Athens, NY to Weston, West Virginia: 536 miles
87 to 287 to 78 81 to 70 to 68 to 79
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia

We have lift-off. Trundling down the driveway only 17 minutes after the 7 am target, the pod is heavy with shoes, clothes, books, and other California must-haves; we are making a mad dash to Santa Fe in only four days. This is because it seems wrong to spend New Years Eve in, say, Oklahoma City (although I had happy days there in another life), and there was no chance of us setting off any earlier than the 27th. Stella is beginning her first cross-country drive, and although she is proving to be a remarkably intuitive dog-panion, we hope she will turn out to be a good traveler as well. New Jersey seems bland and forgettable which is, regrettably, often its fate. I don’t know if it is a fate deserved, because I’ve never been interested in finding out. Somewhere well into Pennsylvania, it is suddenly beautiful, pastoral, serene. A little dusting of snow is the most I’ve seen this season; in upstate New York, the winter so far has been ridiculously tropical. C. loves to watch the barns change as we drive; they reveal such clear clues to the original settlers. The barns here are Dutch, red, and many of their roofs are hipped. Grain silos are domed, curls of smoke wend up from chimneys, and each little property seems like a world unto itself. Economically, the region feels comfortable but not ostentatious. Lunchtime falls in Chambersburg, PA, and we happen upon a bucolic fishing stream just next to a well-kept barn and a few grazing horses, so Stella has a good long run before we settle upon “Pat and Carla’s Italian Eatery” for our lunch, providing her with a pig’s ear to lessen the blow. After lunch we are back into Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” one of about 900 books graciously loaded onto C.’s Christmas I-pod by our friend Owen Lipstein. Michael’s obsessively exhaustive research reveals frightening truths many would probably rather not know. If the majority understood the true ramifications of what he discovered, our country’s eating habits would change overnight. Or perhaps I should clarify that: only those who could financially afford to change their eating habits would do so. I’ve been aware of the Slow Food movement and the ethical and gustatory superiority of grass-fed meat and local, sustainable produce for a few years now, but I’ve only just begun to seriously vote with my wallet. It is a great luxury that I can do so. The growing chasm between haves and have-nots grows exponentially wider as we relegate the have-nots to sustaining themselves on the corn-and-chemical-based diet constantly vomiting from the conglomerates factories. As we drive, C. points out that all the livestock we see are grazing on grass, but I counter with the concept that the livestock being fed corn—in spite of their physiological predilection for grass—is not visible but rather locked up in horrendous factory farms. Chances of anyone in this car ordering a hamburger anytime soon are low. Or maybe Stella would, if she could. West Virginia is grim, as I expected it to be, but we are heading up now and the gray trees promise that, with leaves on them, this might be a beautiful place. Once again I am aware that my childhood amongst trees that kept their leaves year-round was not the norm. But it leaves me feeling that, in wintertime, the world is less than whole. By the time we reach Weston, it is getting dark and the nothing that is there to see is even more nothing-like. Our Comfort Inn (there is no La Quinta here) is more than adequate, and I am blissful that we have a ground floor room with an exterior door (I prefer the diversified method of packing). Stella goes straight to the door and waits for us to open it – is she channeling a previous life? We have never stayed in  this kind of hotel with her. We nap and check e-mail, settling instantly into the customs of the road and, at about 6:30 set out to find our

December 28: Makin' Miles
Weston, WV to Jackson, Tennessee: 614 miles
79 to 77 to 64 to the Bluegrass Parkway to 65 to 40
West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee

