Just because everyone should know, and I’m never sure who stumbles across this domain: All Strangers Are Kin is out in paperback March 7. Available at fine bookstores everywhere.
All further book details are over at www.allstrangersarekin.com.
And my personal site is www.zoraoneill.com.
And, because I still like writing small things from time to time, I also have a newsletter.
No, really, this is the last post ever! As most of you know, my book All Strangers Are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World is coming June 14, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Throw me your email address, and I’ll deliver you a handful of essential, entertaining bulletins about the book and events surrounding it. (You can bet there’ll be some really good food.)
A few ways to explore:
As I said two weeks ago, I’m shutting down this blog. This is my last post ever! Thanks for reading, lo these 12 long years.
As a guidebook author, I have rented a crazy amount of cars, in lots of different countries. Two of my most popular posts ever were about renting cars in Mexico.
I’m sure I still don’t know everything. But here are the basics for anyone looking to get a better deal.
1. You probably don’t need to buy extra insurance…except when you do.
[NOTE: the following applies to rentals made via US websites, using US-issued credit cards. I can’t vouch for what rules apply to Europeans.]
You’ll get pressure to buy insurance. But if you’re renting with a decent US-issued credit card, one of its perks is probably rental-car collision insurance (covering the damage you might do to the car). Most MasterCards come with 14 days’ coverage; Visas usually offer 30.
But don’t take my word for it! Definitely check your card’s terms before your trip. Also ask whether the coverage is primary (you can claim on it first) or secondary (you’d have to first claim with your personal car insurance, if you have it). Once you have that sorted, you can confidently “decline the CDW” (as the collision coverage is usually abbreviated on contracts) at the rental counter.
Note that you can go without collision insurance completely (at least as far as I know re: US and Mexico; laws may be different in other countries). That means you’re taking all the risk yourself, and of course you have to be OK with that risk.
If you decline the CDW (whether because you have coverage through your credit card, or you’re just a risk taker), the car company will want to guarantee you don’t wreck the car and never pay up. So it will usually put a hold for several thousand dollars on your credit card until you return the car.
As for the other key insurance, liability insurance (what you might do to other cars/people while driving): it is required pretty much everywhere in the world.
In the US, most states require the car companies (not you, the customer) to pay for the liability insurance. This is called primary liability insurance, and even if it’s included in the rate, the staff will probably try to sell you supplemental liability insurance at the counter; you can safely say no, thanks (unless of course you are genuinely concerned about your liability risk).
But in some states, car companies are not required to pay for the liability insurance. In these states (California is the biggie), you must pay primary liability insurance at the counter (and, nastily, it’s not usually flagged up in the rate you’re quoted online). However, if you own a car in the US, your own personal car insurance will probably cover your liability, and you can “decline the LDW” without worry. (Again, check before your trip.) If you don’t own a car, alas, you do have to buy liability insurance in the states it’s required.
As for other countries, most also require rental companies to pay for liability insurance, but there are exceptions–such as Mexico. And there, I learned, some companies (such as Hertz) carry the insurance themselves, while others don’t, and pass the fee on to you. But even if they provide primary liability themselves, they will cheerfully try to sell supplemental coverage–so you need to read the fine print. See here (point #6) for more.
2. Start your search wide.
Run a quick search at Kayak.com to get an idea of the range of rates for the trip you want. Target the lowest prices from the international chains (Hertz, Avis, etc).
Avoid Enterprise where possible. They nickel-and-dime to a sometimes excruciating degree, in my experience. Although in smaller cities, they are sometimes the only option, and can be perfectly great.
3. Join the club.
Whatever company you’re considering renting from, join their frequent-renters club. It comes with automatic 10-15% discounts.
You can also set up preferences for airline discounts (below), and also request not to be given the insurance hard sell when you pick up your car.
