usa honeymoon sampler 2008
hotel: Flanigan's inn easily the nicest accommodations on the hiking leg of the trip, spacious room, cathedral ceiling, pool & jacuzzi, right at the entrance to Zion, added bonus of "The Spotted Dog", a little gourmet restaurant (but head down the street for breakfast as they are very slow in the am, we both really liked "The Mean Bean" cafe down the street for our pre-hike coffee and breakfast.
day 1 - with a very special thanks to my patriotic fear of all things outside of my comfortable home in Cambridge, MA, we start with an easy hike to the emerald pools, where I dip my toe in the hiking waters, and realize that no, my new husband is not, in fact, going to go tumbling off a cliff.
(And yes, as a matter of fact, I DID spent more than my fair share of the trip considering every imaginable honeymoon disaster headline
including, but not limited to, landslides, falls, drownings, fires, plane crashes, great white attacks and kidnappers. Books for sale in the canyon lodge with titles like "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon", "Sunk without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde", and "Death, Daring & Disaster: Search and Rescue in the National Parks" didn't do a whole hell of a lot to ease my anxiety.) But back to real life, in favor of imagined horror - after a morning of easy hiking, and being a mountain goat at heart, I readily agreed to possibly the most dangerous hike in the park, up to Angel's landing, every write-up of which wards off acrophobes with descriptions of steep drop-offs surrounding very narrow ridge trails (which I later found to be impassable). "Only the boldest hikers push on the landing each day" They weren't kidding, I made it far, but Martin had to push on to the very end alone, with the few others bold enough to brave the narrow ridge hike to the landing. While I slept in the shade of a butterscotch pine (you smell them all over the place in Zion, it is a terrific smell), he snapped some shots of his breathtaking panoramic view of the park from the landing. You can see a ridge on the second photo that will give you an idea what Martin hiked across to take these pictures.
Along the way up and down, we saw some neat rock formations, and a lizard who was torn between his fear of us and his insatiable desire to eat that caterpillar, he kept scooting from the caterpillar to the edge of the road, and finally, as you can see, hunger won out over fear.
And here, a funky rock formation, and me in a mini-cave, which all the kids loved to play in. After the extended vacation with me running around like a 5 year old, I can imagine Martin will be not so secretly relieved if we don't have kids.
Thus concludes day 1 - author's back is getting sore, so we'd like to interrupt this post with a commercial break.
Take a gander at last night's dinner, today's lunch (astute siblings have either recognized the mixing bowl already, or maybe have tears running silently down the face, and unexplainably vivid memories of returning to Maplewood terrace after school to a kitchen filled with the smell of freshly baked cinnamon bread.)
Anyway, it's a lemon pasta that I can only describe as possibly the "happiest" dish I've ever tasted. Here's the recipe, from "Marcella's Italian Kitchen", my favorite Italian cookbook (though I think Jamie Oliver's risotto recipes are tops).
"Simple and fast recipes that will WOW your guests every time!" - Jane Coté
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1 - Put 4tbsp butter and 1/2 cup heavy cream on high heat in a skillet big enough to accommodate 1 lb pasta later. On boil, add 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, stir thoroughly, and then stir in the zest (no pith) of 4 lemons.
2 - Reduce to half the original volume and remove from heat.
3 - In the meantime, boil your pasta until cooked but firm to the bite (Marcella uses fettucine, I used and quite liked tagliatelle)
4 - Add the pasta to the sauce and toss over medium heat about 20 seconds.
5 - Place in a warmed pasta bowl and toss in 1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano.
I had arugula to use up, the pepperiness goes nicely, just fold it in after the cheese, it wilts right in, I also toasted some crushed walnuts to stir in at the end. Serve with more grated parm, salt & pepper, and ENJOY!!!
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I'd like to see Martha Stewart host Marcella Hazan. It would be an all-out battle. Martha fans know that there is a right way to do things in the home (only to be learned from hours of studying battered copies of Living, and replaying tevoed episodes of her show), and a stupid way to do things in the home, which is the default for anyone-not-Martha. Martha is a big personality, and not to be crossed in matters of the home. Enter Marcella Hazan, master of Italian cuisine, and whose judgmental, authoritative and decisive writing style will make the brow of even the most talented home cook sweat for fear of offending Marcella's very strict concept of what is admissible (her word) in the kitchen. (eg. Pasta machines - "the two admissible kinds...")
Let's sample some of Marcella's memorable prose on how to make pasta:
"...we tend to take for granted the essential component of the dish we are making, the pasta itself. This is regrettable. (note that she does not state opinion, but hard fact-according-to-Marcella) If we do not clearly percieve the differences in pasta character, if we cannot tell good pasta from bad, we can never master the vast range of expression of this most versatile and satisfying of all foods"
"...Both flours make equally valid pasta"
"Olive oil, salt, colorings, seasonings have no gastronomic reason for being in pasta. Some, such as olive oil that makes pasta slicker, are wholly undesirable and a detriment to good pasta. If one respects the freshness and immediacy of the Italian approach to cooking, one puts all the flavors in the sauce."
"Thinning the dough can be compared to reaching the sidewalk from a building's sixth story. The fastest way is to jump, but you will be a mass of shattered bones. One of the reasons that pasta made by shops is so mediocre is that the dough is flattened all at one time, rather than step by step: it's body is smashed, its vital sinew broken, it is inert..."
"In Italian cooking there is no cream of anything soup"
"I wish I could take you into my kitchen and say: Look this is how it's done"
I could continue, but instead recommend that you buy her book, in addition to theory, her recipe instruction is a joy to read and surprisingly easy to follow. Now, back to the brawl. If I can imagine one person who may have the power to make Martha shrink, it is Marcella, and particularly because if you've ever cooked from Living, you may have noted that while the recipes are decent, they aren't particularly special, I usually wish I had used a cookbook after using Living recipes, they are good, but not as good as I like to eat. Martha is a master homemaker, but she falls short in the kitchen, where Marcella reigns. I think I've just invented the ultimate reality TV show...