I am nervous about today’s drive, and with good reason. It’s way farther than I’ve ever tried to go before, but the Four-Day Santa Fe program is set in stone, so I get up at 5:30. In the end, it’s eleven hours with a patient but perplexed pooch (why are we sitting in this small room for so long?), but that’s from the sweet safety of retrospect here in Jackson.
Parting from Weston is sweet bliss. Note to self: never again include this town in an itinerary.
It stays dark for another 30 or 40 minutes after we begin driving, but then we are treated to a smorgasbord of fluffy pink and quilted clouds stitched across the pale morning sky. We are in some unnamed-on-the-map gently rolling hills, way west of the Appalachians. The road dips and rises and the pink clouds are at once ahead, behind, to one side, and always uncharacteristically flamboyant for this bleak land. The morning’s first gas stop is, and this is becoming a constant now, grim. The patch of grass for Miss Stella is grimy and spare, backed up by a gray-black craggy rock face. C. has started driving, and at the ¼ point I take over. For our mid-morning blood-sugar boost, I’ve assembled yogurt-covered almonds and unsulphured dried peaches, which at first encounter with the inside of your mouth feel petrified, but soon loosen up and become honey sweet and simply very, very chewy. The minute we hit Kentucky the road becomes substantially smoother; the terrain also smoothes, quickly morphing into the moneyed and manicured agrarian ideal that can be bought with buckets of tobacco and bourbon money. There are horses everywhere, and white picket fences trundle up hill and down dale, defining small horse estates, medium-sized horse estates, faux suburba horse estates and, in Lexington, the biggest estate of any kind I’ve ever seen; it boasts multiple numbered entrance gates and its own racecourse. The barns of Kentucky are trim, prim, and pristine; most are topped with one to three cupolas and we discourse for a few miles on the correct pronunciation (coop-o-la? cuhp-o-la?). When hunger strikes we are not far from Bardstown, home of the Whiskey Museum and the Maker’s Mark distillery, where we happen upon a superb running place for Stella. It’s near a golf course but there are leafy woods to play in and as we try to get all three of our bloods running we’re serenaded by a church bell chiming out “Oh Susanna.” In Bardstown proper we find the ancient lunch stop, Old Talbott Tavern, which offers forty kinds of bourbon on the back of the lunch menu. Bit of a departure from the depressed Weston WV of last night, virtually an alcohol-free town. But that’s what happens when Americans have money, evidently: they drink.
For lunch, I owe it to my art to have the Old Kentucky Hot Browns. Country ham covers a mound of shredded chicken and the whole is topped by an old-fashioned Mornay (cheese) sauce, after which the grave-like mound is blanketed with grated cheddar and run under the broiler and topped with three crisp slices of bacon, yielding the ultimate incarnation of cheese-a-liciousness nestled in its own individual baking dish. C. needs not act as a slave to his art, or at least not when it comes to lunch choices, so he has a chicken salad. As usual, the perky waitress assumes the rich manly dish is for him and the girly salad for me. Wrong. After lunch I walk Stella in a tumble-down cemetery behind the tavern, where we see gravestones for folks that departed this corner of Kentucky in 1799.
For academic purposes, I score three small bottles of interesting local bourbon from the liquor store across the street from the cemetery (think globally, drink locally, as I always say), we are on our way to Tennessee.
Before diving back into “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” we have a brief disagreement about who came first, the pilgrims or the settlers of Jamestown. One of us is showing his or her slip, historically, and I suspect it may be me. Listening to Pollan expound on the benefits of grass-fed livestock, we look out the window at these bluegrass hills and see many of them doing just that. We wish all animals could graze on pasture as these lucky critters do.
We are beset with terrible traffic dropping down from Kentucky into the massive urbanization that is Nashville, and the first crankiness of the trip (mine) surfaces. I emphasize that This Is Not A Good Day for Traffic, but this announcement has no discernable effect. I take over the wheel for the last 100 miles out of Nashville and into Jackson, and it feels like a lifetime before we roll into our home for the night, La Quinta, which has massive lawns for dog-running thoughtfully placed at the rear.
My selected dinner destination is Baudo’s, a mile or so away, and, first impression, we are shocked by the presence of smokers in a restaurant. Remember how awful that used to be? Tennessee is tobacco country, after all, but they do have a small non-smoking section which we are eventually ushered to. So far, we have adhered to the plan: no chain eateries all across the country. Baudo’s is an Italian joint opened by hungry immigrants from Chicago in the sixties and still run by the same people, now with the aid of children and grandchildren. It’s an ambitious menu, and I doubt so many dishes can possibly be well executed, so I order lightly: fried zucchini and a side of cheese ravioli with marinara sauce (or just maybe the Old Kentucky Hot Brown is still making its presence felt). Both are excellent, and C.’s grilled halibut with brown rice is also exemplary. Oh, ye of little faith. Back at our temporary homestead, Stella has several mad moments after her night-time stroll, bounding from floor to bed and back while gnashing her twisty-toy back and forth at high speed and growling at the tennis ball. This lasts, perhaps, ten minutes. I am still reading out loud from “Life is Meals” when C. falls into a deep sleep, Stella follows him, and then I follow her.

Photos: My Old Kentucky Hot Browns, in Bardstown; Baudo's of Jackson, TN.

