Fall?

The tree outside my apartment’s kitchen window is finally beginning to change color. There are streaks of yellow and a hint of red peaking through the stubborn summer green.

I noticed this yesterday morning when my computer screen became blurry with frustration and I decided to bake cookies instead. I put my Kitchenaid mixer on the windowsill and was surprised by the sudden color outside and surprised, again, by the sweet and salty smell of butter as it churned.

The night before a cold rain had pattered on my umbrella and my friend Ben made a meal of homemade pasta fragrant with cardamom and tossed with a handful of sautéed mushrooms, which tasted like October.

I suppose I knew that summer had ended. But it wasn’t until later yesterday afternoon, when I walked through the Grand Army Plaza farmers market on my way to Prospect Park and saw the piles of pumpkins and crates of knobby gourds spilling out of the stalls, that I realized that it is indeed autumn. All I wanted was apple pie.

So this afternoon I was sitting at my desk, which is covered in mounds of papers and books and rambling lists of things that I need to do, and felt overwhelmed with things to write and articles to read and interviews to schedule. So I decided to go to the grocery store. And then I decided to cook. I’m a procrastinator. What.

I didn’t make an apple pie. But it was something warm and burnished and felt like fall: vegetable and barley soup topped with a soft-poached egg.

Now, go back to work Molly.


Vegetable Barley Soup with Poached Egg
inspired by Gourmet magazine, November 2007

1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon chopped thyme
1 can diced tomatoes
1 qt vegetable stock
3/4 cup barley
6 cups spinach
1 tablespoon white vinegar
4 eggs, or one per serving

-Cook onion and garlic with a half teaspoon of salt in oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir every so often until pale golden, 10 minutes.

-Discard stems of mushrooms and slice thinly. Add mushrooms and thyme to onions and cook until soft, 5 minutes.

-Stir in tomatoes with their juice, stock, barley, and a half teaspoon of salt and pepper each. Simmer, covered, for 15 to 20 minutes.

-Add spinach, stir till wilted, 1 minute. Season to taste.

-Meanwhile, bring a saucepan of water to simmer with a tablespoon of vinegar.

-Break one egg at a time into separate cups, and then slide into the water, one at a time. Poach until whites are firm, 2 - 3 minutes. Transfer to paper towel, and then serve on soup.

Holding my nose

So I haven’t cooked for myself in over a month. Thank you, graduate school.

The lack of activity in my kitchen, however, has not stopped my olfactory neurons from dancing around in my head. More scent has returned in the last two months than in the last two years combined.

And, frankly, it’s driving me insane.

It feels at times like my nose is going haywire. I’m hit by a smell—often new, sometimes indefinable—and I can’t concentrate. There are moments when I can hardly think beyond the thick, malodorous stench of a simple can of cat food.

--

A whiff of cologne on the street near my apartment stopped me in my tracks.

I opened a stiff old book at the library and its mildewed pungency sent shivers down my spine.

I sat near the water off of Hunts Point in the south Bronx, and found myself breathing through my mouth because the air smelled so briny that I felt sick.

The only thing I retained from a recent lecture on the ethics of journalism is the shower-fresh deodorant of the man next to me.

And just last night I stared at the stick of butter in my hand—still cold and in its wrapper—not believing that anything could so reek of salt and sweet cream.

--

My sense of smell is by no means fully back. Many things continue to exist purely in the textural and visual. But the world is certainly coloring itself in a different, thicker way.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that this is wholly due to my mood.

It’s been clear to me since the beginning of this whole loss-of-smell thing that the re-growth of my damaged olfactory neuron was strongly related to my memory and experience. The smells that returned first had everything to do with moments of happiness. The bad have stayed away or just slowly eked their way back into my consciousness.

And, right now, I’m happier. School is challenging. My apartment has large windows and a cat that only yowls when extremely grumpy. Fall is seeping back into the world and the newspaper’s pages crinkle just so.

If it means that sometimes I have to breathe only out of my mouth—like this afternoon, when I sat on a sunny bench in Union Square trying to read but couldn’t process anything besides the spicy scent of the pasta a woman was eating nearby—I’m OK with that. It’s rather exciting, actually.

