it's midnight and my. stomach. hurts

Tonight I found out a piece of my food writing is going to be published online in a few weeks. The journal had been really interested back in April or thereabouts and dropped the ball. While there are a lot of things I like within the piece it's sort of a negative piece in a lot of ways--definitely not a favorite with the writing group--if an important piece for me. It's strange to publish something I don't feel like I LOVE...although I do feel it's important, at least personally (though that is not a great reason)...it speaks to a lot of things I feel about this industry, and it's very of a certain time in my life, and it's perhaps challenging to think of it out of that time.

Nervousness and listmaking. My vacation is almost half over and there is so much left to do. It's so wonderful to see each person I get to see, but it's also an obligation:

do not leave anyone out.

So people want to see me again or have coffee or go driving but there's no time.

To go to New York or not. I will want to have gone by the time I'm back in California. It's just a lot to plan. Right now I'm researching bakeries and whatnot I want to hit up and I still don't really have dinner plans {which I should just make, right} and it's like...this is my vacation...like, relax already. The list so far:


il laboratorio del gelato
buttercup cakery
city bakery
doughnut plant
kee's chocolates
amy's bread/chelsea market
balthazar
kyotofu


Boys night out on the town Saturday to check out the new club, but it was all posturing and bored girls, me included. Been spending lots of time lately with people who remind me of myself too much and it's strange to see my reaction mirrored in someone else's face.

You can accuse me of being too intense, and you'd probably be right

I went to Oleana tonight. There are a lot of things I want to say about Oleana...and Aziza as well while we're discussing Turkish-North African cuisine...

{and I've tried to write already about Aziza a couple of times but it doesn't come out in a way that satisfies me as being accurate, and then there's sort of a lil rant I'm not sure if I should get into even though it really bothered me and it still bothers me a week later}

so for now there is only the things we ate at Oleana:

padron peppers with fleur de sel, yogurt
warm buttered humus with basturma, olives
zaatar focaccia
fideos with chickpeas and chard
spinach falafel with greens, beets, tahini
crispy zaatar-lemon chicken with turkish cheese pancake, greens
swordfish with eggplant-macaroni timbale
goat's milk ice cream (made with sahleb!!) with blueberry jellies, blueberry sauce, rose petal jam
umm ali with peaches and peach jam, honey pot de creme


and Aziza:

grilled flatbreads with mediterannean spreads
giant lima beans with roasted tomatoes, feta, fresh zaatar
chicken basteeya


There were so many familiar taste memories in those desserts. Not surprising-many of the components I'd tasted before, or at least variations on a theme.


I'm nervous about everything that happens when I get back to San Francisco, but that is another list to be made. It's easy to be here and it's easy to slip into things.Being back here is so emotional. Every street corner in Somerville is the scene of secrets, fights, attraction, breakups, longing. It's so marked in so many ways that diminish the abstractions I seek in SF. I moved away for food? I start to think...and it all seems so trite.