4. Get discounts from airlines.
Most airlines–and Amtrak–offer significant discounts at car rental companies. For this, you have to book through the airline’s engine or get a code to punch in at the car-rental website. (For both, go to the frequent-flier part of the website, look under ‘earn miles’ then ‘car rentals.’)
Try a few different ones–they vary a lot depending on the time of year and where you’re renting. (It’s easier to just try the search with the code/engine, rather than parsing the fine print and deciding whether the rules apply.)
I usually check American, United and Amtrak. And because I’ve signed up at a couple of different car companies’ clubs (step #2), I can store the discount codes there.
5. Try an off-airport location.
Some airports charge crazy fees for car rentals. Going to a “suburban” location in the same city can save a ton of money, more than the cost of a taxi to that location. And there’s usually no added fee for returning the car to the airport (but double-check).
6. It costs nothing to cancel a car reservation.
If you see something good, book it. You can always cancel it later, with no penalty.
(Obviously don’t book the prepaid option!)
7. Rental rates change all the time.
After you make your booking(s), check back a few times before your trip. You will probably be surprised, horrified or indignant about how much the rates change, and often for the lower.
Console yourself by feeling smug when you book the new, better rate.
8. Choose prepaid only close in.
When you’re within 4 days or so of your trip, and you’re pretty certain everything’s a go, then you can choose a prepaid discount, if you see a good one.
Now’s also the time to check www.hotwire.com, which does “blind booking” for car rentals, where it shows only the price, not the company. If you see a crazy bargain here, be sure you’re checking the price with all fees and taxes. If it’s still lower than what you have lined up, then go for it.
Honestly, I barely mess with prepaid deals, because it makes me feel all jinx-y about my trip! But sometimes I’ll check the day before I fly and switch to prepaid if it’s better.
9. It’s fairly easy to claim on insurance, if you need to.
I’m not saying you should be a cavalier driver or anything, but at least don’t fret too much if you do damage your car somehow. The paperwork, in my experience with both Visa and American Express, has been pretty easy, and the settlement happens within about four months.
If you do have some kind of incident, don’t move your car without making contact with your car-rental company. It will send an adjuster to document the situation.
10. If your car needs towing, don’t call the rental company.
Well, OK: if you car has some kind of mechanical failure, then yes, call the phone number on the rental agreement. This is the car company’s responsibility, and they should deal with it first.
But if you, for example, follow bad GPS directions and wind up stuck on a sandy forest road, don’t call the car company. In this case (as the tow-truck guy advised me), you should look first online (if at all possible) to find the closest (physically) tow-truck company. Call them directly.
Towing companies charge starting from when they start driving toward you…wherever they are. (Keep this in mind when you hear the hourly rate.) That’s why you want someone close.
And your car rental company charges a service fee ($75, in the case of Hertz) to connect you to a local towing company. Which is why you don’t want to bother getting them involved.
I haven’t looked into it (but probably should), but of course AAA is an option. Even if you don’t own a car, membership may be handy if you rent a lot.
11. Don’t take your car on dirt roads (if you can avoid it).
Car rental companies tend to think this is so blindingly obvious, they don’t mention it. But often they have clauses that say the insurance is voided if you’re on a dirt road. (Check with your credit card’s collision insurance too.)
Happy, cheaper driving! Any questions? I know I said I’m killing off the blog, but of course I’ll answer comments!
As I said in my last post, I’m about to shut this blog down for good. But before I go, I’m posting all the nitty-gritty logistical stuff I currently know about travel. This post is about airfares. Next week’s is about renting cars.
There are a million blogs that drill down deep into the world of booking flights. But unless you’re flying every month, I doubt you’re reading them–and they’re so full of jargon and codes, you can’t understand them anyway.
So here’s my starter set of tips for people who buy airplane tickets only once or twice a year.
1. Check a few websites.
But not all of them! It’s easy to make yourself crazy.
For domestic flights, you likely won’t find a lot of variance. But for international trips, some sites are better than others at digging up weird routings.
