The Anticipation

Tomatoes

The anticipation of a good meal is occasionally the only redeeming quality of a day. Especially on days that are routine, ordinary, or perhaps slightly boring, food can bring us to life. It brings color to my cheeks, so I've been told.

I recently had one of these days, while reporting for jury duty in downtown Los Angeles.

After an early morning, hour-long drive on side streets, and spending two and a half hours trying to read in the waiting room without falling asleep, my group was sent off on a 90 minute lunch break.

I knew where I was headed. Three blocks from the courthouse is Grand Central Market, a convergence of LA food stalls set in a 100-year-old building. I thought about it most of the morning, wondering what I might get. Last year when I found myself in the same situation, I ate at DTLA Cheese two days in a row, devouring a simple salad. With a few new eateries to choose from, I found a seat at the counter of Bombo, Mark Peel's new seafood outpost, and ordered a bowl of mussels with pappardelle.

In the end, the day let me think, let me read, let me write, let me walk. I attempted to see jury duty as a metaphor for impending childbirth, because nothing about the experience that day was in my control, like which group my name would or would not be called in, the random computer generator, or if I was lucky enough to miss the courtroom all together. 

Thankfully, I got off easy. The two civil cases we had been brought in for settled out of court, and by the late afternoon, we all cheered when we were told our service was complete. 

Two months later, I'm officially on maternity leave, which right now is probably the best feeling in the entire world. Now, instead of anticipating a good meal, I'm anticipating the arrival of our little one in just a couple of weeks. Not that there won't be any good food to be had, mind you.

Over Labor Day Weekend we drove to Underwood Family Farms for what's become an annual Roma tomato pilgrimage. Instead of picking our own boxes, we called ahead and ordered 50 pounds of tomatoes. I spent the next three days making fresh sauce and freezing it for when I'll need it most.

There was no recipe, really. I turned on the heat of my largest Le Crueset pot. Next, I halved, chopped, and slid tomatoes into the pot until it was nearly filled to the brim. Salt. A soft boil. A lower heat, and about 30 minutes, give or take. I simply cooked the sauce until it was done.

All the sauce was strained through a food mill on the coarsest blade, then poured into glass mason jars and sealed. In between, I made some of my favorite tomato things, like this tart from David Lebovitz, Molly's pomodori al forno, and fresh tomato sauce laced with parmesan and basil.

And of course, there is Pablo Neruda's Ode to Tomatoes, a poem I read every year around this time.

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets...

Now there's nothing left to do but eat tomatoes, and wait, wait, wait. 

Literary City Guide | Orange County, California

Photo by Danielle Bauter

Photo by Danielle Bauter

When you think of Orange County, California sunshine and sandy beaches likely come to mind. Your instinct isn't wrong. But as Laguna Beach local and avid traveler Danielle Bauter shows us, this cluster of cities along the southern coast of The Golden State boasts many literary offerings as well.

From top-tier universities with expansive libraries to a Shakespeare by the Sea festival, to now-famous donuts in Costa Mesa, and a coffee shop with books hanging from the ceiling, Orange County has a little something for everyone.

Stop by to welcome Orange County to Literary City Guides! 

How to Work Your Lunch Break Like Frank O'Hara

Living with Poetry is an occasional series where we explore how poetry infuses our everyday lives. Catch up with past features here.

The subject of working and writing brings up two important issues: how to best utilize the lunch break to your creative advantage, and how to eat well.

This might not come as a surprise, but most writers have day jobs, sometimes in entirely unrelated fields. If you’re one of them, consider yourself in good company in the ranks of those like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Frank O'Hara, who found time to write during the confines of the work hours they kept.

In a Harvard Business Review article, Poetry for Professionals, John Coleman writes how poetry can teach us to infuse life with beauty and meaning. “A challenge in modern management can be to keep ourselves and our colleagues invested with wonder and purpose. As Simon Sinek and others have documented, the best companies and people never lose a  sense of why they do what they do. Neither do poets. In her Nobel lecture "The Poet and the World," Wislawa Szymborska writes:

“Granted, in daily speech, where we don’t stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like “the ordinary world,” “ordinary life,” “the ordinary course of events” ... But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.”

Frank O'Hara understood that "the ordinary world" was full of inspiration. While on his lunch break from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, O'Hara often composed poetry from fragments he observed in this brief hour. His collection, "Lunch Poems," chronicles many walks around the city.

It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.

-from "A Step Away from Them"

This might seem like a list with no apparent cohesion, but when you consider the circumstances under which the poem was written, it flows. As a reader, you are following O'Hara through Manhattan, seeing what he sees. As a writer with a busy day job, O'Hara used his lunch hour wisely by observing the world around him, collecting lines for poems, and composing them on a park bench.

A lunch break is your time. Whether it’s twenty minutes or one hour, you can accomplish something creative. Bring a book, take a walk with the intention of thinking through a creative rut you’re in, pull out a notebook or sketchpad, type up the draft that you hand wrote the day before.

Now, when it comes to eating well during your lunch break, that’s also an issue worth discussing. Especially if you’re planning to use your creative juices, you’ll need to stay energized (think healthy ingredients like avocado and whole grains, rather than empty fast food calories).

Have you read Lunch at the Shop? It’s a slim little cookbook celebrating the enjoyment of the midday meal. Peter Miller makes lunch every day at his bookstore in Seattle, and this collection of 50 simple recipes makes me want to do the same.

“In our current bustle, lunch has been overlooked. The bulk of lunch has been sourced out to stand-up counters and takeout platters, wrapped and rolled and packaged, and it is now mostly a pass-through, of time and food.”


Peter continues to explain how when you take control of your meal, you are "simply taking a part of the day back into your hands, making it personal and pleasure. The food will be better, the stories more interesting, and the day considerably more distinct."

Cheers to that.

Lunch looks different for each of us. The point is to at least give the meal some attention, in whatever way makes sense for you. And if you need a little inspiration for your lunch bag, here are some great ideas:

Salads

Sandwiches

Things With Avocado*
*Because avocado is always a good idea!