All That

I stood at the corner of Fulton and Broadway early yesterday morning. It was dark and drizzly; my black sandals were speckled with mud from an unsuspecting puddle. Water dripped off the stone porch of St. Paul’s Chapel behind me.

I was there to cover a memorial service for the sixth anniversary of 9/11. St. Paul’s Chapel—just a block from Ground Zero and an hour before the ringing of church bells echoed in memory of the first plane crash—was a solemn space. A sense of quiet reflection pervaded the crowds walking past me on the street.

I waited on the sidewalk for a friend from graduate school, taking a moment to collect myself before I began this reporting assignment, and ate an apple. It was one that I bought from the Brooklyn farmer’s market last weekend, crisp and cool with a gnarly stem.

And as I ate—watching the neon-vested crossing guard wave at a little boy across the street, the women with shiny hair and tipsy black heels and the men in business suits on blackberries walk by—I remembered a line from a piece that Joan Didion wrote when, at age thirty, she decided to leave New York for L.A. She speaks about her early days in the city, just a few years after college, when she was late to meet someone but bought a peach on Lexington Avenue and stopped to eat it on the corner.

I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there—but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs.

That essay—Goodbye to All That—lodged itself in my mind a long time ago. Joan Didion, as I have written before, is a favorite.

But right then—in front of the chapel that gave shelter to dust-covered passersby as they ran from the collapsing towers six years ago—that image of a young woman eating a peach, struck by the knowledge that there is a cost to life in New York City, resonated sharply.

Perhaps it was because, now one month into an intense graduate program of journalism, I am having more trouble than usual getting Didion out of my head. Perhaps it was because the effects of grief surrounded me, putting everything in broader focus. Or, perhaps, it was simply because I was there, on the street, eating an apple.

But, I stood there for a few minutes, waiting to begin reporting, and nothing tasted more apple than that apple, and nothing felt more New York than that damp New York sidewalk.

Cookie, Anyone?

Driving down a back road in Martha's Vineyard with my mom, windows open, a hazy summer afternoon...

"What's that smell?" I asked, suddenly hit by a waft of buttery sweet. "Is it some kind of baked good? Mmm ... like cake, just coming out of the oven. Kinda nutty, too. Almond biscotti!?!"

My mom looked at me oddly.

"Um, no Molly. That's skunk."

"Oh."

Apartment; Pizza

I have spent a lot of time lying on my back, on the floor of my apartment in the last few days. My new apartment. My new, sunny apartment that, after a long, sweaty day hauling boxes and bed frames up and down its stairs, has wreaked havoc on my back.

But I am here now. And lying on the (new, wooden) floor feels best. Right next to the bright red wall which Adrienne, my new roommate, painted while I sat nearby and provided moral support, wine, and select passages from a Robert Moses biography, my current 1200 page challenge. (The wall matches my red kitchenaid mixer perfectly, which happened on purpose.)

I have relocated from Park Slope to Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. Not too far away, but closer to an express train that will zip me away to grad school (beginning in just about two weeks!) with far greater ease.

Cooking has yet to happen here. But late on Saturday night, after a long and sweaty day lugging dressers and bed frames up and down multiple sets of stairs, Adrienne and I sat in our new living room, surrounded by suitcases and boxes—she in a pink armchair and I on my rolling desk chair—and fashioned a table from some (of my many) boxes of books. I had blown through the farmer’s market early that morning to pick up some initial groceries for the new place and bought a pizza-like concoction – rosemary, roasted garlic, caramelized onions and blue cheese on a freshly baked round of bread – from a slim, tanned man with a delightful French accent. It came out in all its crusty, yeasty glory around 9pm, alongside a few frosty bottles of Brooklyn Brewery Brown Ale. I was loopy with exhaustion, covered in bruises and bumps, already stiff and sore, and could not have been happier. The chocolate ice cream that followed, spoons straight in the container, also helped.