My starting points are:
*Annoyingly, sometimes the various big US airlines (American, Delta, United) also decide not to participate in aggregate-search sites. As I’m writing this, I think that might be happening with American and Delta. So if you notice a conspicuous absence of results from one airline, I guess bite the bullet and go check directly at their websites. Argh.
2. Look at one-ways.
If round-trips are looking higher than you want, try breaking your trip into two one-ways. On almost all domestic routes, this works fine and often better, because you can cherry-pick flight times and prices. I fly JetBlue to Albuquerque, for example, because I like that nonstop flight–but flying back, I go with American or United, because I can’t hack JetBlue’s red-eye.
On international routes, it’s not quite so foolproof, but it’s worth a shot.
3. Pick the right dates.
Flying mid-week (Tues, Wed, Thurs) is usually cheaper than other days.
On the other hand, that old rule about staying over a Saturday night is rarely true anymore.
4. Look beyond your destination.
If you’re flying to a city that’s a hub for an airline, it may very well be cheaper to buy a ticket to somewhere else, routing through the city you want, and then just toss the second leg.
For example, this past summer I wanted to go to Salt Lake City. But it was cheaper to buy a ticket to Park City, via Salt Lake, and just skip out on the last leg.
NOTE: You must travel with only carry-on luggage, as the airlines don’t like this practice (it’s called “hidden-city ticketing” if you want to read more about it) and will not check your bags only halfway.
To find these kinds of deals, start at skiplagged.com.
5. You can cancel in the first 24 hours.
This is a biggie! All US-based airlines will cancel your ticket and refund all of your money, no fee and no questions asked, within 24 hours of purchase.
The exception is American, though it’s not really an exception, just a different way of offering the same thing. On the American website, you can place your reservation on hold for 24 hours before purchasing. (Look for the “hold” button at the bottom right, as an alternative to credit cards, PayPal, etc.)
A lot of international airlines do this too, provided the ticket starts in the US. Google “[airline] 24 hour cancellation” and see what pops up.
6. Book directly with the airline when you can.
Orbitz et al. (aka online travel agents, or OTAs) add almost zero value, and if you need to make changes, they actually make your life a lot harder (“Sorry, we can’t help you—contact the airline”; “sorry, we can’t help—call your travel agent”).
So if you find a deal on one of the OTAs, try searching on the main carrier (or, if it’s a foreign airline, its US-based partner) to see if you can replicate it.
Sometimes, though, you can’t find the same price at an airline’s site, and you’ll have to go with the OTA. That’s not the end of the world. Just be prepared for serious phone time if you need to make changes.
7. Set up a frequent-flier account, even if you’re not playing the miles game.
Having login info at the airline website just makes it easier to check your flight details, change seats, etc.
8. You might be able to afford business class.
Biz-class fares to Europe drop very low in summer and over holidays like Thanksgiving, while coach class spikes.
On some routes in summer 2015, the difference was only $300 or so. Summer biz-class sales usually start in the spring, but can pop up any time after that.
9. Let luck rule.
If you’re not sure where you want to go, keep an eye on theflightdeal.com. It’s probably the current best site for random deals (airfarewatchdog.com is also good).
The instructions on how and where to find the particular flights are very detailed, and this can at first can look overwhelming. Don’t get stressed—just take it step by step.
In the process, you’ll learn some of the trickier ways to search for flights (and you won’t need my help anymore!).
10. There might be a better way than flying.
Check rome2rio.com. Especially good if you want to fly in to one city and out of another, and need to know how to get between the two.
They say “ciao aleikum”! (But…no, they do not reply “waleikum ciao”–alas.)
Aaaaand that’s what I’m just about to say to you now. This blog is so long in the tooth. Twelve years old, which is at least 96 in Internet years. For most of 2015, it was just stashed in the retirement home, off in a corner chair, staring into space.
