Please Please Please

Okay, on my last blog post I wrote about how much I love Seattle and know that I want to stay here for awhile.

Unfortunately, that realization doesn't necessarily mean that all the "moving to Seattle" puzzle pieces just fell into place immediately. Sometimes there's some lag time between deciding that you want something and it actually happening.

My first order of business was finding a job. I had been landscaping part-time but was looking for more hours. I found an ad for a full-time position that I was really excited about, and put my whole heart into the application process. And it was a loooonng application. I could probably have applied to grad school in less time. Then I sat back to wait. I paced. I checked my inbox. I decided the only reasonable thing left to do was to learn "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" by the Smiths on my baritone ukulele. (Here's a uke version on You Tube) It was like my prayer. I really wanted that job and I deserved it. A couple hours after learning the chords and singing it forlornly to myself, I got an email: they wanted me to come in for an interview the following week.

It worked! My musical prayer was heard. I did the interview, which went great.

Later that day I was talking to my mom about the job interview and an interview for a house that sounded awesome. "When you are working at that place..." she started saying. "I'm not counting any chickens before they're hatched!" I replied. "But if you move into that house..."

"Ahhh, no counting chickens, no counting chickens!" I shouted.

Later I was talking to a good friend who lives in DC. We were discussing bicycle shopping and dating and looking for places to live, not quite knowing what was going to happen with any of those things. "There are so many balls in the air, it can be a little tiring," she said. "I know! I'm so tired of the balls too!" I said.

So it became my strange mantra for the day, "Tired of the balls, no counting chickens!" It's a difficult place to be in, to have so much uncertainty that you are trying to peg down, but not able to get too set on any one thing happening.

To make a long story short, I didn't get that job. January had started out hard and didn't seem to show signs of getting better. First of all, there was the nausea. Now, anyone who knows me knows I have a stomach of steel. I've eaten street food all over the world with negligible consequences. I can eat on a bus winding through the Andes while reading a book. I can cook and eat meals on sailboats lurching and heeling way over. I never get any kind of motion sickness, nausea, or loss of appetite. But for some reason still unknown to me, I have had a low-grade, constant nausea for weeks. It's hard to get anything done when you feel sick all the time.

Then there is the black hole that appears when you have too much free time. If you work full-time, you are probably reading this and groaning, thinking what a luxury that would be, what you wouldn't give for a day off- all the things you could get done with so much extra free time. The problem is, you really don't use the time the way you think you would.

On a related side note: I took this awesome Modern Lit class in college with a great, if very eccentric professor. He seemed to be stuck in a 19th century British persona- affected way of speaking (read: fake accent), top hat, wool and tweed suits, fitted overcoats, vintage spectacles, perfectly trimmed pencil mustache. (He was very reserved and proper, except for the day we started reading The Metamorphosis by Kafka. The first line of the book is "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." I will never forget that line because this professor repeated it while lying on his back on a table, writhing as if an insect in bed.)

Anyway, we were reading something, maybe Madame Bovary, and this prof said how no matter what the tragedy in the novel is, the character will be consumed by it. Basically, your emotions will expand to fill the vacuum. Then he mused, "Maybe time is that way too. Have you ever noticed that if you have a weekend to do homework, it will still take you all weekend to finish whether you have one assignment or five assignments? Time expands to fill the vacuum."

And I think that's true to some extent. We get done what we need to get done for our lifestyle, and the reality is that when you are underemployed, you're too depressed to do all the fun projects you initially think you'll do. I've had a lot of days where I go for a run, drink some coffee, do the dishes, drive my brother to an appointment, send off a resume, revise a cover letter, and then it's fucking six pm! Later some one asks, "What did you do today?" and you just stare at them, bewildered at how to go about an answer.

I know I want to stay in Seattle but I definitely questioned that at times when things kept not panning out. The good news is, I think things are on the upswing. I'm working more. Transport-stiffling Snowmageddon has passed. I have a renewed faith in the house search. Mostly, I feel so grateful to have such caring, supportive friends who were there for me when I was in dire straights. I want to give a big, huge thanks to Elizabeth, Lindsey, Tegan, and Annie K especially, for always being there to talk, share a meal, have a drink, or go out to see live music, and listen to me and remind me of all the good in life. Those ladies can officially cry on my shoulder until the end of eternity.

