Holy Tomatillos!

Last week I picked 20 pounds of tomatillos from our garden. Tomatillos are small, firm, green tomatoes with a paper husk. The tomatillo plant is similar to that of a standard tomato we are used to; it is from the night shade family and typically requires some kind of cage or trellis for the weak vine to rely on. We have three different cultivars of tomatillos growing this year. Some of them had purple-ish husks. The fruit is slightly crunchy, low in acid and high in pectin. This makes for great tasting salsa with perfect consistency! When I picked them they easily plucked off the vine. When picking tomatillos, you want to give them a little squeeze while still on the vine to make sure that the fruit has filled in the husk. Don't pick them before they are bursting out of this translucent paper wrapper!

When picking (and later when husking) the tomatillos are sticky. I found this sticky-ness to be almost oily, which was to me, a unique experience. While husking, I ate a few whole-- sweet and crunchy like an apple, slightly acidic like a tomato. Then, I simply quartered the larger ones (halving the smaller ones) and placed them in roasting pans. I baked them in the oven at 350 degress for an hour and a half. As the tomatillos were roasting, I threw three poblano, three anneheim, two serrano, and one jalepeno chile pepper on the grill. I just blackened their skins then let them sweat out in a ziploc bag. After they were cooled, I peeled the blackened skins off and took the seeds and stems out. I also sauteed 10 small white onions and six cloves of chopped garlic until the onions were soft and translucent. I drained the tomatillos of any excess water they let out while roasting and threw them, the roasted peppers, the onion and garlic mixture (both from our garden), three cups of chopped fresh cilantro (also from our garden) the juice of three limes, a half cup of white vinegar and some sea salt to taste into the blender.

Now, my favorite part-- canning! I washed and prepared lids for 10 pint jars and filled them almost to the top with my wonderfully green salsa. Then, after dipping in a water bath for 30 minutes, they sealed themselves closed on the kitchen counter while cooling off. Granted there were only 10 jars, but excitingly, my own tomatillo salsa sold out at the farmer's market in Dublin, OH. It's best on plain old tortilla chips, but I also found it very tasty as a tapanade for baked cod or salmon.

The 'Ol Moonshine Keg

So lately I've been into home brewing. I want to brew with my own, homegrown, hops next year, but this year, I will stick to the hopped malt syrups. Well, Younes and I bought a cheap-o plastic brewing kit at CVS the day after Christmas- everything was on sale. I'm brewing a belgian blanc in that 2 gallon keg. However, it's this 6 gallon keg pictured here that I want to bring to your attention.

This 6 gallon keg was in the basement at the farm for over 30 years. I remember, in highschool, going down to the basement and daring my friends to drink what I called, "moonshine." Nobody knew what was in the keg. It was a brownish color, smelled like some sort of alcohol and tasted gross. It was only last week that the keg was unearthed, dusted off, and drained. As I began to drain it I felt sad that 6 gallons of "liquid" were going to waste. I had to save some of it. What if it's aged and worth something now? What if it's some kind of amazing liquor that would go great with lamb?

Needless to say, I put a glass under the tap and saved some. It was truly murky. I looked at it. Remembered the days I willingly drank the stuff in highschool and took a sip. The best way to describe it was 50% rubbing alcohol and 50% tannin aftertaste. Ugh. There must be a better way to remember this keg and how it did its job for over 30 years with no complaints. So I cleaned and sanitized it and dressed it to the nines with a triple-hopped IPA. Let's see if this batch lasts as long as the 'ol moonshine.

Today I quit my job

I did- I quit my job today. For the last two years, I worked as the Director of the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center. You'd think that today would be "My Day"- that people would want to know why I'm leaving, where I'm going, and what I will be doing in the future. Instead, today, I'm finding, is really about everyone else.

I say that because the minute the "shock heard around the world" here, people came to me to get the scoop. Then, after a few minutes of my describing my hatred towards DC and my love of a certain farm in Indiana and the energy I get from my family, it was on to them.

"That's not what happened to me when I gave my letter of resignation!" said a co-worker who resigned a few weeks ago and is counting his days until freedom. "I didn't get those nice emails like you did."

Another co-worker, who's been job searching for months, replied "Well, I'm not leaving DC, how should I phrase my resignation letter?" Or another co-worker, frustrated with DC folks said "I just don't feel like I fit in here. I think relationships in DC are so superficial." Yet another co-worker said, "I'm so jealous you had the balls to quit- I envy you." I had the final visitor-co-worker of the day standing in front of me in my office just now. "I'm thinking about moving on too... as soon as my business takes off and I get my finances in order, probably by the end of the year, I'm out of here. I've been here 6 years, I'm not going to stay until 10 or 11!"

Wow. It's so fascinating to see how one decision: moving away from big city life towards farm life with family opens up the flood gates for everyone to do some self-reflection! What's the point of living a certain life just to SAY you're living it? Why not make a decision that (although difficult, yes) will make your life more fulfilled? Instead of homeless people, and rude neighbors, why not surround yourself with people you love and people who love you? To me, this only makes sense- it is very clear. However, sometimes it takes seeing someone else take the plunge to get enough courage to do it yourself.

