Writing

Castle From A Cloud

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Pavlovas are a dessert that always impress for how simple they are. I have them on the brain right now because I’ll be making a couple dozen for a VIP dinner the day after tomorrow and I’m coming off a bit of an inspirational drought. I’m on the porch in the shade with a lowball of grog beside me and a cigar I may or may not smoke.

Named for the ballerina Anna Pavlova, they are giant baked merengue bowls filled with whipped cream and fresh fruit. If you’ve ever made angel food cake, macarons, or “forgotten kiss” cookies, you already know how to do the hardest bit. Pavlovas look so impressive and dainty, it makes people think they are difficult when the truth is they are a masterclass in Technique, Patience, Fresh Ingredients, and Not Getting Too Fancy.

Simple things are always like that. No space to hide when you fuck up a step. It’s a “you had ONE JOB” scenario, and how well you did that One Job is there on the plate. Overdone? Underdone? Cracked? Everyone’s going to see and then eat it anyway, because it’s sugar, cream, and fresh fruit that you worked hard on. In that way, pavlovas are a reminder that it’s all just food.

Writing can be like that too, I’ve found. You work at it, you pace it right, tease out the story, don’t outsmart your common sense, and hopefully you end up with something people will enjoy.

A selfie of the author- black flat-cap with pins, olive green chef coat, brown canvas apron, smiling face with mutton-chops, and holding up a plated dessert

My boss and I had loosely discussed the VIP dinner dessert. The last dinner we did, he chose a riff on carrot cake because he knew it was the winemaker’s favorite and she would be in attendance. I did my best work on it and everyone loved it. Happy ending. The winemaker enjoyed it, but wondered if it really paired well with the wine that had been selected. I’d never gotten to taste the wine or even get notes on it, so the carrot cake was good… but overshadowed the wine at a VIP dinner at a winery. We could do better.

This time around, the winemaker showed me their advertising copy with tasting notes and poured me a little scoot to try. It was tangy, floral, and spoke of peaches and stone fruit. I jotted down notes in my phone along with her suggestion to avoid going too sweet, or the wine might taste sour in comparison. That’s easy to do with anything that isn’t “dessert wine”- ice wine, ports, or the kind of muscats you find glued to the lips of bridal shower attendees. A pavlova might actually be the perfect answer.

Initially, the boss and I had discussed a riff on another dinosaur Oceanic classic, Peach Melba. Instead of the poached peaches and raspberries on ice cream, however, my boss very much wanted a tart for the dinner. Tarts are easy to plate, clean to cut, and are easy to get cute with. Pile on the flavors, the textures, the colors, and a good cross-section will shine on anyones Instagram, hopefully tagged with the location and brand of the wine,

We both did trials of our tart ideas but neither quite fit the bill, and I kept assembling pavlovas in my mind. I’ve learned that some ideas won’t leave me alone until I take a crack at making them. Writing is a bit like that as well- you pay attention, and you’ll find a story worth telling the best you can.

A picture of Anthony Bourdain eating with the quote superimposed in white over the picture reading, “Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman- not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen- though not designed by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying.”

The pavlova shell would be flavored with jasmine green tea. The herbal/floral scent compounding the flavors above and giving a bittersweet foundation- a blank sky for a flock of birds to be seen against.

I debated a diplomat cream filling- pastry cream lightened and folded with Chantilly- but decided even that would be too much. Pastry cream is a custard. Custard means egg. Egg is earthy, sweet, and grounding- a distraction. Instead, whipped creme fraiche with vanilla- a little sweet, a little sour, not too fancy, This and the shell would be vehicles carrying the fruit- important to do well, but no one marvels at the foundations of a house.

It would be Peach Melba inspired, like the chef and I agreed. Stone fruit was coming into season, and this would be what spoke to the wine. It would have to be gently handled. Highlighted. Elevated to stand out on the plate and point toward the wine. I imagined grilled apricots- another touch of bitterness in the char to caramelize the sugars and announce the sunshine in the golden flesh. Fresh raspberries are always good as they are.

You glaze the fruit on a plate. That’s just how it is. Cooks are craftsmen, and it’s our job to imitate nature and make it look like whatever we served you just grew like that. If there is fresh fruit on a plate, it needs to look like we just ran out to a garden and plucked a fistful of raspberries wet with morning dew from the bush. We have to make ourselves disappear in your mind when you look at the plate– wizards and elves and faeries just poofed this perfect plate of sustenance in front of you with no human hand intervening.

A meme from AZ Quotes showing Chef Marco Pierre White next to a quote in white on a black background reading, “Mother Nature is the true artist and our job as cooks is to allow her to shine.”

Glaze adds sweetness, but done right it can add more without drawing attention to itself. I imagined the berries and grilled apricots, shining in the light on the plate atop their hillock of whipped cream and egg. A little hill. On the hill up to the winery, I knew there was a honeysuckle bush- I smelled the blossoms every morning. Pungent, light, floral, fresh… I needed THAT on the plate.

Early one morning last week, the idea couldn’t live in my brain anymore, and I put it together. “Just make it happen, get it out of your head, and don’t fuck around.”

That’s why the VIPs this week are getting pavlova, you got to read about how it was made, and I have an empty glass beside me. Putting the right things together and putting the work in to treat them right means you’ll more often that not have something to enjoy.

Grilled Apricot Pavlova with Raspberries and Whipped Creme Fraiche

Stay Classy,

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The Rites of the Sanctuary

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There are times when I walk into the winery kitchen in the morning, punch in, get to my bench, and my ritual feels a bit like rehearsing into a mirror in public. It’s for no one’s benefit but mine, and others either don’t care or pretend not to see and be curious. It’s still important because beyond the centering, grounding aspects of the act, it’s how I belong to myself.