All last year’s highlights happened mostly off-blog:
Most everything happening with me these days is over on Facebook (especially the refugees part, which is ongoing), Twitter (itty-bitty travel commentary) and a bit on Instagram.
(And then of course there’s the book…did I mention the book? You can preorder it here and here.)
I’ve scheduled two more posts, totally practical ones where I’m dumping all my hard-earned wisdom about booking airplane tickets and renting cars. (Burning questions? Email me or ask in the comments. I’ll work them in!)
And then I’m going to put this dozy li’l Roving Gastronome to bed.
Thanks for reading along all this time. This blog has been invaluable in helping me develop as a writer, and I wouldn’t have bothered to do it without all your positive feedback along the way.
For the last two weeks, I was on the island of Mytilene (aka Lesvos or Lesbos) in Greece. Peter and I go every other summer or so–he’s been going since 1992. It just so happened this summer the island is inundated with refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and more, who are taking boats over from the Turkish coast.
I wrote a lot about the people I met at the refugee camps on my personal Facebook page, and near the end of the trip, I collected donations from friends to redistribute directly to refugees and to give to volunteers on Mytilene for supplies.
Some people missed that window to donate, so I’m posting a few options for helping out here, if you are so moved.
1) See what the Lesvos Volunteers group needs.
This is a kind of umbrella website for all the volunteers on Mytilene (a few are mentioned below). I have met and/or worked with almost all of them, and can vouch for their efficacy. As of now (early October), this website is the best way to figure out what they need.
This is because–fortunately!–the various specific volunteer groups have gotten a lot of press and subsequent donations. So their needs are now quite specific.
One of those needs, it must be said, is people, on the ground helping. If you are at all entertaining thoughts of going to Greece, and you’re a self-starter who can see what needs doing and just do it, they could use you.
2) Send a shipment of supplies via Amazon.
I set up an Amazon.co.uk wish list with basic gear for kids and adults. (Shipping from the UK to Greece is cheaper than from the US.) If you’re based in the US, ideally order with a credit card that doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee (a lot of cards charge 3%).
The list is now maintained by Philippa and Eric Kempson, a British couple who live in Eftalou, on the north coast near Molyvos, where many refugees arrive. They and their team help people out of the water, feed them, get them warm clothes. I first read about them in this story.
3) Donate to the NGO O Allos Anthropos.
Here is a GoFundMe page I set up with Annia Ciezadlo. [EDITED: We paused donations for now so I could send a chunk of money. If we gather too much at once, it’s a mess to move it all! Bear with us.]
I cooked with them a bit one day, and Annia went a second time, and wrote this great piece about it.
This is a wonderful team of Athens-based volunteers who came to Mytilene to cook at the refugee camps. While many refugees are not poor, they are still traveling on extremely limited funds (who knows when they’ll work again?), so a hot meal from these guys is a balm for the soul. For others who are totally broke, this is the only real food they’ll get.
4) Wire money to the NGO Angalia. [As of 23 September: HOLD OFF for now! They are swamped with donations and can’t manage it all at once.]
Angalia (it means ‘hug’ in Greek; also spelled Agkalia) is a three-person organization that spends all donations directly. It was started by a Greek priest (he just passed away September 1)–read about him on the UNHCR blog. I met another member of the NGO, Giorgos Tyrikos, in Kalloni and immediately gave him cash. He was off to buy sandwich fixings. They do good work. See the bank-transfer details below.
If wiring money to a random bank account in Greece makes you nervous, or your bank charges terrible fees drop me an email. I’m happy to take cash via PayPal myself, then wire money in a lump sum, to minimize the cost.
You can also use the new service TransferWise, which sends money internationally with very low fees. And if you use this referral link, you get a kickback and so do I–I will donate mine to Angalia.
4) Donate to International Rescue Committee.
This is the most conventional thing to do–it’s tax-deductible and all. Of course there’s some overhead, and not all your cash will go to help people. But I can definitely vouch for the IRC.
