Bean Boy Rising

Before I met the Mister, he had informed me that he was working on perfecting the preparation of gallo pinto, a Costa Rican beans and rice dish. This thrilled me, "Here," I thought, "is a man who can really cook and is into legumes: I think I am smitten."*

Imagine my disappointment when I learned that he used his diswasher only for storage, the meals he did prepare consisted of a piece of meat grilled on the George Foreman, and the tamale cookbook he had on the counter was apparently just for show.** On our first date we ate at a new Thai restaurant and he never once mentioned the spicing on his seven spice fish curry or asked me about my panang. The Mister ate pinto gallo while in Costa Rica and garden green beans when he visited his parents and didn't think about them otherwise. The Mister was not a good cook and didn't give a hill of beans about bean hills.

How much has changed.

In the six plus years I've known the Mister, the greatest transformation I've seen in him is becoming a great daddy. This transformation, however, is mostly just one of opportunity. Nobody who knows the Mister is surprised he's a great daddy, but before the arrival of Dianthus, great daddy-ness remained dormant. The second greatest transformation I've witnessed (or second third and fourth, depending on how you count) is to becoming a really good cook, a crazy foodie and an intense gardener.

This transformation came about gradually. By the third date we were discussing the food (Malaysian) and watching a charming Japanese food movie (Tampopo, highly recommended) and somewhere during the first six weeks of dating (before I left for summer field work in Montana) I taught the Mister that sauteing the onions before adding the other omelette ingredients makes all the difference. He credits me for bringing about the onion change which somehow led to cooking all sorts of wondrous things, most of which involve the fragrance of sauteing onions when one walks in the door. These days, he cooks more often than I do.

He'd probably object to the term "foodie" as it implies some sort of snobbery (as do "gourmet" and "gourmand"), but the Mister now cares about food. He talks about it, he plans around it, he'll analyze it in his spare time. Since I have always been like this***, I'm not sure I noticed at first. Sure, we agreed that nice meals were a good use of money. Yes, the Mister started reading cookbooks and buying ducks to roast. And, yes, he purchased Where to Eat in Canada before the Canadian Maritimes trip so that we could plan what amounted to a culinary tourism vacation properly, but somehow I didn't really realize until this summer.

Travelling from Como to Rome in May we bought separate train tickets Como to Bologna and Bologna to Rome so that we could eat lunch in Bologna at a restaurant we chose after consulting three books and two websites. The Mister purchased Anthony Bourdain's Nasty Bits at full price for light summer reading and started a new list of places for us to eat in New York City when someday we go. For our anniversary in July, we spent the weekend in Pittsburgh. The Mister not only made reservations for a fabulous six course tasting menu at a nice restaurant, but also consulted several websites to find out where we could stop for Thai food on the drive there and back. While we ended up eating at Olive Garden going and Long John Silver's coming back, it was not for lack of trying on his part, which is when I decided that I needed to write an anniversary post about how very well suited the Mister is for me.

Of course, Dianthus arrived soon thereafter, so this post has been lurking in my brain unwritten. It is now a birthday post for the Mister. And Dianthus is demanding attention at the moment, so the parts about the Mister being a great gardener and bean cook will still go unwritten (but notice the great bean structure he made in the vegetable garden he created and cultivated).

In any case, please wish the Mister a happy birthday**** and know that I know I'm lucky.

*Okay, the legumes weren't a particularly big deal at the time and it wasn't just his professed cooking ability that smote me so quickly.

**I just found this out a month ago. While I had wondered why meeting me made him stop making tamales from scratch, it never occured to me that a man with a tamale cookbook and masa on his counter hadn't actually ever made them. I am such a sucker for a well-placed ethnic cookbook.

***Always implies an awfully long time, but before you accuse me of hyperbole, know that you are reading the blog of someone who can still list most of the meals she ate on a vacation in 1981, wrote her big eighth grade investigative "I-search" on cheese tasting, and checked out The Magic of Herbs from her elementary school library over ten times.

****Birthdays are major celebrations in my family and very minor celebrations in the Mister's. I'm trying to change his thinking on this as well. It has, thus far, not worked as well as sauteing onions, but I have considerably fewer opportunities to exert my influence.

The image is of the Mister and William playing "wheeee" which they both enjoy and which makes me melt every time I see it.

Italian Beans III

Devoted readers of this blog have been relentless, "enough about the baby, what about the beans?" So I take this brief moment while The Mister has the baby, not to do something useful like take a shower or file medical paperwork, but rather to post photos of legumes in Italy.

Italian Itinerary

Sometimes my friends seem to want to know where we went or what we did when we travelled (rather than what we ate or how many bean plants we saw). For those of you this describes:

Brunate (2 nights) village above Como on Lake Como: Ferry to Bellagio (pictured) and guided tour of the gardens of Villa Serbelloni.