The Best Kind of Sandwich

“I am now on the quail bandwagon,” said my brother seriously, the sleeves of his blue button-down rolled up to his elbows. A white plate so clear it could have been licked clean lay on the table in front of him; it once held a salad of pickled green tomatoes, fresh figs, and fingerling french fries underneath a seared quail breast, topped with a fried quail egg and pomegranate molasses. Coming from a guy who wouldn’t eat anything but white food (vanilla yogurt, plain pasta, etc.) for the majority of his childhood, this was big.

The business man seated across the table—distinguished gray hair and a black polo shirt; a glass of delicate rose in hand—nodded in agreement. “I don’t often like dishes that incorporate eggs like this, but it worked wonderfully.” His wife, an artist, was smiling and talking to the photographer a few seats down. I could hear an excited conversation running about a recently opened gastro-pub in Brooklyn. The apartment's light was diffuse and warm; meat sizzled behind the cobalt blue curtain separating the diners from the kitchen. Wine glasses clinked and a peel of laughter erupted from the next room over.

This past Friday was the third event of the Brooklyn Food Group, a“roving supper club” that I began with a few friends in April. Twenty-two people—a group ranging in age and profession and including my wonderfully supportive brother and two of his friends—were gathered in an apartment in Cobble Hill, partaking in our five course meal.

Ben, our chef, outdid himself with the savory courses: it began with a riff on ratatouille (red pepper puree, fried squash blossoms filled with a cinnamon ricotta, eggplant caponata); then a snapper cerviche with jicama, peach, red onion and coconut alongside a mini fish taco; a fresh pasta course with peas and pesto; and then the quail.

As pastry chef and official bread baker of the establishment, I spent a good part of last week playing with sourdough starters and cookie doughs. Fragrant loaves of Italian bread and a rosemary focaccio emerged from my oven early that morning.

But mainly, in the midst of this sweltering July weather, I could not get away from ice cream—thinking about it, making it, eating it. And what resulted was a tasting of mini ice cream sandwiches: molasses cookies with plum sorbet, saffron-butter cookies with pistachio-cardamom ice cream, chocolate wafers with fresh strawberry ice cream, and peanut butter cookies with dark chocolate ice cream.

In retrospect, creating these elaborate ice cream and cookie combinations to feed so many was perhaps a bit much and the process was not without some stress (who knew things could melt IN the freezer?). But I was proud of the end result: four little sandwiches—varying in color and texture, all contrasting a creamy cold with sweet crunch—lined up on the white plates, balanced next to a small berry salad, and popped into mouths by hand.

It was fun, successful night; it reminded me, again, of how much I love to cook and how addictive the adrenaline of the kitchen can be.

Some great photos from the event are on flickr here and here.

My favorite of the sandwiches was the saffron-butter cookie with a pistachio-cardamom ice cream. The ice cream, however, is great straight up out of the freezer.

Pistachio-Cardamom Ice Cream
adapted from Shona Crawford Poole's Ice Cream

8 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups evaporated milk
heaping 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom
2 oz shelled and chopped pistachio nuts
1/2 cup whipping cream

Add sugar to 1/2 cup of water in a heavy pan and heat slowly until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil and cook the syrup for five minutes. Set aside to cool. Add evaported milk, cardamom, nuts, and cream.

Freeze in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer's instructions.

I could smell my brain

“I can smell my brain.”

I was sitting in my bed with a bottle of water and stack of books by my side. My left leg, encased in a bulky metal knee brace and layers of bandages, extended limply in front of me. My mom stood at the doorway and stared at me blankly.

“Your… brain?” She started to laugh and then stopped; she looked confused.

“I can,” I said. “It’s always there, whenever I exhale. A smell. A noxious, earthy smell.”

…

“What else could it be?” I asked, gesticulating around me. “I haven’t smelled a thing in over a month. And this… It is obviously not coming from something outside of me. So it must be from within. What else could it be but my brain?”

“I’m not sure it’s possible to smell your brain,” my dad, a doctor, said when I told him later that day. But I chose not to believe him. I liked the smell of my brain—woodsy with a slightly smoky backdrop; it reminded me of a hike I once took in Vermont in the fall, red leaves crunching underfoot.

“That’s awesome,” said my little brother, at home for a weekend from college. “My sister can smell her brain.”

“Ew.” My mom.

