white truffle, hen egg, robiola pizza with Bolognese sauce

I did not intend for 2012 to start somberly, but I can’t seem to lighten my loafers. All I can think about is change. Once I start to lose my personal struggle with change, it shrouds everything I see, taste and touch like a thick, mocking apparition.

Let me back up. Ever since I was small, I have had a heel-dragging reaction to stagnancy. At the merest whisper of stillness, my tiny self leapt on to the next dragon, slaying it with the unbridled passion of a wild-minded child. When I was six I attacked the art of spelling fiercely, until I won the Idaho State Spelling Bee. Granted, the state’s population was only a million at the time, but still. I drank in words and letters like a parched vulture, eventually conquering every volume of an encyclopedia. Read more

In the spirit of pursuing things that matter in the new year, I’ve been distilling my priorities. I am the type of person whose home reflects the state of her inner monologue. If my home is clean and orderly, so is my head and heart. I can work, cook, and generally have a more positive outlook. I love my current house, but I’m starting to grow restless.

I am fortunate to live in a single-family home that is very near the nucleus of Seattle and all she has to offer. I can be at Pike Place Market in five minutes flat. I do much of my shopping there, from farm-fresh eggs to esoteric cuts of meat like veal shins and Moulard duck legs to foraged produce such as fiddlehead ferns or morel mushrooms. On the rare occasions when I can’t get what I need at Pike Place, it’s likely that Uwajimaya, the most well-stocked Asian grocer in the Northwest, will have it. I am there at least three times a week, and they keep me in pig’s heads, Buddha’s hands and chicken feet as well as pea shoots, yamaimo potatoes and all manner of sea creatures, from urchins to smelt roe. Read more