Train to Rome, stopping in Bologna for long lunch.

Rome (9 nights): In Rome: Colosseum, Forum, Palatine Hill, St. Peter's, Scavi Tour of necropolis below St. Peter's, Vatican Gardens (me), several other museums (Mister), Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Trastevere neighborhood, lots of walking, neighborhood playground, several markets. Near Rome (3 different day trips): Garden at Ninfa, Ostia Antica, Villa D'Este (Tivoli), Villa Adriana (Tivoli).

Siena (2 nights): soccer match, Il Campo, Cathedral (pictured under scaffolding), Sienese Art Museum, Enoteca Italiana.

Riomaggiore (2 nights) village on the Mediterranean coast, part of Cinque Terra: Hike to botanical point, hike among 4 of the 5 Cinque Terra villages (Vernazza pictured).

Milan (1 night): Cathedral.

Eating should be assumed as a primary occupation throughout. Transportation was by train between cities and private car to Ninfa and Tivoli.

Roman Cats

I first visited Rome with My Brother in June 1992 and hadn't returned until last month*. Shockingly, the Eternal City has changed in 17 years. Or perhaps I have.

First, Rome feels decidedly safer. The Mister and I were not swarmed by young Gypsies. Waiting at the giant Termini train station this trip, I sipped my cappuccino and looked at Armani bra ads and wondered if it was really the same place I rushed through clenching my backpack, thankful that I had not been gassed on the incoming night train while my brother fended off those flapping maps and passes in his face. The city still bustled (and lurched and skidded while riding buses) but it felt only like a big city, not a big city out to get me. Much of this could be attributed to staying with a friend in a nice neighborhood rather than in a cheap hotel near the station, being 37 instead of 20, and not lugging most of my worldly possessions on my back, but some must be a difference in the city. Where have all the gypsies gone?

Secondly, the sights have changed. The forum is huge. It was big 17 years ago but not huge and definitely not connected to Palatine Hill. Excavation works. Had I made it into the Vatican Museums, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would be different. Restoration apparently works.

Finally, the Colosseum cats are gone. This shocked me. The skinny gray feral cats sneaking in and out of the stonework were as iconic of Rome as the structure itself. There were hundreds 17 years ago. Now, the only public cats to be found are at the Argentine dig, and those cats are all well-fed, sterilized and tested; even if not quite friendly enough to talk to the Mister.

Later on the trip we encountered well-fed feral cats in Riomaggiore, the village we stayed in of the Cinque Terre, talking to the fishermen and tourists alike. The Mister offered to bring one home, but we decided it would miss the fresh fish and Mister Splashy Pants might not be so happy.

*Rome is fabulous, by the way. For an American, the depth of ages of stuff is phenomenal. There just aren't that many places where a renaissance cathedral is relatively very modern. The food can be fantastic, the public transportation is cheap and city buzzes. If one could only visit one European city, it would definitely top my list.

Fava Beans (Italian Legumes II)

Fava beans seldom pop up in the diet of Middle America. I've long known of their existence and their importance in Egyptian cuisine (which, is, in itself, odd because I couldn't tell you another distinct component of Egyptian cuisine). I've also known for years that Brits eat them fresh as broad beans. What I didn't know is what they taste like. I know now.

Not much.

I'll be the first to admit that I may not have prepared them in the most succulent of ways. The Ambassador, the friend I was visiting in Rome, had purchased the beans as a novelty at the local vegetable market and promptly forgotten they were in her refrigerator. I peeled them, boiled the beans and mashed them with olive oil, rosemary, salt and lemon juice. The resulting paste was spread on rice cakes. Altogether it was a success, but made one wonder why one didn't just make hummus.

I later learned of a seasonal Italian soup involving fresh fava beans and artichokes, but was unable to sample it as I never recognized it on a menu nor knew exactly what to look for.

Pedicure in Newark

While I have much to say about Italian legumes, both as plants and food, I will have images to illustrate the key points if I just wait two weeks. I'm also feeling sorry for travellers who don't notice either plants or food (what do you look at out the train window if you're not noticing the plants whizzing by? how do you plan your days if it doesn't involve trying a new kind of cheese or gelato?), but it's nap time rather than essay time. But, just to thank all of the people who stop by here even when I don't write regularly, I will offer this tip: if you have a long layover at Newark airport, the little "spa" in the C wing does great pedicures with swollen-ankle-reducing foot massages at prices competitive with the scary tanning salon in my town, West Virginia.

Italian Legumes I (without images)

Spring here in Northern Italy is rife with blooming beans. What I believe are black locusts grow wildly along the railroad tracks, broom pops up in odd places, and I am a huge fan of wisteria, which is done blooming in Como, but is still in full flower here in Brunate, a village above Como (up a 50% grade on a funiculare). I've been almost 35 hours in the country, however, and have yet to eat a bean. Don't worry; I will.