In the short time I was on Mytilene, they did two substantially great things at Kara Tepe: laid down gravel to keep the dust down in the camp, and built shower stalls for women. Since then, they’ve done even more, such as running buses to spare refugees the 40-mile walk across the island.
Giorgos of Angalia also had a fantastic story about an IRC rep handing him an envelope full of cash earlier in the summer, on the first day Greece kicked in the capital controls–Giorgos had donated money waiting in the bank, but couldn’t withdraw it. IRC gave him 5K euros to buy food.
Many thanks in advance, and even if you can’t help now, at least keep these refugees in your thoughts.
ADDITIONALLY, for anyone with contacts in Greece: Information is in very short supply for refugees. Here is a Greek-Arabic phrase list–please distribute to anyone you know working with refugees in Greece. Also, please share this map of Mytiline island (PDF, good for printing; JPG, good for viewing on phones), with the various camps marked. And here is a Google map, for online reference.
Oh, hello there. I briefly forgot I had a blog! But the electronic record must show some exciting developments in the realm of words printed on paper.
The Crimson Sofa All Strangers Are Kin is delivered and accepted, as they say in the biz.
(In the biz, this also means I finally got PAID again. Writing a book is the most nonsensical “job” ever. Happy May Day, everyone!)
So that means (because this is printed on paper), publication date for my travel memoir about why it’s worth learning Arabic, despite the grief it can cause, is June 2016. Yes, that’s more than a year from now. No, I cannot tell you why it takes that long.
But production is moving along at a rapid clip (copy editing is in process; I’ve seen one cover mockup already), so there will be more news soon.
2) Moon Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque is out in a new full-color edition!
OK, maybe not at this moment “out” in stores, but I got a big box of them the other day, and they look lovely. If you’re planning a trip to fair New Mexico, pick one up.
(If you’ll go farther afield, remember there’s also Moon New Mexico, also now full-color, and only a year old.)
3) The beautiful New Mexico Farm Table Cookbook is out.
I have nothing personally to do with this except that you’ll see my name on back under a very excited blurb. It is a beautiful book! And, to quote myself, it does go way beyond the classic red and green chile dishes. Beautiful photos, and recipes from a huge variety of restaurants all over the state.
Try out the Los Poblanos Pork with Modern Soubise (p122), would ya, and tell me how it is?
I can’t do it myself now because I’m off to back-of-beyond Greece for a couple of weeks. Much needed hiking trip, because…
4) I’m updating the Lonely Planet USA guide.
Not the whole thing, just the NY/NJ/PA chapter. But even that involves a ton of driving and a lot of road food (hence the need for hiking). Man, America. You gotta get with the program on vegetables!
(Welcome exceptions: Moosewood and Stonecat Cafe. In a perfect world, I’d have a whole post about eating at Moosewood, finally, after living out of one their cookbooks for so long in Egypt. But I gotta go pack.)
I’ll be heading up to the Adirondacks and out to Long Island when I get back from Greece. More news then…
So of course I would say Gabrielle Hamilton’s cookbook, Prune, is brilliant in nearly every way. Because I am the very person around which its conceit is built–I, the hapless line cook who might very well ruin everything if I’m left to my own devices.
But it’s also great because, contrary to appearance, it’s a solid book for a home cook. Prune, after all, is one of those rare restaurants that combines the specialness of dining out with the immediacy and simple satisfaction of eating at home. Even if you haven’t eaten there (or worked there), I think it’s possible to appreciate this book and learn from it.
First of all, YES, it sucks, there is no index. I almost didn’t buy the book, out of spite, and vain hope that a second printing would include an index. Then I decided I’d just make one myself. Or at least a master list of recipes, organized a little bit better. HERE IS MY INDEX FILE. Download away! Pass it around! Doctor it up the way that makes sense to you and print it out and tape it in the back of your book, like I did. (Also, here is an online index of sorts; the bonus is that it’s easily searchable. **And OH LOOK! Now there’s a PDF version of that online index, on the Prune website.**)
Aside from this, it’s a marvelously designed book. The “kitchen notebook” look may seem like a gimmick, but it’s not. That binder exists; I have worked from it. It is just as stained, scrawled on and taped up as the book looks. It’s also in drab old Times New Roman, just like that.