December 30: Life is what happens….
OKC to Santa Fe – ooops! – Carlsbad NM: 540 miles
40 to 27 to 62
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico

At 5:30 am, we’re watching the weather channel with Stella in the bed between us. Yes, the normal dog rules have broken down--or been tacitly abandoned--on this trip. We three intrepid travelers are sleepily regarding the screen in the dark room when suddenly with no warning our plans are dashed carelessly to the ground: a cone of bright yellow, signifying severe weather--encompasses the entire area we are—or were--just getting ready to drive into. This is the fastest departure on record, and we are up and out without full ablutions (also without my green barn coat and my silver teaspoon) with the faith-based concept that if we get across to Albuquerque early enough and fast enough, we can still get to Santa Fe. But about an hour out of OKC a digital roadside sign informs us that I-40 west of Amarillo is closed. Concept number two, which we entertain for about 45 minutes, is that we’ll spend tonight in Amarillo and then go on to Santa Fe in the morning. I grab one of the last remaining hotel rooms in Amarillo, which is rapidly filling up with pissed-off holiday travelers. But then we see a sign indicating that 1-40 will be closed for 36 hours. I guess I’d thought a little slow driving, a little exciting sliding and clearing of snow from the windshield, and we’d be easily though and ensconced in our kiva-burning adobe. But it was not to be. Next, we decide to turn south toward Lubbock, escape the storm, and head for Marathon and the superb Gage Hotel (9 hours away at that point), but of course they are booked for New Years’ Eve and there’s no point going all the way to Marathon if you aren’t going to stay at the Gage. Next option: head straight for Silver City, where we were supposed to go after Santa Fe anyway—but will they have a New Years’ Eve room for the intrepid trio? Pamela in Los Angeles is on the internet checking www.nmroads.com, and shoots down my next proposed route, a diagonal through Clovis, Roswell, and Alamagordo: “All those roads are closed,” she says. What, the whole state of New Mexico is closed? Evidently. Only one day earlier, and we could have been snowed in, yes, but in Santa Fe!
Finally Pamela finds us a road that is open, 62, and we head south west after barreling south like the wind for many hours. I already know there are no lunch-ortunities in Lubbock, so we begin scouting just south-west: Ropesville, Meadow (a singularly inapt name) pass by and I can say that this is the most unattractive place I have ever been. It’s ugly, empty, industrial, brown and gray, and there is not one non-chain restaurant to be seen. Finally in Brownfield we see a tumble-down drive-in called the Cub. Inside the Cub it is cold but festive and full of locals who know what we are about to find out: that Vera and her crew are making some of the tastiest beans and the lightest, crispiest chips we’ve ever had. “Why are your beans so good,” I ask her, “do you make them with lard?” “They make ‘em with

December 31, 2006: Love the Place You’re In
Carlsbad NM to Silver City, NM
62 to 285 to 82 to I-25 to I-10 to 180
New Mexico

