Salumi 2: In which our heroine encounters meat

You know life is okay when the only thing you can think to write about is your meat sandwich. Today I went back for my second helping of Dino Batali's chow. I think I'm in love.

No, not just with the meat sandwich (the meat being an awesome lamb) but with the place. The food's good, but it's not that, or not just that. Even the crowding in the tiny place is wonderful. It's a New Year's Eve kind of crowded where getting elbowed and stepped on doesn't seem annoying. On the contrary, everyone on line, stuffed into the long corridor by the counter feels that they are part of some fun lark, some rakish escapade. Most people are all smiles even when some gnocchi sauce nearly finds its way to their coat sleeves. When someone sighs heavily and leaves in a huff, not able to put up with the line or the tight quarters, the people left on line eye each other knowingly with looks that say "more for us!"

It just feels so good to be a regular somewhere - and the trick of Salumi is that you're made to feel like a regular from the moment you step inside. I've only been there twice and was very nearly embraced by the owner on my way out today. I've been to costco tons of times and not once has anyone tried to hug me - even a little bit! Cheers was really onto something and so is my meat palace. But I know the real secret of the place: it's the place Dino Batali dreamed of having his whole life and now he's got it. The whole place is filled with an atmosphere of "I've got it made" courtesey of its purveyor. And when you bite into a ciabatta roll covered in pesto and garlic and slabbed with lamb and roasted red peppers you feel like you've got it made too.

Salumi - it's more than head cheese

I finally made it to Salumi after several failed attempts over the years. Salumi is the tiniest place in the world and has a better awesome meat to space ratio than most cattle. It's run my Dino Batali (Mario's Dad) and once you see the sandwiches this guy is dishing out it is easy to forgive Mario's jolly belly. If my Dad had been feeding me anything like that soprasata sandwich the guy with the baby behind me ordered, I'd definitely be walking with canes. Armandino opened the place in the late 90's as his retirement gig and the place is a perpetual mob scene, made even more mobbed by the fact that it is only opened Tuesday-Friday from 11-4 or when they run out of stuff.

I tried to bus down there one grey day and found the place closed - they sometimes don't feel like opening, I hear, and so don't. No one will hold it against them since they have called us all with the siren song of delicious salami and stuff like lamb priusiutto, oh my god, all cured on the premises. Another time my ride to the pioneer square shop fell through. It seemed I would never make it to Salumi and would be labeled a disgrace from here back to Babbo.

But alas, my new temp job's other perk, besides yesterday's UPS waterfall park, is that it is one block from Salumi. So I finally got to the holy grail of pancetta. Ironically, I shunned meat since it was "Gnochhi Tuesday!" They seemed to forget my order and so I got the extra joy of being coddled by the staff. A nice blonde woman said she hoped it was worth it as I grabbed a chair at the communcal table. Of course it was. I loved being crowded on all sides by strangers and felt especially superior hearing an Italian-American dad tell his daughter that gnocchi was made 'from dough - flour, eggs." The precocious gourmet looked doubtful. "I don't think so, Dad. It doesn't taste like dough." Good girl.

In less than a half an hour lunch I felt like I had a real experience, only available in Seattle. It makes me realize how little time I have taken to explore this city and how so much of it is so appealing and up my alley. This realization comes at a juncture of possible hindsight - maybe we're moving soon and I will have spent my years as a Seattleite in the dark, and not just because of a lack of sunlight. Or maybe we're not and I've realized just in time to spend the next year really making Seattle my own.

The Birthplace of UPS

My favorite lunch spot in my new work neighborhood of Pioneer Square is the tiny park across from the store. It's called "Waterfall Park" and doesn't disappoint as there is a real live mini waterfall casacading over rocks sandwiched in between office buildings. There are tables and chairs and plenty of flowering trees - it's the perfect spot to sit and eat a bag lunch. I love it there, not only because of the wild water that has no shame in spilling right over the railings, but because its the type of public space you don't often see in Seattle - but that are everywhere in New York. One of my favorite things about my NYC temp years was my lunchtime quest to find the best place to spend my paltry lunch hour (or half hour) outside without a time-eating haul there and back. There were the steps of the church on Park Avenue. The indoor solarium with the lunchtime piano player off - was it 57th? And so many tiny be-fountained spots where I unwrapped my sad sandwiches or popped the lid to my hot and cold salad bar offerings. So this little park really brings me back. I can't believe I'm nostalgic for temping, but one thing I do love about it is getting entre into a new five block radius of the world with every job. New places to grab coffee, new lunch spots, new waterfalls.

