The most California cookbook of all - The Art of Simple Food - Alice Waters

California, my home state, is on fire. The air is smoky and people wear masks to go outside. Low visibility. School cancelled at UC Berkeley - if this were three years ago, maybe I would be eagerly packing up my laundry hamper to go home for Thanksgiving break a few days early. Now I'm in Boston watching this unfold from afar. Truthfully, I don't know how I would react or feel if I were in California now. Right now, we're expecting our second snow in Boston. It's a surreal nightmare happening far away, at home. Towns destroyed. People displaced. People missing. People dead.

In reality, this post isn't about fires or even about California at all, but just a jumble of thoughts about eating and cooking that have been cooking since my surgery rotation, begun in September, now a week ended. Long story short, thanks to long hours, I've been eating less and eating worse.

To bring these thoughts together, I'm sharing some extracts from Alice Waters' - of Chez Panisse fame - cookbook The Art of Simple Food. As a point of food anthropology (lol), her perspective on fresh and simple food was apparently revolutionary, and this food was emblematic of that kind of hippie Berkeley, California attitude. Fine dining gone green, French-inspired but with local ingredients because California is the center of the produce universe.

Anyhow this was a ridiculously rambling preamble to what should be a brief post. Also, I find it kind of cool but weird but awesome that our hospital has a food pantry, a rooftop garden, an apiary, and actual farmers in a city that is frozen for a third of the year and has zero compost bins.

Without further ado...

...Alice Waters' book begins with an introduction about how the food culture of America is terrible. Fast food, microwave dinners, etc. As a medical student on her surgery rotation, three years removed from the organic vegetable/fresh bread/cheeseboard/hella fruit paradise that was Berkeley. California, and now subsisting on black coffee for breakfast, half a Clif bar before the first surgery of the day, the rest of the Clif bar before the second, and ginger ale/peanut butter/graham crackers from the PACU the rest of the day, and instant noodles for dinner...I decided to read the rest of the book after the clerkship finished. Without really knowing a ton about Alice Waters while I lived in Berkeley, I devoured the book. I even noted recipes I wanted to try. Her kind of snobby attitude about how we must all be green goddesses and Luddites and foodies was kind of aspirational.

1. Eat locally and sustainably - that's a lot easier to do in California than Massachusetts, but I've been known to drag home big bags of local apples and cider and cider donuts, local honey. Other than that, I don't know the last time I paid attention to where my food came from. 
2. Eat seasonally - beyond seasonal offerings like stone fruits vs. apples vs. oranges, and Halloween-themed vs. pumpkin spice vs. Thanksgiving-themed vs. Christmas-themed things, I regrettably haven't given seasonality a thought. Actually, no. Tomato soup is only for the summer and early autumn, when tomatoes are in season. And I look forward to it every year.
3. Shop at farmers' markets - this I actually do, when our market is open in summer and early autumn. Apples, mostly, and tomatoes. I'm a farmers' market kind of person, and it really makes me happy to go to them and just walk around, though the one I go to is small and more arts and craftsy than one where you can actually do your groceries at.
4. Plant a garden - how I wish I could do this
5. Conserve, compost, and recycle - there is no composting in Boston, but the other two I try. Recycling more than conserving, admittedly, with my zero waste attempts mostly futile.
6. Cook simply, engaging all your senses - I realized recently that a lot of the food I cook has the same texture - mushy, mostly. When I try to make stuff my mom made growing up, it tastes approximately the same, but the wrong texture. That's something I can work on.
7. Cook together - this is probably a universal joy. It's fun to cook with friends, and something that I miss. My roommates and I, in all the apartments I've lived in, have vastly different dietary requirements and tastes.
8. Eat together - another universal joy. I like going to potlucks. My friends and college cooked and ate together a lot. It happens less often in med school, partly because we all live spread out over Boston, and because we're a lot busier now. Lots of good memories of being with friends crowded in a kitchen making messes, and then hanging out and eating the stuff we made. Doing dishes, even. This is something I miss and wish I could do more of.
9. Remember food is precious - always. 

And so, I have a lot to learn from Alice Waters, and a lot longer to go towards home. And even though she's kind of a food snob, I don't mind trying to improve my relationship with food and cooking with this book as a model.

As a last, unrelated point, my home cooking has become a lot more like the food I grew up eating. And maybe my greater goal is to master the simple, quick, and comforting Chinese home cooking that makes it into no cookbooks. That, most of all, is going home.

Early spring update: loose leaf tea, greenery, and what's next

It's been a long time since I last posted. I'm finishing my second year of medical school soon with our last exam, then taking the next 1.5 months for my dedicated study period for Step 1. And then it's off to a great hiking vacation with my dad for a few days: Grand Canyon, South Rim to Colorado River and back up again. Down 4860 ft the first day, camping at Bright Angel Campground. Then up 4460 ft the next day.