Also, the photos: Some are harsh or strange or blurry. But they’re real too, in a way that so many food photos aren’t today. Yes, the kitchen lights bounce off the stainless steel so much it strains the eyes. Yes, the range is greasy, and the steam from the roesti potatoes makes them look like some unfortunate shag carpeting. Yes, cardoons and beans look disgusting–but they taste great. That’s real life.
Which is funny, considering how cookbooks generally peddle in fantasy. Usually, they’re softer and fluffier fantasies: You host grand regional-Italian dinner parties, or you live at River Cottage and raise wholesome pigs and raspberry canes.
Prune presents a fantasy too, of course. But it’s a tougher one—you work in a restaurant. Not like in a reality show–but like in actual reality. You’re a lowly line cook, and you probably get paid $12 an hour, if you’re lucky (assuming wages have gone up in twelve years; I got $10). You don’t know half the words people are using, and you don’t know where to find the knife you need.
So, on first pass through this cookbook, give in to this fantasy. Don’t read thinking you’ll jump up and cook from it tonight. Read like you’ve just started a new job, and you are desperate to learn because you are in way over your head. (This book captures that feeling perfectly. By the time I got to the end, I was sweating and had a headache and wanted to throw the book down and run.) Read in fits and starts, grabbing what you can.
Close the book. Take a deep breath and be glad you don’t really have a job in a restaurant. That shit is hard work.
NOW you can go back and read it like a regular home cook, like you’re going to figure out what this book’s all about, and what you might cook from it.
But wait! Don’t start at the beginning. Read the “Family Meal” chapter, the last one. This is the actual introduction to the book, where Hamilton lays out the philosophy of her kitchen: thrift, creativity, clean presentation, the joy of feeding others. That’s what guides everything else in the book, and in the restaurant.
Next, give a quick skim through the “Prep Daily/Weekly” chapter. The sauces and spice mixes in here are the backbone of many of the recipes. Full recipes will cross-reference back here, and you want to have a passing familiarity with some of the more distinct combinations (Smoked Tomatoes, for instance, or Salsa Verde). This way, when you’re reading and deciding whether to cook a recipe that calls for one of these ingredients, you can imagine all the flavors in the dish.
Equally important, the “Prep Daily/Weekly” section gives you a little window into how a restaurant kitchen runs. Almost never is a dish cooked from scratch, but rather assembled from parts, many of which can be reconfigured.
I don’t normally think home cooks should mimic restaurant kitchens, because a lot of it is bullshit-fancy and inefficient. But Prune is not a bullshit-fancy restaurant–the first recipe in this book is canned sardines on Triscuits, after all, with strict instructions not to make them look too “restauranty.” And it is most definitely not inefficient. What the cookbook reveals is how a kitchen runs to keep cooking every day. You too, as a home cook, should aspire to have a system in place so you can cook every day without reinventing the wheel. Take the pan juices from one dish to spike another one; take the scraps from vegetables to bolster stock; heck, decorate with leek ends and hollow bones.
OK, NOW you can look at the recipes. It’s pretty much up to you from this point on. What you’re hungry for, what you feel up to tackling. Some dishes are easy; others are fiddly. Bite off what you can chew–and there’s plenty even for beginners to chew, especially the various stews and braises, and many of the vegetable preparations.
A lot of the reviews I’ve seen have wished this was a more user-friendly book. Really, it’s friendlier than it appears. It’s intense where it matters (Breton Butter Cake, my god). By contrast, where the instructions seem dangerously cavalier—those cases are almost always where if you wing it, you’ll probably be OK. Because in order to cook well, you, the home cook, need to do your own thing.