The routine of the morning grows ignominiously but slowly. I come in, punch in, put my stuff down on the bench and decide what needs to be out and what needs to be in the locker. Going over the prep sheet and whiteboard is next. If something fucked up after I left the day before (or will fuck up without my immediate intervention,) that’s where I’ll find it. Make a plan for the day, then the coffee I’ll never drink. Check the covers for the day, then back to the office for emails on what amounts to the professional version of gossip. Very little of it has anything to do with me or requires my attention yet, and if things got really bad on the pastry station, that’s how I’ll find out.

Back to the kitchen. Temperature logs handed down by the higher-ups, then my ritual and work begins.

I put on my coat, check my tools, scale the first recipe, and consecrate what is still My Place in this world- laboratory, dojo, and sanctuary.

Animated GIF from Disney’ “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” showing Quasimodo defiantly lifting Esmeralda’s unconscious body while yelling “Sanctuary” at the city.
Not quite like that, but still an epic moment in the movie.
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Overdue Epilogues

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CW: Discussion of health, weight, body image, diet

A few years back, I wrote a book- my first book, in fact– about losing weight and getting in shape. I used my own story, half-baked methods, understanding and experience to explain just how I did it. For the time, it was all good advice. What I failed to mention, however, is what can happen when your health, your brain, and forces your can’t hope to control take your feet out from under you.

It’s easy and glib to say “Keep trying, don’t give up, tomorrow’s another day” and the rest. It’s true as well, but it’s not the whole truth. Life comes at you fast.

Consider this post and a few others before, then, as something like an epilogue to “Blood, Sweat, and Butter.” Marie Kondo famously recanted some of her tidiness dictums because she realized that they aren’t possible for someone with kids, like she became after writing her books. I’m not necessarily recanting anything I wrote… but I’m definitely throwing up a few asterisks.

The front cover of "Blood, Sweat, and Butter- Getting Fit on a Cook's Schedule (and Paycheck)
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A Rose’s Thorns

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The traffic on Burnside is, predictably, terrible. The two-to-four-lane road that bisects Portland between North and South has a number of signs meant to help open the way during rush hours- No Parking on the eastbound side between 7 and 9 am Monday through Friday, westbound side is no parking between 4 and 7 pm.

Signs communicate penalties, not rules. They don’t have alarm clocks attached to them, nor do hypercaffeinated parking enforcers go knocking on peoples doors at 6:50 in the morning to tell them to get their butts outside and move their cars, and they can’t possibly tow everyone… So we deal with it and some people get creative parking on the sidewalk in the driveways of shuttered businesses. A clever plan… as long as that sidewalk is not also a bus stop. Bus drivers in Portland will not hesitate to phone a make, model, and license plate into dispatch and let the might of Trimet’s pseudo-monopoly send a tow truck.

Portland- Don’t Make Us Make It A Problem, And It Won’t Be A Problem.

It’s early evening. A sunny afternoon has given way to warm gray cloud cover and a few raindrops have fallen, making the most desperate fresh-air fan wonder if it’s time to close the windows.

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The Impact Of Intent

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I’m enjoying a local bar the way I like it- nearly empty, quiet but for the band in the next room that I’ll shortly go in to support, and just me and the bartender discussing books. They have to bus tables, I need to write and wait for my food order. It’s a genial end to the conversation.

Leikam Brewing is Jewish woman-owned brewery in Southeast Portland that embodies what I want to be myself- unapologetically and openly itself and also a hub of its community. It’s a Jewish space that’s not just for Jews. If you’re part of the community, you don’t need to be part of the Tribe.

I’ve knocked back two beers over the course of my conversation with the bartender about the virtues and flaws of various fantasy series. One was a French Toast-inspired ale called “Ain’t No Challah-Back Girl” and the other a stout called “Mob Barley.” If it’s not Jewish puns, it’s music- or both- and I’m not mad about it. Going here tonight felt needed, and not just because I knew a particularly good skewer truck was going to be selling their wares and I have an unhealthy need for their black sesame flatbread with roasted garlic toum spread.

The first month of 2026 in the US was not fantastic. An activist mother of three, Renee Good, was murdered- shot three times at point blank range- by an agent of the state who proceeded to brag about it, and the government unabashedly bullshit the public about how the woman was a “domestic terrorist” and “tried to run/ran the agent over” when their own camera shows otherwise. They did it again to a VA nurse- Alex Pretti- whose last words were “Are you okay?” to a woman these same agents had just pepper-sprayed and pushed to the pavement.

While still processing this, I got treated to reports of leftists- the guys meant to oppose this kind of fascist, Big Brother crap- lined up outside at New York synagogue chanting about how much they love Hamas. Later, I’d see tweets asking if the VA nurse was a Zionist, and I’ve grown too used to them showing up to every protest or event with their flags and keffiyehs yelling “collective liberation!” as they attempt to hijack someone else’s efforts to organize.

After over two years of feeling chased out of leftist spaces by these ignorant shmucks who are- at best- useful idiots parroting slogans, I think I’m well within my moral rights to wish a plague on both their houses, wait for both parties to beat the tar out of each other, and rebuild better once they’ve burned each other out.

It can never be that simple though. The fact that it goes against every bone in my body to look at people suffering and say “not my problem” is only part of it. It’s that I once again get to watch my identity be made convenient.

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