I went home for a week earlier this month and saw old friends, and replenished my stash of loose leaf tea, which I get from Berkeley Bowl. I went back to Berkeley with my parents and sibling and had a good time showing them around, revisiting my old favorite places. I miss many things -- maybe most things -- about Berkeley. Seeing old friends from college reminded me of that, and though I'm very happy pursuing my dream career on the other side of the country, spending time with familiar faces does remind me of what I lost by living so far away. And I did lose a lot. More than a perfect day hike, long car rides, and nostalgia could give back.

We were planning on hiking a notable summit in the Bay Area, but rain got in the way and we went up and down some killer muddy hills in a local park. Still worth the effort, mostly because of present company.

I don't want to dwell on the past, but it's hard not to. And it's also hard not to be nervous about my future, uncertain as it is now. I still want to do orthopedic surgery, but to do that, I need to absolutely kill Step 1. And to do that, I need to stay disciplined and healthy and smart and study better than I ever have. And to do that, I need to focus.

So, after the Grand Canyon trip, I'll come back to Boston and start third year. Clerkships -- it's been a long time coming. What I'm saying is I'll be off the blog until mid-May, and probably sit on editing what I expect to be mediocre pictures of the most beautiful landscape on Earth. Before that, I'll probably have something to say about building my professional wardrobe, and my spring/summer shopping list for clothes. I haven't made a lot of effort in these things, but I'll need to, given how imminent rotations are.

And that's all for now. I hope you're having a good week so far, and that the snow melts sooner rather than later. I thought I put my parka away for good last week, but I was wrong.

Muir Woods National Monument | California

"Here in this grove of enduring redwoods, preserved for posterity, members of the United Nations Conference on International Organization met on May 19, 1945, to honor the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, thirty-first President of the United States, chief architect of the United Nations, and apostle of lasting peace for all mankind." - memorial plaque in Cathedral Grove Muir Woods, 1945

Here is a post of many photos and few words. I think these are the best photos I have ever taken. I went on a hike in Muir Woods National Monument last July right before I moved out here to Boston. Somehow I never got around to editing the photos or sorting through them, but just looked at them when I felt homesick.

I already waxed poetic about Sequoia sempervirens, the coast redwoods, true icons of the Californian Pacific coast, on a previous post about Big Basin State Park, so I'll just leave these photos here.

Doe and fawn

Californians and non-Californians alike: please visit this place. Please hike beyond the first 1.5 miles of the park. The next time I come here, I'll hike to the beach. I hiked here alone and realized I'm seldom out in nature by myself. These are the most beautiful trees on Earth.

Take a look at these big ass trees

Here we enter Cathedral Grove, where some of the largest, oldest trees in this forest stand. This is probably as close as I will come to a spiritual experience, and this forest is probably as close as I will have to a house of worship.

Looking through these pictures, I feel a bit overwhelmed with homesickness for California. In college, I lived in a treehouse-like apartment in a redwood grove. My apartment in Boston is on the sixth floor a block away from the so-called "Methadone Mile." Though Boston has certainly grown on me (bricks and bricks and bricks and bricks and the ability to walk across the city easily, I know that the East Coast is not home. Somewhere out West is home.

But thankfully I'm back in the San Francisco Bay Area for awhile longer. This summer has been exhausting but so much fun. I have had the most wonderful experience doing research that I believe in, and learning as much as I can from the residents and attendings on the orthopedics service.

"Not only would this focus attention upon this nation’s interest in preserving these mighty trees for posterity, but here in such a ‘temple of peace’ the delegates would gain a perspective and sense of time that could be obtained nowhere in America better than in a forest. Muir Woods is a cathedral, the pillars of which have stood through much of recorded human history. Many of these trees were standing when Magna Carta was written. The outermost of their growth rings are contemporary with World War II and the Atlantic Charter." - Secretary of Interior Ickes letter to President Roosevelt, February 1945

“These great redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument are the most enduring of all trees. Many of them stood here centuries after every man now living is dead. They are as timeless and as strong as the ideals and faith of Franklin D. Roosevelt.” - Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., U.S. Secretary of State, 1945

The park is heavily trafficked near the entrance, but much quieter farther off. I'll go farther next time.

As much as I think I want to live somewhere else, looking at these photos reminds me that California is my home.

I didn't track my mileage or elevation gain, and don't have numbers to share. A bit more on logistics: I took a $5 shuttle from Sausalito to Muir Woods, which gave me a lot of time to look out the window and daydream about owning a cottage looking out over the Pacific Ocean, with redwoods on my property and within hiking distance.