaves…the web tells us that  passiflorine is  a glycoside proven for centuries to calm a body down…hence all the passionflower (leaf) tea on the healthfood store shelves..

Green: The vibrant color of cress and feijoa

the interior of these are like Persian rugs, or brain scans, or ....

Out in the hills on a bike ride today I immediately realize my error in not packing along a couple of plastic bags as I roamed fifty-plus mile into West Marin’s farmland and ranches being sold to create subdivisions (mansions only). Two places for sale, the Borello ranch (670 acres or so) and some other one, 1000 acres. Longtime residents are cashing out.
The 800 acre beauty, the one on Wilson Hill has been developed into a wine yard, sadly. The colored vines arrayed along the road and up the hill mean “there goes the neighborhood”.
Out with the unpainted barn, the cowshit-smeared road (how I miss it, I do, I do!)
the roses on the fence and the laundry on the line. In with the wine. The olives. The car collections.
Mustn’t whine.
I drink wine.
I like local products.
The first find, at the corner of Creek Rd and ooh I can’ tell you, was the first feijoa of fall.
Er, ‘autumn’ .
Mark Fitz sez  his wife, downhill champ Marla Streb,   refuses to utter the word ‘fall’ because it’s bad ju-ju.
I stuffed about two dozen nice big fat “Martian lemons” in my jersey, and found a bag to put them in further up the street, stashed the full bag deep in the brambles in the next block. Over 50 miles fruit–any kind–in your back pocket will become salty, gooey compost.
Head out west to the farmlands and soon-to-be patchwork of palaces on 10 acre plots. Daydream about how very similar this all seems to 1981, the year I dove into racing, time trialled up that road (permanently earning the opprobrium of the Boys Of Summer, thanks to my sketchy judgement in the s-turn section) and really, it’s not all that different except traffic is way up, maybe five fold since 25 years ago.

Around the dam-side of the Nicasio reservoir there is a roadside ditch that always has watercress. In recent years the ditch has been eradicated, save near the Tocaloma Bridge, and there I threw down my bike (sorry, carefully laid ‘er down on the non-derailleur side).
Tip toed into the mire, and pulled out two handfuls of the fresh stems and leaves.
It’s an easy-to-pick-herb, nothing stringy or tough about it. But because of its need to have wet feet it’ wouldn’t be easy to cultivate.

Making it all the more Desirable to have on the dinner table.

Roussel-Uclafoutis

Just made myself a blackberry and dried cherry clafouti. It looked so good in the dish yesterday, but today it looks tired and deflated. Sort of an aborted dessert. At which point, this heinous pun headline popped into my head…. Roussel-Uclafoutis.  A controversial dish, universally appreciated. Best when enjoyed within a few hours of pullling out of the oven…

O.K. Now what am I ‘really’ saying? Roussel-Uclaf is the drug company that makes RU-40, the abortificaent that keeps a few million women from poverty by allowing them to hold off on delivering a baby until they, the mom are ready (hence the ‘out of the oven’ reference).

I might be too chicken to be truly cointreauversial…but had to commit this food-pun to cybertype…