We’ve gone so far off track to avoid the “monster storm” that getting back to the world means a meander through the mountains above Alamagordo, which is where the first atomic bomb test took place. After winding very gently up some hills and dales studded with messy but cozy homestead-style farms, we’re suddenly in a rather twee little ski area we’d never heard of: Cloudcroft. It’s studded with embarrassing examples of faux Swiss architecture, but here the snow is deep by the side of the road and we let Stella out for a run—she’s never encountered snow before, since upstate New York has been imitating Miami so far this winter, and she thinks it’s quite a discovery. C. throws snowballs which she gamely attempts to retrieve, and if the cold bothers this sparsley-furred Texan dog she doesn’t mention it. For us two, the quintessential middle-aged childless couple obsessed with their (adorable) dog, this is one big photo-op.
Just as soon as the mountain–top snow world appeared it is gone in the rear-view mirror as the road drops precipitously to the desert floor and we’re treated to an odd, dark fog sinisterly blanketing the White Sands Missile Range. Radiation? Poisonous? Who knows, we’re only a stone’s throw south of Roswell here and we know what secrets are kept there (at least we do if we’re big fans of the movie Independence Day, which I am).
We’re busy making New Years phone calls to all our friends so the remaining miles to Las Cruces pass quickly and then there we are, in the sunny, dry, and spare New Mexico that I love so much. Lunch is at Nopalito’s, a north Las Cruces suburban true-Mexican joint recommended by the offline Roadfood, and althought my mini-plate of cheese enchilada with both red and green chile is very comforting, the beans and chips can’t hold a candle to the Cub Drive-In in Brownsfield, Texas, something we found all by ourselves and just barely by the skin of our teeth. In something of an epiphany (I’m not a true expert on Mexican food), I realize why Vera’s chips were so vastly superior: she starts with tortillas handmade from fresh masa, and then deep-fries them just before they’re popped onto the plate. Translucent with the fat and lighter than air, they shatter in your mouth at the barest touch of a tooth. Conversely, the chips at Nopalito’s appear to be fritos out of a bag. But then we decide it would be a crime not to try one of their chiles relleno, and Nopalito’s is gloriously redeemed. Feather-light coating, glossily oozing cheese, and an earthy, mature chile flavor place this stuffed fried puppy firmly at the top of my list
By the time we get to Silver City, it’s New Years Eve. Notwithstanding our deep disappointment at being snowed out of our multiple luxurious plans in Santa Fe (plus an extra day of driving), we’re ready to like Silver City. But it’s not immediately apparent what makes this small hill-town such a draw for the thousands of “relocators” from points north and east who are expanding the population here exponentially. The historic main street is charming and pioneer old-west-ish, yes, but does that make up for the miles of strip malls and car dealerships one must endure to get there? The Buffalo Bar is populated with authentic bikers and broads – there’s nothing faux about it. After marinating ourselves in tobacco smoke to get its true local “flavor” for 30 minutes (this included a not-so-quick margarita, grudgingly made with, yes, fresh lime juice), we set off to our 8pm table at Shevick & Mi, just one icy block down Bullard Street (when the sun goes down in New Mexico, it gets COLD).
In this charming book-lined, candle-lit room, we are treated to a chunky pate rich with goose fat from the Christmas dinner, a ham-a-licious split pea soup, and pork medallions sauced with a chunky and figgy capicola ragout. The savvy wine list belongs in a New York city eatery, not in a pioneer town, and because they have a large cruvinet, you can try any of them by the glass. So we do. Toasting each course with a different fruit of the world’s vines and celebrating the unexpected, we ring out the old year with gratitude and optimism. If you can't be in the place you were supposed to be, Love the place you're in.

Photos: Travels with Stella; The Buffalo Bar, Silver City.

January 1, 2007: Ancient Stones
Gila Cliff Dwellings and Hot Springs
New Mexico

A day of no driving, and what do we decide to do? Why, drive, of course. The road to the Gila cliff dwellings is only 44 miles, and to us road hogs that seems like a piece of cake, but what they don’t tell you is that it’s a very, very windy road. It also goes up and down and up again. Through snow and burgundy-red dirt (so very much darker than the Sedona dirt that runs in my veins). C. is starting to look a bit gray after all the twists and turns, so what with the blue-blue sky and the dark sage of the scrub oak and pinon, I’ve got quite a rainbow of colors around me. Finally we arrive at the trailhead for the cliff dwellings, where the lone ranger on New Years’ Day duty fills us in on the current thinking about these dwellings. “We now feel that they weren’t dwellings, but more ceremonial and religious sites,” he says. Evidently there is some dispute in the world of Native American history and the eggheads have their panties in a bit of a twist about this. But the coolest thing here is that you can actually walk right into one or two of the dwellings, not possible at some of the larger and more famous sites. As we wind around the snow-speckled path, heading up, we suddenly come upon a spectacular view of one of the largest of the dwellings. It takes your breath away to know that 700 years ago people lived—or at least celebrated—in this walled and windowed space appropriated from a cave created by time and erosion.
Inside we join a small group following a guide, and although I am not a group person must admit that I learned more by several orders of magnitude by listening to the girl talk. I felt the glass-smooth stone where countless women had pounded grain, touched the wooden support, called a viga, that had been tree-ring-dated to 1273 AD. The roofs of all the cave-dwellings were black with soot, and in a few places there were petroglyphs: a human form, something that might have been a monkey, and a snake. When these caves were excavated, a macaw feather was found. This means these Native Americans, the Mogollon, were trading with someone who was trading with South America.  Think for a moment about the distances implied by that statement. What a perfectly apt way to usher in a New Year of new opportunities and, undoubtably, more surprises: touching and walking in a place of such rich and natural spritual history.
Not far from the cliff dwellings are the Gila hot springs, a non-commercial yet sensitively “developed” group of hot pools on the bank of the Gila river. Some kind person created rock-lined pools with fine sand-and-gravel bottoms, then placed driftwood benches, twig, and scavenged metal sculptures betwixt the pools, to titillate the eye as well as all the senses that are soothed in the natural springs. We disrobed in the dirt parking area and soaked for an hour or so, chatting with a young South African who’d come to live in this exceedingly out-of-the-way locale with his American wife. Even Stella joined us in the water; who knows what she thought—it was certainly different from the swimming pools she frequented back east this summer. On the way out, as requested, we put three dollar for each of us--and a dollar for Stella—into an envelope, sealed, then dropped it into the lockbox underneath the sign that told us all about the hot spring. Except who had turned it into a scrubby work of art.
It was a good day with which to start the year.