Hallo from Berlin: 12/10/2007

Hallo.

I am currently sick. despite all the vitamins, and the
airborne tablets I ATE straight up, my nose is all
broken out and I have a fever. I am in the hotel room
tonight while everyone else is out.

other than that I am having a good time. Berlin is a
very interesting place. It really hasn't made too much
progress since WWII. It is fascinating to see
destroyed buildings and massive reconstruction
projects going on everywhere. You would think that
after so many years, the place would be cleaned up by
now, but it isn't. Just as the residual landscape of
war is in your face in Berlin, so is the extreme
racism and an uncomfortably all-white, all-educated,
all-pretty public. We have met so many Germans who
have never met a Jew (who was alive) before. At the
same time, there are Holocaust memorials that groups
go to and I see them jumping on the memorial stones.
Luckily the monuments are sprayed with a protective
coating to save them from being destroyed by grafitti
or gum. Other memorials erected in the last 15 or so
years have in fact been destroyed by Berlin citizens.

As if the city hadn't housed enough hatred already, it
is divided- east from west, still today. This morning
we went to Checkpoint Charlie, where so many people
were killed as they attempted to cross over the Berlin
Wall into West Berlin. Although the wall is down now, there are rarely cross-overs---
meaning, never a person who dates a person from the
other side, therefore, if you were born on one side of
Berlin- you stay on that side. Even our tour guide,
who was born in West Berlin, barely knew the streets
or attractions of East Berlin.

East Berlin is where we are staying. It is the place
with the most Jewish "sites." I put "sites" in quotes
because the sites used to have Jewish significance but
were destroyed. So, really when you visit them, you
are visiting the LACK of a site. A void, loss is the
attraction to the place. There were places we visited
like the "missing house" which resembled a street of
connected row houses, and all of a sudden, a row house
was missing, as if it was skipped over. This house was
inhabited by Jews and destroyed in the 1930s and never
rebuilt. Also, empty lots which appear to be just
squares of grass, used to house synagogues, or Jewish
stores.

Sorry this is so long, I didn't think it actually
would be...There is so much more to tell. This is
really an eye-opening experience.

xoxox,
wendy

Halloween Night, an email from Wendy on 11/1/2000

Halloween 2000

It was like this:

3:00 am I hear banging noises. Where are they coming from? I put on my glasses to see the faint image of a girl's legs behind my mini-blinds.

Tip-toeing to the window above mine she keeps banging. "Nick, why are you doing this to me?" Crying she continues, "Why do you fuck me and then ignore me?!" A voice from inside the apartment right above me answers, "You're acting crazy, go home!" Sobbing she falls to the ground, her skirt fluttering in the cold wind. This episode repeats another 3 times and finally Nick says, "Don't you realize there are other people who live in this house?" "I don't care!"-she yells. "Well, I do because I live here!"- was the last I heard of the guy above me.

I waited for about 5 minutes, hearing her sob and repeating "why, why me?"

I could tell that she was tossing and turning about because the leaves were crunching every time she moved. I couldn't stand it. There was a reason I had to hear this. So, I got dressed and went out there. It was like a black and white photograph. She was sprawled out amongst the grass and leaves- still crying. I asked if she was "ok"- the only thing I could think of at the moment. Everything seemed to lose its color as I went outside. She had a white dress on and her face was painted white to match her costume. Dark eye makeup ran down her cheeks along with her tears.

The grass and fallen leaves seemed like a sea of black engulfing this little costumed creature.

She didn't want me to walk her home and she constantly said "sorry" for waking me up. I told her that it always seems 10 times worse at night and that she should go home, go to bed and it would be a little better in the morning. She replied, gasping for air, that it was always 10 times worse in the morning because you wake up and realize the person isn't there and they don't care about you. I was dumbfounded and hard up for words. I left her there and came back into the bright light of the hallway which now smelled like microwave popcorn.

Wendy

S2 to Swine Flu

I had, quite possibly, the worst bus ride of my life tonight. I got on the S2 by the Giant in Silver Spring around 10:00pm. Just after having yummy spaghetti and meatballs with my amazing chef-boyfriend. He walked me to the bus stop and after about a 5 minute wait, the bus came and I got on. As per usual, everyone was sitting one person to each two-person bench. So, I was forced to sit with someone and I could choose, virtually, anyone I wanted. I chose a skinny Ethiopian guy, and quickly sat down. No sooner did I open my book, the guy across the aisle from me started coughing. I'm not talking a "friendly" cough, or one that could be a tickle, or anything ordinary, but a full-blown, hacking/vomiting cough. I mean, I could hear his lungs rattling with mucus. Not only is he not covering his mouth, but rather, his arms are fully inside his striped polo shirt. The guy sitting in front of the coughing man, probably petrified by the media's recent swine flu craze, soon moved to the back of the bus. Now, the entire bench in front of him was empty. As the bus turned on Georgia and proceeded to Alaska Ave., his disgusting cough continued. At that very turn, we left Silver Spring and entered DC. A large Black man came forward from the back of the bus and yelled at this little Black coughing man. "Now we in DC! THIS is my fucking city- MY town! You best cover yo mouth! Cover yo mouth when you cough! We ain't in Montgom-ry county no more, no! not in Montgom-ry county!" The coughing man said, "ok, geez, ok."

