In recent weeks, two close friends have started WordPress blogs at new domain names: Ben Deemed Cool replaces Ben’s previous travelblogue and BlueSaepe is another friend’s first.

The summer solstice seems to be lining up with a digital turn, as office colleagues embrace Facebook as they have Twitter, and I remember to blog my redesign of the University of Virginia’s Medieval Studies program site from last summer.

My role was to design a template easy to maintain, and I focused on making the design elements appropriate to the program, discovering a plethora of atrocious “medieval” fonts, and working the header image to include Eastern and Western medieval imagery (the Virginia program emphasizes its global course scope).

(Nota Bene: “Background-image: repeat;” could really have helped some monks out.)

Instead of entering into the requisite monastic practices associated with dissertating—surrounding myself with stacks of books, researching, caffeinating, and writing, I have spent much of the past few months traveling for work, seeking out new ways to think about public broadcasting and social media, and also what inspires me most—beautiful food.

In my usual refrigerator logic, I opened the door a few weekends ago to local roses for my colleague Jen’s birthday and aioli golden from orange duck yolks sharing a shelf (I often group by color family).

The opening of the weekend markets in late spring is a boon for locavores, a chance to renew friendships with area artisans (below, Jeff Miller, my favorite jewelry craftsperson in Charlottesville),

and to find new ways to use local ingredients.

When I compared the five blog posts in the queue this morning, written in hotels and airports, including four hundred photographs, the pattern of recent weeks took shape—each post highlights shining moments when local food offers transcendence.

At the end of April, my sister Katrina and I visited Kassandra for her final performance at Point Park, and on Sunday, we celebrated Grilled Cheese Month with wonderful bread from Gold Crust Baking Company (within walking distance) and Crowley Colby from Cheestique, the local cheese shop near the Del Ray farmers’ market.

We sat on the porch, drank Hefeweizen, and smiled at the children playing a few yards down. The crisp, lacy crusts crunched from the butter, and when Katrina left, I listened to the ticking as the gas ignited; I stood over the pan and reheated the last half, watching the late afternoon sun play over the kitchen walls.

On Memorial Day weekend, my mother and Kassandra surprised me, driving to Charlottesville to collect some things I had stored from her Pittsburgh apartment in my garage. Before the market, we went to the Albemarle Baking Company, the award-winning local bakery that makes superlative pecan sticky buns.

Kassandra and I shared the same smile that Katrina and I had flashed at each other over grilled cheese. She was in a happy place. Pastry does that.

They left after the market, Ben was attending a family wedding, and I turned to my favorite mesclun from Radical Roots and my bouquet of chive flowers.

Here’s a dare for you: hold a chive flower in your hand, close your eyes, and eat it whole. It’s like eating a firework. Decorative, functional, and purple, these may be my favorite flowers.

Late spring also means baby squash at market, often with their flowers still attached.

They won’t last, and I like the speckled greens and bright yellow pattypans best,

especially with green garlic in a burrito with fresh eggs and strong guacamole.

For a few weeks, soft-shell crabs are everywhere, but ordering them on menus means you miss their transformation from blue to red.

Spying jumbos at Seafood at West Main market, I remembered the Sancerre in the back of the refrigerator and bought this one to dip in flour, fry in butter and oil, hit with lemon, and sprinkle with garlic chives and chive flowers.

I have developed a terrible habit of eating these with my hands, dipping the legs into aioli, which works well when your roommate is off at a family wedding doing the electric slide stonecoldsober at three in the afternoon.

In Dallas, I went to the Tasting Room at Lola. When I go to a restaurant with heightened expectations, my hope is to leave slightly more knowledgeable than I entered; what to expect from a restaurant where the owner also creates the paintings hanging throughout?

A quiet table by the window, and eleven courses that helped me understand why I prefer to make reservations for one.