It had been five weeks since I was hit by a car and fractured, among other things, my skull—an injury that resulted in severed olfactory neurons and the loss of my sense of smell. Just out of knee surgery, I couldn’t walk and would be in bed for weeks. I felt wild and slightly out of control, my mind looping every which way on pain medication and my own dosage of home-grown denial. I wouldn’t let myself think about what had happened. I did not quite believe it was real.

Later, I learned that those who lose their sense of smell due to head injury often experience what are called “phantom smells”—pungent yet nonexistent scents, often foul—constantly humming in their olfactory consciousness. My brain-scent was the first of any kind I had experience since the accident and though not unpleasant, was certainly phantom. After five weeks experiencing only the heat of a once nutty coffee, the gelatin slickness of a once rich chocolate pudding, and harsh saltiness of once ripe parmesan cheese—this scent, brain or not, felt wonderful.

It lasted only a few weeks, gradually petering off and leaving me with the familiar nothingness of a scent-less world. I soon forgot about it, as I have forgotten about much of those first painful months of recovery, letting them fall quietly away to the hazy perch of repression in the back of my mind. But I was reminded of it the other day while walking down a dirt road in rural Pennsylvania with my mom on a long-weekend trip, and was suddenly hit with a pungent woodsy smell. A smoky backdrop. Someone, perhaps, had built a fire.

“Remember when I was so sure I could smell my brain?” I asked.

“Yeah,” my mom said with a little laugh. “That was weird.”

I haven’t had any phantom smells since. But barreling into the heat of this summer, I’ve started to wish that some of them were. The Second Ave subway stop on the F train? I would hope, for my companion commuters especially, that the odor that washed through the open train doors was a figment of my olfactory imagination. Unfortunately, I hear, it is not.

I’ve been hit with many new smells lately. Or if not new, with an intensity I’ve never before experienced, which sometimes border on ferocious (like the red snapper that lived in my nose for days after it was seared and consumed in my kitchen). I think part of this is simply due to the fact that I am, to be blunt, happier. In the little over a week I’ve had off since my last day of work I have experienced more new, strong smells than in the last two months combined. Cilantro hit me over the head while chopping for a salad; cantaloupe’s sweetness shimmered from five feet away; the subtle jasmine of my mug of tea poked its head into my exhale; a man’s cologne—sudden, vividly ex-boyfriend—appeared on the subway. It’s mysterious and intriguing: my mood plays a heady roll in the inner workings of my nose.

As a result, the city is changing. Last summer, only a year post-accident, New York was a blank, sunny slate. The cement sidewalks were warm; beautiful glistening people in high heels or double breasted suits strutted along Madison Avenue near my office. The breeze, as I walked through Central Park’s groups of chattering pedestrians, was warm. It was a humid, sweaty world—but one that spoke to me purely through the visual. The parks were green; the buildings were tall and shadowy, windows shiny; subways were dark and sometimes crowded; my apartment was bright and serene.

I forgot that scent changes all that. The trains, especially, are bastions of smell. Summer subway rides are rich, cloying—discomfort runs off the backs of passengers with odors that stick to my face, hair. It’s hard to shake that barrage of body, especially because its presence is as yet so unfamiliar. The parks carry a twang of smoke, whiffs of tree and flower, the liquid waft of water, drifting coal and grill, roasted nuts. The streets are filled with surprises—rotting trash! coffee beans! Even the department stores call to me with the cool scent of air-conditioning, their subtle olfactory ploy.

Often when I walk around the city, dodging tourists and business men, cars and vendors, I retreat into my mind. My mom, who does the same thing, calls it “tunnel vision”—we are oblivious to the world, lost in our thoughts. But these days I am often tugged suddenly out of my mind and into the world around me with unexpected scents—some good, some bad—but always in that moment, there. I notice more; I concentrate more.

New York—though never staid—has become a more vibrant city. This new influx of smell irks me (try smelling nothing but red snapper for two day straight), excites me (who knew the fountain in Bryant Park smells like my old summer camp?), and fills me with hope (the calm scent of a man’s deodorant, previously undetected, on a lazy Sunday afternoon.)