The Yellow House

During the harvest and crush this year, Ben used a phrase that I latched onto. When racking wine in its initial stages of fermentation, the winemaker Ben works for calls for “big air”—pouring the wine from one container to another from a great height, to ensure that oxygen comes in contact with the juice. In winemaking, a certain amount of oxygenation of the juice is a good thing: it helps to stabilize the wine, protect it, and develop in the bottle. Too much oxygen during barrel- and bottle-age though, produces oxidation, a flaw. I love that idea. Taking a risk, to be sure. But that risk, in prudent amounts, protects and encourages growth. The next months will be a whirlwind—really, they already should be, but I’m a bit in denial. In two days, Ben and I are moving to a new home. It is old (the original part of the house was built in 1760). It is rural (it sits on 5+ acres and is surrounded by more vacant land). Ben is also going to Uruguay for three months to apprentice during the southern hemisphere harvest. Conveniently, though, he’ll have two whole weeks to settle into this house that I impulsively decided we needed to live in, before he leaves. Before he goes to Uruguay, we are taking a trip to Buenos Aires. After I get back from Buenos Aires, I have just a few days before I fly to Indonesia for work.Somewhere in there, Christmas and New Year’s have to happen. But I haven’t quite worked that out yet. » Click to read more

Do you make rules for yourself? I started to write this post, and then realized that I might sound a little crazy, talking about lists of rules I self-enforce. I don’t mean self-denial or masochism. They’re silly rules, but they’re useful. For instance, there is a growing list of publications I’m no longer allowed to read on the train home, because I am statistically more likely to stop at the grocery store and impulse-buy ingredients for recipes that I need to have if I read them. No looking at the Anthropologie catalogue, ever (for similar reasons). No drinking an entire bottle of red wine by myself on a Sunday. I’m joking about the last one. Sort of.Similarly, there is a list of states in which I should not allow myself to go to a farmer’s market. There was that time I was starved for color during a week of grey days and bought radishes just because they were so rosy. Or the time I got peach-drunk on the promise of summer and brought home a bushel of peaches. Then, when summer was waning, I became a bit obsessive about wringing the last drops out of the season, and bought every single forlorn, split tomato from a farmstand. I am a woman that needs a little structure, if nothing else, for the sake of my budget. » Click to read more

Most recent in the “I never stop learning” chapters of my life was getting schooled on the subtleties of endive. As it turns out, that which I know as “endive” is technically “Belgian endive”. Confusingly, “endive” can refer to what most people call “frisée” (the curly-leafed, spindly salad green) and also “escarole.” All of them—Belgian endive, frisée, escarole (also known as “broad-leaf endive”)—are in the chicory family, but are the leaves of chicory plants, not the roots (which is the chicory we might think of as a coffee substitute). All of this newfound endive knowledge was conferred onto me by a very zealous farmstand helper who must have had a lot of coffee to start off his day (caffeinated, not the chicory kind). I almost wished I hadn’t asked about the word “Belgian” on the sign. But the endive zealot finished his polemic with a fact that left me walking away feeling as if I had tucked a few treasures in my basket: there are only one or two commercial producers of Belgian endive in the U.S., so even in the grocery store, it is very rare to find a Belgian-style endive grown in the States. » Click to read more