Winterpoint oyster with blood orange granita (Bisol “Crede” Prosecco di Valdobbiadene)

Scottish salmon belly, preserved lemon, olive, and herbs

Brodo di Parmigiano Reggiano and a spring onion raviolo (Tangent, Pinot Gris, Edna Valley 2005)

Soft scrambled goose egg with chives, house-cured pancetta and Gruyere

Pan-roasted Hake with ratatouille (this was my least favorite)

Pineapple sorbet (this is molecular gastonomy)

Arancini: risotto, chicken liver, morels and spinach (Bestue, Finca Rableros, Tempranillo-Cabernet Sauvignon, Spain 2003)

Seared foie gras with spring peas and Prosciutto di Parma (unsurprisingly, my favorite)

Kobe coulotte, potato puree, asparagus, porcinis, and marrow

Cheeses with cogna and focaccia crackers (A French cow, a Spanish goat, and Echo Mt. Oregon) (Marenco, “Scrapona” Moscato d’Asti, Italy 2004)

Orange genoise, rhubarb, gelato di carnaroli, and mint (genoise was fine, gelato was odd)

Although I prefer to dine alone, Jane has joined me on all recent travels. She particularly enjoyed the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California,

where I attended the ForumOne unConference on online communities. (unConferences determine the sessions by participants writing panel titles on pieces of paper and placing them in on the conference room grid; rooms and sessions change during the day as participants see fit.)

Jane stubbornly decided to stay in my purse for much of my trip to California; I tried to coax her out in Yountville, admonishing her poor manners in Bouchon, the less formal institution of überchef Thomas Keller.

I thought the pork trotters were worth the drive from San Francisco, but the restaurant patrons were, frankly, obnoxious and beneath Jane’s notice; the sympathetic bartender half-smiled and just poured me another glass of wine.

Driving to Adobe headquarters for the Bay Area Video Coalition presentations,

I passed what looked to be the largest meringues I have ever seen in a window.

Happily, Patisserie Philippe is two doors down from Adobe, and the man behind the counter told me that many Parisian shops have meringues just as big and in twenty different flavors. He then insisted that I try a macaron; to my surprise, it was chewy.

I bought a breakfast pudding, an eggy, condensed pudding with chocolate and berries that I could eat every morning,

and he handed a truffle across the counter to put in my purse “for energy in afternoon meetings.” As I left, I told him he had made my entire day. (The macaron euphoria helped as I sat in the Adobe lobby and stared at the wall of CS3 software.)

I would much rather drive than fly, and that afternoon I drove from San Francisco to L.A., stopping at one location of what an SEO guru I work with calls “a sacred place.” He instructed me via Twitter to use my inside voice.

I opened the car trunk and watched the lolcals, thinking, i’m in ur Een-N-Owt eating ur cheezburgerz.

Into the drive, I pulled over to revel at the turbines, thinking of last summer when Katrina and I came upon turbines on our road trip.

My silver PT Cruiser looked zippy in front, and soon enough we were in Lala Land.

I was listening to public radio so as not to hear the very latest news about Paris and her medical needs, but found I could not escape this sign on the side of a Hollywood flower shop:

Last weekend was the first annual PixelodeonFest, a vlogger conference held at the American Film Institute, which turned out to border Griffith Park.

Scanning market listings for California is incredible, and I wandered through the Hollywood Sunday market, filled with beautiful vegetables, some new to me:

cheering rainbow chard,

fresh porcini (the mushroom vendor confirmed their six-week season)

fluorescent squash blossoms,

garbanzo beans,

komatsuna,

and boysenberries that stained my fingers as I walked around the corner to The Hungry Cat on Vine for brunch.

I have never been a fan of eggs benedict, having ordered it at twelve and been disappointed by what I supposed hollandaise must always taste like. The Cat’s lobster benedict erased all of that and made me understand how the dish works.

Egg yolks mixing with the lemony hollandaise, with (their variation) pork belly and lobster on a muffin. I took a sip of my fresh strawberry puree mimosa and blinked. Recreating this is reason enough to throw a brunch.

I also ordered the Suzanne-style sticky bun since the Suzanne in question is celebrated chef and co-owner Suzanne Goin; turns out her style is to serve house-cured bacon on the side. Maybe she eats sticky buns with bacon standing over a pan in her kitchen.

Yesterday morning, I sensibly made steel-cut oatmeal before I drove to the Old Town Alexandria market, willing myself not to be disappointed after last weekend’s California market.

I found a woman selling baskets that I liked,

didn’t see the woman selling American Girl doll clothes as I had before at the market (see below—John, these are for you, note the girl’s crown).