This isn’t the case in a restaurant, where consistency is what matters, and your job as a line cook is to perfectly reproduce the vision of the chef. But you don’t work in a restaurant, remember? Isn’t that a relief?
So this book is in fact nudging you, the non-professional, out into the world to cook better, gutsier food. Cooking is not a matter of quarter-teaspoons or simmering for precisely 12 minutes in precisely the right pan. Cooking is making do with what you have, and developing your own instinct for when vegetables will be just the right texture.
Rare for a restaurant cookbook, Prune is good at helping you develop that side of cooking. Discussing how long to cook eggs, GH warns that it can vary–are they cold from the fridge? In the roasted capon recipe, you get a great and thorough warning to keep an eye on the bird–sometimes your croutons can get too dry, or, if the bird is quite juicy, the crouton can get soggy. Paying attention to details like this and making adjustments as you go is how restaurant cooks make dishes consistently well, even with inconsistent ingredients. And this is how good home cooks succeed too. It is never due to setting a timer for exactly 48 minutes or whatever the book says.
Read the recipes for technique, and listen up when Hamilton hectors. Because what matters most of all is your attitude. Lazy, sloppy, making excuses–none of that is appreciated at Prune, or in any kitchen. “I understand the egregious lack of oven space here,” Hamilton writes in one recipe, “but let’s do things right anyway.” In that sentence is a pep talk for anyone with a too-small kitchen.
Thrift is critical too–and always key for a home cook. “Don’t throw your mistakes away” is a tip that comes along with a way to salvage cream past its sell-by date. It’s encouraging you not just to rethink your blunders, but to value ingredients. “This is how we show our respect for the people who made this,” Gabrielle once told me as she wiped a mustard jar clean with a spatula. The natural outgrowth of that attitude is the entire “Garbage” chapter, a beautiful testament to the nobility of scraps.
In this way–that is, in the way of putting you in the right mindset for running a good kitchen–the Prune cookbook is very helpful. You want the kind of rustic, tastes-like-the-home-you-never-had food that Prune serves? It’s all in here, and you can cook it.
GH’s only-in-this-restaurant-kitchen instructions actually strike me as a perverse reality check. This is how we do it, she’s saying, and you’ll never be able to do it quite this way. But that’s OK—we all know the restaurant thing is a conceit, a bit of fiction. The important, real thing is that you get in the kitchen and make it. What matters is that you care enough to make it good.
If you doubt this last part, go back and read the “Family Meal” section again.
Bonus glossary!
Here’s some lingo that caught my eye, and some of the more cryptic admonitions. Feel free to ask about others in the comments.
Balsamic = In the “Family Meal” section, GH says never to use this. That’s because the good stuff is insanely expensive and should not be tossed on a salad. (There’s also crappy balsamic vinegar, the cheap stuff you get at the supermarket. Presumably you could use this in a Prune family meal, but let’s be honest, there is something a bit cheesy about a balsamic vinaigrette. Salad should not be sweet. I wrote about the various grades of balsamic vinegar here.)
Blended oil/”our oil blend” = EVOO cut with vegetable oil, 70% EVOO/30% veg, for applications where EVOO would be overwhelming or a waste. (It’s explained on p463, but of course, without the index, you have no way of knowing this until you happen across it.)
Football = A plate shaped like a…football. Regular people would probably call it an oval. Of course, how you plate things in your own home is entirely up to you.
Half sheet = A full sheet pan is the right size to fit in one those rolling bakery racks; it is too big to fit in your home oven. A half sheet pan is, obviously, half that size and will fit in your home oven. (It is somewhat bigger than a cookie sheet you’d pick up in a grocery store, though.) A Silpat (nonstick mat) fits a half sheet pan perfectly.
Hotel pan = A deep rectangular stainless pan, the kind you see in hotel buffet lines, that slots into a counter with a steam bath underneath. Of course you won’t have one at home, and you won’t need one because you’re cooking smaller quantities. A flat-bottomed pot with straight, medium-heights sides will do. Also, there are third pans and half pans. See pics here. You don’t need any of them.