My mom said to me recently, "Things don't happen quickly for you." I don't think that's necessarily accurate, as it sort of depends on what I'm doing. This is also the woman who told me, "If you ever find yourself pregnant or just want to have a baby but don't want to get married or have a partner- that's fine! We'll all help you raise the baby." (This comment had nothing to do with the nausea. She actually said it awhile back- I just still think it's hilarious and mildly ridiculous) Did I mention my mom is a conservative Christian? Apparently her grandma biological clock is ticking louder than her sense of propriety.

Point is, I really respect her, but I have to take some things she says with a grain of salt. I don't know if things happen slowly or quickly for me, but they just happen when they happen. These last few months I've had to find a balance of being proactive and making things happen, and accepting that I don't have control over things. And that the recession and high unemployment rate are real things that affect our daily lives, not just numbers that happen to some one else.

Apparently I can't write a blog post these days without a quote from Anne Lammot's Bird By Bird.

"It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what's keeping things running right. We're bugs struggling in the river, brightly visible to the trout below. With that fact in mind, people like me make up all these rules to give us the illusion that we are in charge. I need to say to myself, they're not needed, hon. Just take in the buggy pleasures. Be kind to the others, grab the fleck of riverweed, notice how beautifully your bug legs scull."

I'm happy to let this month trickle into February. Meanwhile, I'm watching my bug legs, not counting my chickens, and offering up unconventional prayers for what the rest of 2012 may hold.

Tired Paws

The name of this blog, which I've been writing for over four years, means "Amber on the go" in Spanish. I've rarely lived in one place for more than 6 months in the past decade. I spent years in Bellingham but was in and out traveling and studying in Latin America. When I did live in one place for a whole year, it wasn't even in America, but in South Korea.

In Mexico in 2005, my Mexican boyfriend Josafat immediately pegged me as a "pata de perro". This literally means "dog's paw", but translates more as backpacker, wanderer, or globetrotter. I also very specifically remember him saying, "Te enamoras con tu entorno" meaning You fall in love with your surroundings (or wherever you are in that moment)". How could I not? There are so many amazing places in the world to see, and a little bit of your heart can fall in love over and over. Yes, I've been a Pata de Perro for a long time and am incredibly grateful for the life that I've led. Last year alone, I went to 10 countries on 4 continents and took at total of 17 different flights.

I never thought I'd say this, but my little dog paws are tired. I don't want to be on the go anymore right now. I had a great experience living in South Korea for a year, but if anything it made me appreciate and LOVE the Northwest more than ever. After being in Korea, going to SE Asia, Australia, then to Europe in the summer, a little voice in my head was screaming at me to stay in Seattle. It wasn't even a conscious, logical decision, weighing pros and cons of career and romance and social networks or whatever makes some one move somewhere. It was just what my heart said and I had to listen.

I would run into friends or family and they'd ask, "So when's your next trip?" Nope, not going anywhere, I told them. I don't want to get on another airplane for a long time, and if I go anywhere I have about a 3-hour land-or-sea travel radius. That means my cardinal boundaries are essentially Vancouver BC, the Cascades, Portland, and the San Juans. That's as far as I have any interest in going. "Hah, we'll see how long that lasts!" they scoff. "You'll get bored in a few months and be off again!"

But I don't think I'll get bored at all. See, I used to be drawn to the dynamic feeling of always being on the move. There were so many places to go, cultures to get acquainted with, histories to study, languages to practice, new systems and concepts to wade through, interesting people to meet, foreign boys to kiss. I felt like I was always challenged and growing by traveling, pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

All those wonderful things definitely happen when you are on the go. But the same little voice was also telling me, Those things can happen when you stay put too. Being in one place definitely doesn't mean being stagnant. In fact, just the opposite; there are ways we can grow and develop ourselves in a stable home setting that are almost impossible while traveling. For instance, I have worked on farms and gardens from Bellingham to Italy, from Orcas Island to Korea to Mexico. I want to be somewhere for more than one year if only to see a garden in its second season. If only to eat the canned goods that I worked so hard to preserve. If only to make sure my little niece remembers my name.

And so, I'm digging my heels in and giving my paws a rest, at least for awhile. And I'm embracing the fact that life is as meaningful, beautiful, rich, and adventurous as we make it, whether we travel the world or live for 90 years in one small town. It's all a matter of finding what's new for you, in your own community, in your own way. And for me, the conventionality of a 9-5 job in the English-speaking city where I grew up feels brand new and exciting.