It wasn't long before the coughing man couldn't resist, and had to cough again. At this point, I felt as if I needed to cough as well and was doing all I could to ignore the increasing tickle in my throat. The big guy who yelled, rang the bell for the next stop and as he was walking by, handed the coughing man a small bottle of hand sanitizer and said "use this, you better put this on man-- just PUT it on." then he got off.

As we got onto 16th street, the bus stopped and fresh blood got on. Folks who didn't realize that this guy was a wack-o, but thought "hey! It's my lucky day! Everyone is crammed into the other seats while there's this whole empty bench here!" and sat down in the dreaded seat in front of coughing man. Oh no, I thought, while I tried to focus more on my book and squelch the feeling of coughing or getting off at the next stop. Soon enough, he started hacking again. At first, the person in front of the coughing man would fidget a bit. The second cough would merit a full head turn from the person in front. The following coughs received more and more fidgeting, until finally, the person just couldn't stand it any more and went either to the very front of the bus, or the very back. It was ironic, but when a person would sit in the seat next to coughing dude, they actually lasted longer, it was if, even after all this awful coughing, they didn't want to offend him by switching seats! One innocent man, who didn't know what he was getting into, got on the bus and plopped down next to coughing man. After a few coughs, he started glaring at me, as if to say "How could you? How could you have let me sit down next to this?"

As we started getting into single-syllable street names, I looked over at coughing man and saw that he was rubbing the hand sanitizer all over his face, hands, and even lifting up the legs of his pants to put it on his ankles. I couldn't look anymore, I had to switch to survival mode: must focus on book, must get through this bus ride, must make it home.

Another round of new bus-riders got on and a young, well-dressed Black guy sits down next to you-know-who. He soon learns to put his back towards the coughing guy and quickly notices the bottle of hand sanitizer on the floor of the bus. He picks it up and puts it on my bag "Excuse me mam- is this yours?" in a polite way. I almost screamed at the sight of that bottle so close to me but oddly all I could do is shake my head back and forth several times. I was in shock.

Soon, there was no more energy left to focus, I had lost my wits, and had to escape. The bus stopped and two other people and I rushed off; I was walking as fast as I could, then running, to get away from the recently disembarked bus riders and the bus. All of a sudden I stopped, bent over at the waist, and now that I was alone on the sidewalk, coughed.

More than one brick make the best neighbors

I live on a one way street. The street is three lanes wide with cars parked on both sides... so I guess that makes five lanes. Thankfully, there are no bus stops on my street so there is no loitering or bus noise. My apartment is one floor of a row house which was built in the 1880s. On the north side of the house is an alley (where sadly many rapes have occurred) and on the south side of the house is another house! This means there are only windows on the east and west sides of the house.

The house that adjoins my house is undergoing construction and has been since June 2008. Before this time (and a whopping 60 years prior) an elderly Black woman occupied the house. The house is much, much bigger than my house. It has four floors each with 750 square feet. The woman told me all about how she lived in the house when Martin Luther King was murdered and many of the streets in this neighborhood were up in flames in protest and mourning. In May 2008, I began seeing miss-matched furniture on the sidewalk and realized the woman was slowly, slowly moving out. In June 2008, my new neighbors purchased the house and began gutting the place from floor to ceiling (four times).

Matt, my new neighbor, and his wife purchased the home for over a million dollars. Right after they closed on the house, the invited me in for a "before" tour. I saw gorgeous hardwood floors, deep enameled cast-iron tubs (with clawed feet), wonderfully worn farm kitchen sinks, and beautiful original door knobs and window hardware. Matt saw a dump with potential. He proceed to tell me he was going to take the smooth plaster off the walls to expose the brick, rip up the hard wood floors to pour polished concrete, and split this rare-in-DC one family home into three units. My heart sank. First, because I could literally feel the house crying and second, I knew I was going to be the recipient of a lot of construction noise and dust for the second year of my two year lease.

Last week when I came home from a run, Matt invited me back into the house. The first two floor are being transformed into two one-bedroom units. The third and fourth floors are slated to become a two-bedroom unit for Matt and his wife. Strangely enough, I didn't feel sad when I went into the house this time; it wasn't a house, it was a shell. It smelled like sawdust and nails (yes, nails have a smell). Matt showed me around and told me all about the solar panels, energy efficient appliances, dual-head shower, foot-pedal sinks, and finally pointed out the obvious- the exposed brick walls.

I came back to my modest little apartment, jumped in the shower, and I had this strange claustrophobic feeling- my neighbors were now only one brick away.