Simple Pleasures, San Francisco Style.
Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. My friend Bill in Ohio wrote to ask how I had all that energy to see all those art exhibitions in Paris, the ones I wrote about last week. I think it was the Camino. It energized us, to run around Barcelona for a week after our walk and then to run around Paris for another two weeks after that. We went from the art of living day to day on the Camino to the art of visiting places we have been before in Barcelona to the art of experiencing exhibitions on themes we had either never thought of (The Fool in Art) or exhibitions on art that was familiar, but presented in a new way (Jackson Pollock).
As Ginevra noted, there was a beautiful, reassuring repetition to the Camino. Setting out each day with only one goal in mind, getting to our destination. Knowing that at the end of each day’s journey (the length of which we knew before starting out) our luggage would be waiting for us in the hotel lobby and the receptionist would give us the key to our room. A 24 hour emergency telephone number (just in case) was pretty comforting, too.
It was simplicity itself. I can’t remember when I have ever done anything so simple. Anything that required so little mental energy. I don’t think it was when I was a child developing skills through repetition. Maybe it was when I was at home with my kids when they were newborns. When all I had to do was the same small range of things all day (and night), every day (and night). Although as sleep deprived as I was, the simplicity of those repetitive actions was less soothing than walking the Camino was last year. Which is why next year’s walk is currently under discussion.
Has anybody walked the West Highland Way in Scotland? It’s a little longer than the portion of the Camino we walked this year, 154 km vs 122 km. One of its appeals is that we can take a train from Paris to Glasgow via London. And Glasgow is very close to where the walk starts. Once we’ve done our walk, we’ll take the 4 hour scenic train to where we started and then visit Glasgow and Edinburgh before taking the train back to Paris. We’ve never been to Scotland, so everything will be new!
But back to these past two weeks in San Francisco. The first week, I have pretty much forgotten. It rained or drizzled a lot, I got a Covid vaccine and a Shingles one, too. The Covid was Modena. It didn’t affect me the way the Pfizer did last year when I was laid low for weeks in Paris. The Shingles shot (1st of 2) was a different story, it kept me in bed for an entire day. And I had a pain in my arm for days afterwards.
The weather broke just as the vaccine faded into an unpleasant memory. Life returned to normal and I was back to walking and eating. One day, we walked along a path that used to wear me out - from Land’s End to Sea Cliff to Baker Beach. This time, I admired the view. Our return could have been charming but our path abutted the Golf Course at Lincoln Park, so we were mostly on the alert for random flying golf balls.
On Thanksgiving Day, we walked to Queen Wilhelmina’s Windmill. It’s sometimes called a Tulip Garden but the tulips only bloom in March and the gardeners keep the garden lively with new plantings every season. I like to sit on a bench and admire the gardeners’ handiwork. The benches are all dedicated to someone and I think that’s a better idea than an expensive casket. We walked along the ocean on our way home, watching the surfers trying to master the waves.
For all of our walks, whether we were getting groceries or walking to Land’s End, the Golden Gate Bridge was always a presence. So this Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, we decided to walk across the Bridge. We walked through the Presidio, past Marshall Beach, finally arriving at our destination nearly 2 hours later. Walking on the bridge, on a beautiful sunny day in November, was not the fabulous experience I anticipated. There were lots of people, which is only to be expected, it was, after all, the day after Thanksgiving. And I suppose the noise of six lanes of traffic shouldn’t have been a surprise, either. It was battling the headwinds as we walked toward Sausalito that did me in, that did all of us in. We were half way across the bridge when Ginevra said what we were all thinking - if we turned around immediately, she would be happy to walk home. So we did and we did. The round trip walk wasn’t long - 12 km - the length of one of our shorter Camino walks, but the headwinds were exhausting. Walking toward San Francisco, with tail winds urging us along made our return trip faster, and far more pleasant. (Figs 1 - 8ish)
These past few weeks have been about eating, too. And about planning my most favorite meals of the year, Thanksgiving leftovers meals. Which actually started at lunch on Thanksgiving Day when, following a suggestion from Sam Sifton at the New York Times, I made melted cheddar cheese and cranberry sauce sandwiches for us. But the festivities began even earlier with Ginevra’s perfect pumpkin muffins - from a recipe we found many years ago in Gourmet.
