Dear Scott,
I made you this internet collage comprised of (beautiful) images that remind me of you. I really hope you like it.
Love,
Taylor
Happiest of days to you, friend. I hope your weekend is full of even better things than Ellie giving the sneaky middle finger to you in a photo, though it’s hard to imagine what’s better than that.
I’m writing a cookbook
it’s a sequel
to the much-renowned
& world-beloved
Joy of Cooking.
Mine’s about disasters
that occur
in the kitchen.
It’s called
The OY! of Cooking.
(illustration via The Studio of Summer Pierre)
Let me tell you
about a spicy experience
a very spicy experience indeed
when I made pickled horseradish
from thick dirty roots Misha dug up
from our little vineyard in the frontyard
which I washed and scrubbed in the sink
with a round bristled brush and let them soak
in the righthand sink and peeled them with a lefty peeler
and chopped them and threw them in the Cuisinart with salt
and whey and pulsed it pulsed it added water blended it until HOT DIGGETY OUCH
I ran yelling from the stuff when I opened the lid and horseradish slid down
my throat and in through my eyes and cut off my breath and my tears
and cleared my sinuses. Hot damn, not since hot sauce have I been
that spiced outta town. Now the stuff’s in jars, stuff you’d say
you’d never eat and I rarely eat it either but every year
there it is on the seder plate and Geoff from work
tells me you can take a tablespoon of it
with lemon juice to cure an asthma
attack and hey if horseradish
is just out there growing
in your yard all free
and spicy, you’d
jar it, too.
First harvest.
Many of the houses on our hill and on surrounding hills are huge estates. Acres and acres of lawn. One lone, beautiful building. Like something Hopper would paint, or has.
(Edward Hopper, “House by the Railroad,” 1925.)
In the belly
baguette in spicy olive oil
eggplant parmesan (homemade!)
gazpacho (homemade!)
English muffins (homemade!)
wild grape jam (made by Misha’s dad!)
fresh burrata
dark chocolate
On the table
pint of raspberries
plums
eggplants
apple chips
summer’s last cantaloupe
a tiny tower of sheep cheese
small, wussy avocadoes (we’re not in California anymore…)
black turtle beans
In the yard
calendula
hops
raspberries
cherry tomatoes
rose hips
three types of grapes
black apricot trees
various plum trees
apple trees
thyme
lime thyme (!)
acorns
horseradish
Jerusalem artichoke (l’chaim)
Chutzpah (pronounced huuts-pah) is a Yiddish word used by Jews and non-Jews alike to describe someone who is particularly audacious or has a major guts, or, more crudely put, someone with balls.
All I ever wanted was a hip-hop bat mitzvah!!
I mean Drake got one, and Lil Weezy was there in a panda mask, so can I have one, too?
plus I made smashed potatoes with fresh chives and rosemary. the matzoh balls are made with spelt matzoh and coconut oil and the charoset has organic diced sour cherries in it. in honor of tradition, i’ve cleaned the house of (some) crumbs. and i’ll be very, very hungry by the time we eat (it’s not passover unless you’re starved by the process!). happy first night of passover/and happy easter on sunday/& happy springtime coming in/& a very happy full moon to us & plants. amen.
C: It’s as if someone handed him a Magic Hat, but he was like, “Nah, I’m good with this Natty Ice.”
T: It’s like if someone gave him a pressed sandwich with Portobello mushrooms, sautéed onions, and fresh cheese from a goat and he said, “No thanks, I’ll just have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
C: Exactly! Go fuck your pb and j!
T: YEAH! Who turns down a panini??!
You know I used to play tennis with Robin Williams’ mother. She had her own way she liked to play: we would just hit the ball back and forth, no games, no sets, and sometimes it would finish and someone would get a point or they wouldn’t. She was really a very quirky woman, a real character, I think that’s where he got his sense of humor from. She used to put Band-Aids on the sides of her eyes like this to give herself “facelifts.” And she had this great story about her friend. This friend never did laundry because she was always playing tennis! And this went on for many weeks and her husband was, you can understand, getting a little annoyed with her, he said, I don’t even have any clean socks! But she loved playing tennis so much that she never had time to wash their clothes! So one day what she did was she took all of their socks, and she put them all in the dryer! She didn’t even wash them first! And then they all went back in the drawer! God knows if her husband even noticed!
panache, perhaps 