I did find figs and squash blossoms as I hurried to my car to drive to Baltimore.

Stopping to take in the outside of the modern convention center, an anxious couple almost ran over my toes, and I realized the depth of fandom in the six thousand people that converged upon Baltimore Saturday for the first stop of the upcoming seasons’s Antiques Roadshow.

Inside, lines snaked around for the different categories, multiple cameras were rolling, and the excitement was contagious as families steadied their treasures strapped to rigged carts.

I wandered over to the Subaru exhibit (this year’s sponsor), and was delighted to find this vintage car that thumbs its grill at the Mini (and sports a sweet logo and side mirrors).

Back outside, those walking away into the blue Baltimore day didn’t seem overly upset to miss their television debut, and I walked to my car happy that I been in attendance as viewers generated show content for the upcoming season.

Walking up the Alexandria porch stairs with my treasures from the Old Town market, valuable in their freshness, I worried that my squash blossoms might have wilted.

Warm, but not wilted, I set the blossoms out on the counter and stirred two snipped spring onions, a teaspoon of chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and a clove of minced garlic into three ounces of goat cheese.

Carefully opening the flowers, I put a rounded spoonful in each of ten flowers and pressed the ends together.

Then, I made the beer batter that seems to work for everything—it’s a 1:1 ratio of beer and all-purpose flour (a little lighter on the flour, a little heavier on the beer)—thin with water a dribble at a time until you like the consistency.

The trick is to coat the blossoms and still see their lovely veins; then fry them in a good half-inch of oil heated to medium for three minutes (test with a little bit of batter first) for two minutes on the first side,

one minute on the second side, turning gently with tongs.

Cool for 30 seconds and then eat immediately; let the counter be your anchorhold.

Related posts:

1. summer squash blossoms, starflowers, and deep dishes
2. spinning in the sun
3. Aerial Roots

1. John:
   June 18th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

   My darling, you have surpassed yourself. It’s like Mrs Dalloway meets On the Road (“I said, ‘Man, I think I’m gonna eat the flowers myself’”!) colliding with a 21stC version of Rossetti’s Goblin Market (“what melons icy-cold… peaches with a velvet nap… pellucid grapes without one seed”) from whose delights not even the sinister presence of the America Girl franchise can detract, and all the while forging new pathways for truly social networking. Especially nice to see Kassandra, who I look forward to meeting one of these days. The unConference is inspired, just as Kthread is in its way a triumphant unBlog, undoing the absurd pretence of coherent self-containment to better achieve what the confluence of strands was meant to in the first place. We need to compare meringue notes; meanwhile, I leave you (courtesy of Ms. Rossetti) as you leave us, on a note of delicious insatiability …

   “Nay, hush, my sister:
   I ate and ate my fill,
   Yet my mouth waters still;
   To-morrow night I will
   Buy more:” and kissed her…

2. Kristen:
   June 18th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

   John, you spoil me so with your marvelous comments.

   How soon do you return? Is there time for a quick European tour to see the wondrous meringues? How lovely that would be…

3. Ben:
   June 22nd, 2007 at 11:43 am

   You were dipping soft shell crab in aioli whilst I electric-slid? Life is terribly unfair. Btw, my mom and grandmother have decided to re-create that soft shell crab sandwich from 2Amy’s. They were practically drooling over it the other evening as I introduced them to the glories of Kthread. The California farmers market also left them drooling.

4. Ben:
   June 22nd, 2007 at 11:44 am

   p.s. Thanks again for helping me create the blog.

5. Mica:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm

   Wow, I’m in Paris and have yet to find food as delicious as what you appear to have made. I will testify to the existence of giant meringues, however.

   Where will be you be in August? May I come visit?

6. Kristen:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm

   Mica, would you please flickr giant meringue pics? I’m fascinated by these.

   And I hope you will come visit in August—there are food adventures to be had in the District—

7. Colby:
   April 7th, 2008 at 7:30 am

   That silver car on your site is a Chevy HHR, not a PT Cruiser.

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Posted Sunday, June 17th, 2007, 7:31 pm * Filed in Food, Photography, Travel. * . Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.