I can't sign off without an ending thought from Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird:

"All the good stories are out there waiting to be told in a fresh, wild way. Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before. Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions."

Eastside Cabin Weekend

This past week my dear friend and fellow blogger Elizabeth turned 30. We celebrated in the city on her actual birthday, but the weekend was a chance to get out of town. On Friday, the birthday girl plus 4 of us headed over Highway 2 to Plain, Washington, somewhere between Lake Wenatchee and Leavenworth. We stayed in one of her friend's cabins- though it was more of a house with 3 bedrooms, a loft turret, tall ceilings, and hot tub. It was a clear day with about a foot of snow in the yard. First things first: we unpacked the car, with every one bringing various food and drinks to pitch in for weekend provisions. D had recently hosted a dinner party and had a lot of leftover cheese, so he brought in a gigantic armload of tupperware full of cheese, imploring us, "We HAVE to eat all this cheese." It was that moment that I knew we were destined to be friends.
While the rest of the crew jumped in the hot tub, Eli and I wanted to play in the snow. We had a blast sledding down the tiny hills in the yard, since after all, beggars cannot be choosers. We wanted to build a snowman, but the snow was too hard and didn't pack well. Then I had the idea to build a cooler for our drinks that didn't fit in the fridge. We were keeping drinks cold by just keeping them outside, but I thought they needed their own area and envisioned a sort of open-walled pedestal. After a few planning meetings, Elizabeth and I came up with this lovely and functional cooler.
R was in charge of dinner, and she made her mom's famous tomato beef soup, complete with homemade pasta noodles and organic canned Amish-raised beef that her mom sends her from the midwest. The soup was soooo good.
On Saturday morning we had a really relaxing time just hanging out- coffee, breakfast, reading on the couch, and funny David Sedaris stories on This American Life. In the late morning, the rest of the guests who couldn't leave town on Friday arrived in 2 carloads. We made lunch and then a group of us headed to Lake Wenatchee state park to go cross country skiing. I have downhill skied and snowshoed, but somehow in my life never have been cross country skiing. It was fun gliding through the woods with awesome ladies and getting used to this new movement. We got out of the trees and were rewarded with a stunning view of the lake.
We also did some real sledding, not the tiny hills of the previous day. I marveled at how the simple, simple act of going down a slippery hill can be fun for humans of all ages.
That night I was on a team dinner duty. K had made pulled pork for tacos and an AMAZING, mostly homemade dark mole. We had all the taco fixings, plus her pickled red onions and my home-canned green tomato salsa.
Then another friend busted out a homemade birthday cake for dessert- tres leches! I know I had tres leches cake in Mexico, but usually from bakeries, and have never had it homemade here in the States. It was innccredddibble. (I got the recipe and am looking for an excuse to make it, so if you want to be my excuse, just let me know!)
So yes, the trip was mostly about eating and playing in the snow, just as an eastern Washington winter cabin weekend should be. Elizabeth and I have known each other since we were 12, but have almost never lived in the same place as adults. I'm so happy I could celebrate 30 with her- Happy Happy Birthday Eli!

Happy New Year

So far 2012 has been treating me well. New Years Day started with a polar bear plunge into the Puget Sound at Golden Gardens. After the cold, refreshing dip, new and old friends gathered around the fire to chat, drink coffee, yerba mate, cook eggs over the flames and eat homemade bread. Costumes, acrobalance, burning Christmas trees, and a crisp view of the Olympic mountains added to the festive atmosphere on the beach.

Day two of the new year I traded cold water for hot water and went snowshoeing to a hot spring near Steven's Pass. It was my first time this year in snow! I marveled at the beauty of the mountains and the falling snow while soaking in the tub, grateful to spend the whole day outside in the winter.

So today is my first day to really assess what 2012 means to me. There is still a lot of unknown, but no matter what I end up doing, I want to do it well, and with intention. Here is a passage I loved from the book Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott. She is talking about writing, which I want to do more of this year, but it can apply to anything.

"You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set bricks as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself."

Happy New Year- here's to losing and finding ourselves in everyday, unexpected ways.

Quite the Year

I will remember 2011 as the year that I got to do an incredible amount of traveling... enough to possibly even get it out of my system for awhile, if you can believe that. I feel so incredibly lucky and blessed to have seen so many new places and spent time with people I loved. Here's a quick recap, mostly in photos.