Quenelle = What’s wrong with a quenelle? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with a quenelle: It’s a bullshit high-toned unnatural shape for a scoop of ice cream. Would you make a quenelle at home? No, of course you would not. Plus, it requires the garde manger person to fiddle around with two damned spoons, when she could be doing something a lot more productive with her limited time and space.
Sacramento tomato juice = The internet swears this is the proper brand for Bloody Marys. (I personally have not developed my palate much in this respect; I have no idea.) The reason GH stresses this in the book is because she’s letting you know why her Bloody Marys taste so good. Should you not make a Bloody Mary from this book if you can’t find Sacramento tomato juice? Of course not!
Sally/salamander = When God makes open-face cheese sandwiches, he uses a sally and it’s all oozy and blistered brown in about six seconds. When you, mere mortal, want to broil something, you will have to use the thing in the top of your oven, or the broil setting in your toaster oven. It’s wimpy, but what’re you gonna do? (On the plus side, you will probably not inadvertently scorch your meal by turning your back for a second too long, nor will you singe all the hair off the back of your hand from reaching into your toaster oven, as you would in a sally.)
Wax = Jargon peculiar to Prune, I think, for a freebie given to a good or familiar guest. (I think it had something to do with bikini waxes, and zipping that charge right off the bill…maybe?)
This whole past year, I have been considering retiring this blog, and I still am. But…it is a helpful memory bank.
See, I’ve been mentally concocting this post for a couple of weeks. And it was not positive: 2014 felt like Groundhog Year, because I had to massively overhaul my book, despite having made special efforts in 2013 and even earlier to avoid such a thing (gnash, gnash).
But scrolling through this year’s blog posts, I see that some other things happened–and some of them even represented progress, of a sort.
Granted, it’s not a great sign that two of my posts were cranky rebuttals: one telling Marc Maron to lighten up on his cast iron, and another telling a New York Times reporter to lighten up in Mexico.
But then there’s something genuinely good: The new edition of my Moon New Mexico book came out–in fabulous full color! It reminded me that, in eleven years of working on these Moon books, I’ve learned a lot about photography, and I now have a body of photos that I’m proud to see printed in color. The writing ain’t bad either, if I do say so.
This reminded me of a couple of things that didn’t even make it to the blog. I wrote another story for the New York Times, “36 Hours in Santa Fe,” which turned out well. I can even call myself a published poet now, because the entry for Ten Thousand Waves includes a haiku!
And, perhaps my proudest accomplishment of the year, I wrote an article for The Art of Eating on a couple in New Mexico who are making traditional balsamic vinegar. I’ve been thinking this would make a good story since I first heard about the Darlands, at least five years ago; I learned a ton; and The Art of Eating is an excellent magazine. Writing the story was a great experience all around, especially in the editing, which reminded me how helpful and inspiring that process can be.
The majority of my 2014 posts were dedicated to my trip way back in January, when I went to Rwanda and Ethiopia (and then Thailand, for frequent-flier-mile reasons too dull to go into). It was fantastic, and I am so glad I went, but Peter and I came back fried. Too many destinations, not enough time in each and certainly not enough alone time. I still haven’t quite recharged–I have never wanted to travel less in my life, which is unsettling.
[REDACTED. There was some more blerghy complaining here, but we’re all pretty tired of that, aren’t we?]
In 2015, I am taking the advice of a thirteen-year-old friend, who recently said, with the wisdom of an eighty-year-old, “Consider it a hobby, and it will be less troublesome.” He was talking about something else entirely, but still.
Not coincidentally, this is one of my favorite photos of the year, from the Itegue Taitu Hotel in Addis Ababa.
Bad art? Refresh by rotating 90 degrees.
Hello, 2015. May you be different and perspective-altering.