But what you might ask of UPS? Well as it turns out Waterfall Park was built to commemorate the birthplace of the United Parcel Service. From where I sit at the reception desk I can peer across Second Avenue to the very spot where Worldwide Delivery as we know it began, here in Seattle in 1907. There is plaque on the sidewalk that tells you so as you walk past and goes on to say that the birth of the United Parcel Service is evidence of what can happen under our great Constitution of the United States. It seems like an odd trajectory from the founding fathers to FedEx, I know. But I'm willing to go with it. When you think of how brand new this place Seattle was, even in 1907, a baby-city, and that UPS wasn't started by a bunch of moguls, but by a small band of messenger boys who organized themselves on this corner of Main and Second and that now there is a tranquil waterfall to commemorate all of their hustle and bustle - I'm happy to have the Constitution claim that victory for lunchhour oasis seekers everywhere.

Stripping!

Over at my house, we're stripping. That's right, once again, we're turning up the heat (gun) and taking it (paint) off. It's an amazingly transformation. We live in this great Arts and Crafts style bungalow. You see, there was nothing in Seattle before, say 1870, except for wild salmon, minus the chemicals, and happy omega-fat loving Indians. Those early days of Seattle are marked by tons of ye old prospector types, brothels-a-plenty, and the original "skid row." So, normal people didn't start coming here to live until round about 1920, which means you can't spit without it landing on a cute little brick cottage or a bungalow like ours.

Some are crack dens, well not really, but you know the house. Maybe Boo Radley lives there. Others, like the house next door have been renovated back to their full glory. This is what we are attempting.

We live in Dr. Vic's Grandma's house. When she died, Dr. Vic's parents decided we could move in until he got a job and moved (perhaps to Alaska, but that is another story). Grandma painted over all of the hard wood - a dull white - and covered the floors with either linoleum (even the bedroom) or shag. It was the 70's, she could hardly be blamed. Everything probably looked awfully old fashioned and in need of some crisping up. Now, retro is in, and here we are in big masks, stripping and sanding and staining to try to restore the old house to its proper place in architectural coziness.

It's funny, I often feel the yen for a kind of beginning of the new year fresh start. A desire to paint over everything that has happened and start anew. I often will begin to jot down to-do lists even, and rip them up and start fresh if I've made a mistake or don't like the way the handwriting looks. But this house is so much more beautiful with all of that stripped away. You see the little knicks and bobbles more. The place in the wall where the panelling is caved in and patched with a cork from a wine bottle - but it's so much more lovely and itself with its woody natural splendor on show. Here's to stripping off all of our unnecessary layers and for god sake any figurative shag carpet in our lives.

One for good measure

In my attempt to trim down without giving up my addiction to cookbooks or purchasing an avalanche of new, crappy "Bony and Loving it!" cookbooks, I've taken my turn at lightening up some recipes from the fatty pros. Some substitutions are easy: turkey sausage for regular sausage, low fat milk for whole, etc. But nothing is as simple as cooking with just enough oil, instead of how much these fat meisters would use.

I'm deep into Italian cooking at the moment, a result of a flash of warm weather here in Seattle and the promise of heat and tomatoes and basil growing on my stoop. So most of the dishes I'm concocting have a base, somewhere, of onions and garlic cooked in oil or butter. Recipes usually call for at least 2TBL of greasy goodness. This is at least twice as much as you need (desire is another story). See the great thing about onions when cooking for fatties is that they are full of water, mushrooms too. So you really just need to use enough oil to keep them from sticking and carry the flavor. I start by reducing it to half of what skinny/fatty (Giada/Mario) has called for. Sometimes I can get it down to a tsp and not really miss it.