I started the year in Gunsan, South Korea where I was finishing a year-long teaching contract. It had snowed on Christmas and didn't get above freezing for the whole month of January. I'd pass this snow-covered Buddhist temple on my bike ride. (Yes, I learned how to cycle in the snow.)

Our school had a winter English camp, and I taught the drama class, in which I wrote and directed a modern musical version of the Wizard of Oz for 64 middle school students. They sang "Help" by the Beatles, among other songs, and luckily some of my awesome Korean coteachers choreographed the dances.
In February I went to Australia to visit my dear friend Scott. We hiked around the Grampians National Park (as well as we could with all the trail closures after the floods) and saw emus and kangaroos and some of the oldest petroglyphs on the planet.
We also drove to Sydney and back via the coast, stopping for caves and fresh oysters and local cheese and beaches.
Then I headed to Southeast Asia for a month, where I had one of the absolute craziest experiences of my life- riding a motorbike in Saigon, Vietnam. I managed to stay alive and avoid accidents, and even drove onto a ferry with a kazillion other bikes.
In Cambodia I watched the sunrise over Angkor Wat.
In Thailand I visited a couple friends, took a cooking class, and made it out to some islands.
In April I was back home to enjoy the beauty of the Pacific Northwest in spring.
I didn't want to leave town again before going to our annual family work party on Memorial Day weekend in the San Juans.
Then it was off again, for a long-awaited trip to Europe, where I hadn't traveled in over 10 years. I met up with Cherie, who I had met in Korea, and we traveled in Spain and walked a bit of the pilgrimage route El Camino de Santiago.
We went to Barcelona together, then parted when I flew to Italy. I started in the north and volunteered on a farm in Piedmont.

From there I made my way down the coast to Genova and Cinque Terre...

... and then to another farm in Tuscany.
In August I came back home to the warm summer, and made sure to do plenty of hiking, including a trip to the Olympics.
In September my Australian friend came to Seattle for the World Hardcourt Bike Polo Championships, and I ended up watching a lot of bike polo at Magnuson Park.
I also went to Mount Rainier for a group campout weekend, which happened to also consist of a historical 1899 roleplay murder mystery game.
Later in the fall, the whole family took a trip to Seabrook on the Washington coast.
Well, there were of course a million other things that happened, but those were some of the highlights. Can't wait to see what 2012 brings. Happy New Year!

Merry Merry

Merry Christmas! It's hard to believe another Christmas has already come and gone. It's been a sweet, peaceful, and very traditional holiday here in Seattle with my family- big Christmas Eve party with Norwegian brined meat, potato lefse, a Santa suit, and singing around the tree with lots of enthusiasm but gaps in the verses. Christmas morning at my mom's with satsumas in stockings, then brunch at my aunt's with waffles, bacon, frittata, coffee and Baileys, and mimosas . It's funny to think I've done these things for almost all 29 years of my life (minus the year I was with my friend's Jewish family in Mexico, and last year in South Korea). There is comfort in doing the same thing, and yet what is surprising is that each year is not the same at all. Kids get older, a divorced spouse is absent, a new girlfriend is brought, a family member is sick, or recently recovered. This is what I like about tradition- that it is not always the same, just the same context for a family to grow and change.

A coworker at the flower shop asked me last week what my favorite thing about Christmas was. After considering a moment, I said, "That it's such a big holiday that people make the effort to get together." It's a time when it's okay to put everything on hold and make time to see family or dear friends. If we didn't do that at this time of year, would it happen at all? On the flip side, the holiday can create a lot of pressure and stress- on people to travel in winter, to decide who to visit, to figure out what to do at all if they don't have family or a close community around.

And of course, there are many other holidays to celebrate in this season. We say "Happy Holidays" as almost a euphemism or sneaky substitute for "Merry Christmas", but I like the idea of honoring other things that are actually happening at this time of year, namely the return of light, instead of a birth that we all know didn't even happen in winter.

And so, besides celebrating Christmas merrily, I've really enjoyed gathering with friends the past week in Solstice parties and potlucks, and Hanukkah candle lighting and singing. We are in the dark heart of winter, and these holidays remind us of the light within ourselves, the warmth in the people we love, and nature's ever-changing cycles. It has to get dark to get light. And even as the bustle and cheer die down, we have to remember that every day is a minute or two longer, and even in the deep grey of Seattle, we have a quiet, resolute strength to get through the winter. Here is a quote I recently came across, by writer Melanie Rae Thon- "The chickadee comes to the feeder. Even now, so close to twilight! Less than half an ounce of feather and hollow bone, ten drops of blood, heart smaller than a fingernail — yet she survives all night, every night, all winter."