When we opened the turkey that I specially ordered to be spatchcocked (butterflied), it was clear that it hadn’t been spatchcocked correctly (don’t get me started). Thankfully, Nicolas was able to strong-arm the bird into submission and it cooked more or less evenly. We followed Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recipe from last year, which called for the turkey to be slathered in herbed mayonnaise. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023623-mayo-roasted-thanksgiving-turkey-with-gravy
As in years past, the sides stole the show. I made traditional cranberry sauce - fresh cranberries, orange juice and zest with as much sugar as you like (we don’t like much) boiled until the cranberries popped. And cranberry orange relish from a recipe on the last page of a November issue of Bon Appetit from the 1990s. It’s just a bag of cranberries, a nub of fresh ginger, a naval orange with its rind and some sugar. Blitzed in a blender, it’s refreshing and in a pinch, takes the place of salad. Which it did not do this year since we made a riff on a David Tanis salad of sliced citrus, torn chicories and minced shallots, simply dressed with Meyer lemon juice, olive oil and the lightest sprinkling of sea salt. I peeled and sliced sweet potatoes, doused the rounds in olive oil and roasted them until they were browned. I served them with fried sage leaves. I made Brussel sprouts a new way, a way Ginevra suggested. First I boiled the sprouts and then I smashed them flat with the bottom of a glass. I placed them one by one on a roasting pan, brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled sea salt on top. I left them in the oven until they were crispy, exactly how I prepare small potatoes in Paris.
This year’s stuffing was an Alison Roman recipe. It was more like a bland bread pudding than a stuffing. https://www.alisoneroman.com/recipes/buttered-stuffing-celery-and-leeks It was boring, but I think that was intentional. Alison was anticipating that all the other sides would have a high flavor profile and eaters would welcome something more low key. Our sides weren’t too spicy but it’s okay, I have a few recipes for leftover stuffing including one by Sola El-Waylly from the New York Times called Stuffing Panzanella with Cranberry Vinaigrette, https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021606-stuffing-panzanella-with-cranberry-vinaigrette I’ll let you know how it tastes next time. (Figs 9-11)
Another recipe from Alison Roman was (still is) fantastic A pumpkin pie loaded with spices. What I hate about most pies is how soggy the crusts become. This crust was a graham cracker one, and it was and still is, perfect, as were the dollops of softly whipped cream on top, sprinkled with left over graham cracker crumbs.https://www.alisoneroman.com/recipes/gingersnap-pumpkin-pie (Fig 12)
So now the fun begins, leftover turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and Brussel sprouts. We started slowly with a sandwich suggested by Kenji-Lopez for lunch the day after Thanksgiving - sandwiches made from leftover turkey dressed with the leftover herbed mayo that we slathered on the turkey the night before and left over cranberry sauce. I’m not sure it was enough fuel for our walk to the Golden Gate Bridge, but it didn’t slow us down, either!
We’ve already made Pho Soup following Samin Nosrat’s recipe https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018424-turkey-pho with charred onions and ginger; fish sauce, star anise and a little brown sugar. And Bang Bang from a Nigella Lawson recipe that first appeared in the New York Times in 1992 and which I have been making every year since! It’s lettuce and cilantro and mint and cucumber and scallions and shredded turkey topped with a wonderfully vibrant sauce, made from peanut butter and sesame oil; Chinese Chile-bean sauce and Chinese black vinegar and soy sauce. The recipe was revised last year and the only difference I can see is that now any lettuce will do whereas Nigella specified Iceberg. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/121-bang-bang-turkey?.
From last year’s line-up, we’re keeping Kenji Lopez-Alt’s hot pockets https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024863-thanksgiving-leftovers-hot-pockets and Margaux Laskey’s Enchilada Pie, https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019047-thanksgiving-leftovers-enchilada-pie but we’re deaccessioning Samin’s Turkey Tikka Masala, too fussy. We’re replacing it with one by Mark Bittman, also from the New York Times, from 2009, called The Turkey that Went to India https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012887-turkey-and-spinach-curry Happily, a few days ago, an email from The Bittman Project appeared in my inbox filled with ideas about what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers. https://bittmanproject.com/youve-got-lots-of-thanksgiving-leftovers-now-what/? Bittman’s a minimalist, so if you need exact measurements, he’s not your man, at least not with these recipes. We’ll be experimenting with his suggestion for turkey tacos, pulled turkey sandwiches and arroz con pavo.
We’ve still got a turkey carcass for soup and I think we’ll follow the recipe Janet Fletcher, who normally writes about cheese, provided in her latest newsletter. It’s her husband Doug’s soup. https://www.janetfletcher.com/blog/2024/11/22/another-year-another-day-after-thanksgiving-soup. It leans Mexican with chipotle chile in adobo, queso fresco and hominy.
I’m just afraid we’re going to run out of turkey before we run out of recipes. As I did last year: https://www.museemusings.com/blog/talking-mostly-turkey?rq=Thanksgiving
Our neighbor just brought over a couple dozen Meyer lemons, so I’ll be making lemon curd and lemon pie in the next couple of days. And maybe preserved lemons, too. The forecast is for sunny weather for the next 10 days with temperatures hovering around 60 degrees. It’s a good time to be in San Francisco. A good time to be taking walks. There are a few exhibitions that I’m looking forward to seeing and telling you about , among them one on Mary Cassatt and one on Tamar Lempicki. And a few that I saw in Paris before I left that I am anxious to share with you. I’ve got two books that I’m getting ready to review, one is called The Propagandist by Ćecile Desprairies and the other is by L. John Harris, Portrait in Red. A Paris Obsession. More about those soon. In the meantime, happy eating and gros bisous! Dr. B.