It's a great way to save room for cheese.

Caveat: I am talking about everyday cooking here. When I have people over, I just stick to the recipe and drown them all in butter or EVOO.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I can only remember two real meltdowns I had as a kid. One: My parents rearranged the furniture in our livingroom. Where was my home? Someone took it. Meltdown. The second is a musical meltdown. Back in the 70's, my parents shunned disco, preferring instead to drive along in our crappy chevy with the country music station as a soundtrack. Being born in '74 (if you're counting that makes me 3-0) I grew up with a western twang in my ears. One day my father purchased a vinyl record by a group called "the Eagles". I immediately started weeping. Who was this man playing this crazy music? Where was Willie Nelson? Meltdown.

So I have a long history with change and not liking it. In the past couple of years it seems that the big G is trying to keep me in a constant state of flux, not so much by bombarding me with change but by dangling the possibility of change in front of my nose, or rather just off to my side, like in my parapheral vision. It's like a gnat, but you know you can't swat a gnat. If you manage to get one, there will be others, better to just learn to live with the buzzing.

Cafe Bambino

Vic's new job means he gets the car. For a long time I was ruler of the automobile, mighty queen of the Mazda. I would pop here and there, exploring, running errands, carrying great loads of heavy fresca or bottled water at a time. Those days are gone.

I'm someone whose mind is easily jumbled and nothing clears it like a nice cup of coffee, sitting in the shop reading a chapter or so of a book or going over my to-do list. This is probably a hold over from my first days in NY when I hated my apartment so much that I became a reading machine hopping from one cafe to the next with something like my dogeared second hand Simone de Beauvoir biography. But now hopping out to a coffeeshop means a 20 minute walk downtown, and a 20 minute walk back. Add some reading and a cuppa and it's a two hour adventure instead of quick pick me up.

That is until I recently discovered Cafe Bambino on 65th. A mere six blocks away this tiny cafe is a godsend to poor carless me. Legend has it that they have been serving coffee there since 1927 (in Seattle years that is like 1681) and that it was opened by a circus family who would draw business by performing on the modest street corner. Not only do they have the best coffee in Seattle (voted #1 two years running - who knew?!) but maybe the most delicious anise biscotti that I have ever tasted. What's more, though the inside is cramped and tiny, a deck next door is a perfect place for sipping, with its arbor covered in burgeoning purplish vines and the Seattle weather pushing toward Spring.

And so even though the rest of Seattle seems to be giving me a look that says "Duh!" I've finally found the cafe they've known about for years, just blocks from my house. It's amazing what being forced to use these crazy feet will do, what you will find. But I still get the car on weekends. Fresca's heavy.

Rick Steves - Heartthrob a-go-go

There is truly no one nerdier that is sexier than Edmonds, WA-born Rick Steves. He's like John Denver's half-brother, the nomad who only stuck around for "Leavin' on a jet Plane," and took bro's advice. For those of you who don't know Rick is the star of the PBS "Europe through the Back Door" series and the matching guidebooks. First of all, "Back Door?" ROAR! Second of all, anyone who can make an awesome living, nay, an empire out of vacationing in Europe has got some major mojo. And as if that isn't enough, Steves is about the most outspoken lefty liberal in the country. He posted an anti-Bush "voting special" on his travel site to the outrage of many Republican travelers. Rick (may I call you Rick?) didn't care. He used to be one of those Republicans - until travel opened his mind and heart to the rest of the people on this vast planet of ours. He just figured whatever business he lost was worth speaking his mind and exercising his American freedoms. Sexy right?

I met the man himself a couple of months ago at a book reading. I told him that I was planning a European trip because my man Vic has never been out of the USA. He peered in my eyes with those limpid baby blues and said "You've got some work to do, then!"

Today, in honor of Rick Steves, let's all spend five minutes dreaming of a far away place. Maybe even without visiting our minds and hearts can open a smidge. We're not talking Grinch sized proportions, but every little bit helps.