Merry merry to you, whatever you may be celebrating.

Cow to Beef

It wasn't the best weekend to leave town. I worked all day Friday so I was leaving Seattle late. I turned down an event I really wanted to volunteer with, a fundraising dinner for Just Garden. There was not one, but two different friends' birthdays on Saturday. But it's rare to get a chance to go out to our family's property in the San Juan islands in December. In fact, in my almost 3 decades of life, I don't think I ever have. And I have definitely never been a part of slaughtering any cows that the family raised.

Yes, that's why I went out for the weekend. Vegetarian friends, you may not wish to read on. My family has raised organic, pastured, grass-fed cows on this land since I can remember. Usually they are sold live at a cattle auction, but for a variety of reasons including lack of profit margin and lack of full-time residents on the property to care for the animals, we are starting to phase out raising cows at all. So we are slaughtering the ones we have and keeping the meat in the family in our last years of beef production.

It may seem strange, even inhumane, for me to set aside a weekend to kill a huge animal. Anyone who knows me knows I'm the kind of person who won't kill a spider- even at a friend's house I will offer to take the spider outside for them, trapped between a piece of paper and a cup while in transit. But I eat meat, and prefer to eat animals that lived happy, healthy lives and died quickly with as little suffering as possible. The best way to ensure this is to eat animals that I've had a part in that process.

I got out to the island early Saturday morning, thanks to my step-dad picking me up on Orcas. He had french-pressed coffee ready for me in the thermos, and we enjoyed a calm, bright grey boat ride with seal heads poking out of the water and buffleheads swooping by.

There were 8 adults that convened for the Cow to Beef project. The bull stayed in the pasture and a younger cousin shot it from the other side of the fence.
Another cousin slit the throat to drain the blood, and then we skinned the hind legs to expose the rear tendons. There is place between the tendon and bone where large animals can be hung up and it will support the weight. We put a crow bar through and then raised up the whole animal on a rope with a Caterpillar tractor. It was quite a surreal sight because the bull was massive, probably around a thousand pounds. Then my cousin drove the animal a quarter mile where we would do the gutting and skinning near the barn.I have experience skinning deer, so I had no trouble jumping in and helping skin while others worked on field dressing in front. However, the skin was much thicker, and the domestic animal much fattier, than the wild deer that I'm used to.

Field dressing is more technical because you don't want to puncture any of the organs, especially, obviously, anything containing urine or feces. This is the most time-consuming part as it needs to be done carefully, or you risk ruining the meat. But it needs to be done relatively quickly so that the body can cool and the meat exposed to air to start curing. They finally got all the guts out, and it was quite a large pile. Just the heart alone was enormous.
Once the guts were all out, we finished skinning, and then took off the head. At this point it was starting to look more like meat in a butcher shop. From there we cut it in half with a sawzall, then into quarters.
Even in quarters, the meat was extremely heavy. It took four adults to carry each quarter 30 feet into the barn where it could hang overnight. We estimated that the quarters weighed 200-250 pounds each. Finally, after hours of standing and working in the cold December air, we were finished with the cow project for the day.

But there was still more meat-related foraging to do. Larry and I went to pull up the crab pots in the bay, since winter crabbing is currently open. As I pulled up the pots, I was shocked at how full they were.

I've done a lot of crabbing in my day, and never seen a catch like this. Only about one per pot was female, and a couple were undersized, but for the most part they were all regulation-sized males.
That night, we had a feast of fresh crab and wild king salmon straight from Alaska. My cousin and I also taught every one the drinking game King's Cup, which turns out is pretty fun even with non-alcoholic beverages.

On Sunday, we had to cook all the crab that had been kept in the live well. It was quite a process cleaning, cooking, cooling, and packing them all up. Here is our two-burner set-up.
As soon as that was finished, we moved the beef quarters from the barn down to the boat. We loaded up the back of the truck, also a totally surreal image.
Once we got the truck to the dock, we used the crane and winch to lower the quarters onto the boat. It worked really well, but took quite a few people.
With that, the weekend's work was done. We headed back to Anacortes in a very heavy boat in the afternoon light with a great view of Mount Baker. Since it's a lot of meat and no one in the family is a butcher, the plan is to just take it to a local butcher who can do up the cuts we want. I'm looking forward to trying the meat that was raised from start to finish within the family. Sorry for the graphic, slaughter-centric post, but it was such an interesting experience I couldn't help but share.

Seattle Half Marathon

Today, in the wee hours of morning when it was barely light, I joined 17,000 people in downtown Seattle to voluntarily slog miles and miles through the rain. Yes, it was the annual Seattle Marathon and Half Marathon. I drove down with my training buddy Gabi, and we checked our post-race clothes and prayed we'd have time to go to the bathroom before the starting gun went off. Here's Gabi, pumped for the race.
And the finish line at Memorial Stadium at the Seattle Center, about 15 minutes before the race started.
We made it to the start line just in time, and took off with the sea of bodies down 5th Avenue, under the monorail, and then through the international district. I saw my friend Johnny, and Gabi saw another friend, amazing me that we could find familiar faces in such a large crowd. We got on Interstate 90 as it started raining. The grey scenery improved as we turned onto Lake Washington Boulevard and had a nice view of the lake.

One of my favorite parts about running an official race is the community and camaraderie of it. All these strangers from different backgrounds have somehow decided on completing this same, somewhat arbitrary mileage goal. It's fun to people watch, see miles of the city by foot, chat with people around you, and see the signs of some of the supporters. My favorites were "Chuck Norris never ran a marathon!" and "You've got great stamina!... call me (phone number)". When your clothes are wet, you've been running for 10 miles, and the uphill stretch of Galer St, Madison Ave, and the Arboretum seem like they will never end, a little humor goes a long way.

Johnny, Gabi, and I kept each other entertained, and we tried to share the laughter around. But the response was disappointingly quiet as the majority of runners had headphones on. I understand that music is a major motivator and the norm for modern workouts, but I think it's really too bad that it creates an atmosphere of isolation when this type of momentous event could be shared with more people. At one point, Gabi and I came up behind a guy in shorts with bulging calves and beautiful sleeve tattoos on both legs. "Awesome tattoos!" Gabi said. No response. Silence. We passed him and saw he had headphones in. I just don't like the feeling that you can't have a simple conversation if you want to.

But my headphone rant aside, the race was great. It's well organized and supported, and really wasn't even that miserably cold. We finished, got snacks, and it was just around 10am, so it felt like we had already accomplished a lot for the day. I like doing races so that I have something to train for, not because I'm fast or competitive. I ended up getting the exact time I have in 2 other half marathons, so my pace was on track. I got a better time in the half marathon in Seoul last year, but the course along the Han River was completely flat, so I don't think it can quite compare to the hilliness of Seattle. I ended up getting 308th place out of 629 in my division, so it's nice to know I'm a little faster than the average woman my age. Mostly, I was happy to have a reason to get outside and be active this fall, and to see a project through.

Thankful for Home

Happy Thanksgiving! I was home for the first time in four years, which was really nice. It was a mellow holiday at my mom's with good food and good company.

My culinary excitement of the day was making my first Tarte Tatin. I had never heard of it until a few years ago when my friend Miri had me over for dinner and whipped one up nonchalantly for dessert while we were chatting. I was struck by the beauty, and deep caramelly flavor of the apples, the rustic elegance. I found a great recipe on Orangette, and while my process was a lot slower than I remember Miri's being, I was really happy with the end result.

Later I went to a friend's house who was hosting an "orphans" Thanksgiving. The post-meal lethargy eventually wore off and turned into a dance party. It was the perfect way to end a day of lots of eating and sitting!

Seabrook, or, A Crash Course in Razor Clamming

For the 3-day weekend of 11-11-11, my family rented a house in the little community of Seabrook on the coast of southern Washington. I mean immediate family, as well as grandma, first cousins, aunts, uncles, and a few friends- 21 of us total in 2 different houses. Coincidentally, it was just announced that razor clamming would be open for 2 days only on a small handful of beaches in this exact place!

By the time we got through the holiday traffic on I-5 and made it out there, it was later than we had planned. It was practically dark and almost dinner time, but my step-dad Larry and I couldn't be confined indoors for the night until we had at least attempted clamming. The only problem was, neither of us had ever clammed, and my uncle who was going to show us the ropes had already headed out. We didn't get cell signals in this stretch of coast, so there was no way to get in contact. Shrugging, Larry and I geared up for foul weather and decided to head out anyway, admitting that we were the blind leading the blind.

We found a beach, pitch black except the evenly-spaced dots of yellow lantern light from the other clam diggers. At least we are in the right spot. So with heads bent to the wind, and awkwardly gripping our flailing buckets and clam guns, we started walking across the beach toward the water. If you've been to the Washington coast at low tide, you know that this can be a long, flat stretch. It was dark ahead of us and dark behind us. It was the most extreme weather I've been in for a long time- the kind where the wind is so strong you can barely breathe, and driving rain has a way of finding any tiny cranny of clothing. Luckily it didn't last long, and by the time we got out to the shore, the rain had stopped and the full moon came out from behind the clouds.

We knew we needed to find the airholes in the sand, and in my head I was picturing compact, round black holes. We saw a few of those and dug, but to our dismay, nothing came up. We stooped over in the wind, eyes strained on the sand, til Larry said, with an intuition that amazes me, "That looks like something." It was just a faint dimpled crater, not an obvious dark hole. But Larry dug, and lo and behold, up came a big razor clam with its oblong yellow shell and long neck and digger foot at each end. It was sort of shocking at first, that the tiniest of clue could indeed yield a real creature living down there. It reminded me of digging potatoes, how you can't see them but you trust that they're there, and up from the darkness comes food. We dug for the next hour, until Larry reached his limit of 15, and I had a solid 10.

We got back to the house cold and tired, but happy with our catch. The whole family had arrived and convened for dinner, various carloads from Seattle and Oregon managing to find each other. Dinner turned into dessert, for which I had made nutmeg pot de creme. (Years ago, my grandma gave me a set of baking ramekins when I graduated college, which I thought was a completely useless gift. But I already loved eggy, custardy desserts, and found that with ramekins in my possession, I became a creme brulee making machine that summer.) This recipe is like creme brulee without the torched sugar top, and with nutmeg and vanilla and heavy cream tasted just like the holidays.
Then dessert turned into drinks and games and poker... but those of us who had caught clams had to clean them before any more fun could be had. My uncle showed us how to blanch them so that the shells would open and easily slide off. Here's a particularly big one with his neck stretched out. Then you have to gut them, and fillet them open to get all the sand out.

On Saturday morning we awoke to... you guessed it, more rain! I went for a soggy run on a back-road logging trail, where I saw no other humans but did see bear scat, a large 3-point buck, and a random hand-painted sign that said "My man Otis". The next few hours went like this: coffee, a group walk to the beach,

my 3 year-old niece in mini-human raingear,
clam chowder and fried razor clams for lunch, a dip in the pool and hot tub... all just distractions until it was time to go clamming again. Since we hadn't been able to go together the night before, we planned a group departure at 3:30.

Razor clamming is best 1-2 hours before low tide. The low tide was at 7:20 so going out at 3:30 was a little too early, but we were hoping to do some clamming in the light. We got down to the beach and saw similar dark black holes to the night before, and on the off-chance that they were clams, started digging... only to find sand shrimp! I had no idea that there were shrimp that lived under the sand. The seagulls overhead were happy with our find, but it wasn't of much use to us. The tide was still in too far for us to get to the clam zone. So I headed back to the house with my sister and a few others for a self-imposed "happy hour". We drank some wine and ate some brie and home-smoked tuna dip and felt fortified to head out for a second round.

There were about 12 of us out there clamming, so it was quite the family endeavor. As people reached their limit of 15 clams, they headed in, but of course those of us who had gone back to the house were a little behind in numbers. My 10 year-old niece was my faithful assistant, holding my catch bag when I couldn't in the whipping wind, and staying out as long as my step-dad and I did. My brother-in-law had already reached his limit, so he wasn't digging anymore, but he was scouting holes for us. He would call out, "Amber, over here!" or "Larry, here's one!" and keep his light trained on the tiny crater until we came over. That might have been my favorite time of the whole weekend- the working together, the inter-generational and almost tribal mentality of helping each other forage for food.
Later we had a pizza potluck and I made mulled wine. Then the music got turned up so loud that we could hardly talk, and the only thing left to do was dance. Cousins, aunts, sisters, mom, and yes, even my grandma couldn't help but shake it at the end of this wintery vacation day.