Photos: Gila cliff dwelings; Gila hot springs, New Mexico.

Once upon a time, I lived on virtually permanent vacation. After my first husband’s spectacular meltdown in the financial markets of London, I picked up the scattered pieces and found there were enough left to hightail it (for him, in disgrace) to southern Spain and live--very simply--for quite some time. So that is what we did. I sold the London house and invested the proceeds in an offshore money fund, which paid out a monthly income which amounted to approximately 20% of his previous earnings. Two could, carefully, live on it--in a profoundly different fashion, of course. For three years, we did.

Whether or not it was wise for me to take seriously his statement that “I can never work again,” will not be addressed here. Hindsight is the best sight, after all. And there are any number of ways that it could have been worse; I have absolutely no regrets. Okay, maybe one or two. Small ones. And I did learn to sew out of it. And bake bread. And grow vegetables. And forego Lancome.

Most importantly, I met Jane.

In Spain, social intercourse takes place at the beach bar. This is a class of establishment Americans have never perfected nor even understood. In America, waterside restaurants and bars are fancy, white-linen places with prices to match. All over Europe waterside dining options run more toward the cheap and cheerful, making it possible, assuming you have found a beach bar where the clientele, food, and wine suit your style, to virtually live there all summer long.

It was at the Hawaii Kai beach bar, not far from Marbella during a tail-end-of-the-eighties summer, that I first met Jane. Even before we spoke, I’d been aware of her group for several days, in the way that you do at a beach bar. In the late mornings I’d notice a group of attractive Brits snoozing in the sun for a few hours; then, through squinty eyes I’d watch them gradually rouse and order their first cocktail from the barefoot waiter. Some time later the decibel level of the infectious laughter coming from their quadrant would begin to rise. Eventually, at about 2:30 they’d trickle up the steps to the dining platform and order a multi-seafood, multi-bottle lunch that would last until sundown. We two refugees from the polished financial sector in London, just getting used to our new and slightly tarnished existence, did basically the same thing, only a lot more quietly.

After a few days of this, our parties all the while surreptitiously eyeing one another, we were eventually introduced. Here I must describe the severe dichotomy between the English at home and the English on a beach holiday: In London, we would have shaken hands and discussed the weather. Here, Jane’s husband ran over to my sun lounger, picked me up, and hauled me back to his own lounger while loudly proclaiming his intention to draw another tattoo on my opposite bikini line. With a sharpie. The Mexican Stand-Off had ended. When we settled in with our new friends at the very long table, bathing-suit clad, for a very long lunch, I found myself sitting next to a glamorous, tanned, witty. and sparklingly attractive woman: Jane. It took us all of ten minutes to establish that we had a great deal in common, including our birthdays: November the 8th. She was, to the day, ten years my senior, and ever since that day she’s been one of my very closest friends in the world, however far apart we may now live. It was probably within those first ten minutes that I realized I wanted to grow up and older with as much grace and style as Jane. She seemed to be the center of a spectacular social whirl—the arbiter of tastes, activities, and purchases; maker and breaker of friendships; the one to whom they all looked for approval. Yet let me not for even one moment paint her as judgmental, haughty, or pretentious. That’s a different kind of Englishwoman. My favorite mental snapshot of Jane comes from a few summers later, again at Hawaii Kai: As her husband gently piloted their fancy new speedboat toward the shore and dropped anchor, Jane could be seen standing, as always perfectly erect, on the aft deck. Resplendent in matching pink bikini, earrings, lipstick, and sun hat, she delicately slipped one leg over the gunnel and prepared to ease slowly down into the water for her daily swim to the beach. The idea was to paddle in with no damage to coiffed hair and makeup and enjoy the rest of the day in style. (I know it is uncommon for Americans to wear makeup and jewelry to the beach, but let’s think like Europeans for a minute.) The other leg eased over to join the first, and then Jane slid, at rapidly gathering speed down the stern of the boat and into the water. She came up spluttering like a dunked poodle, pink hat collapsed, hair plastered to her neck, and mascara already starting to run. And laughing hysterically. Jane was like a Queen with a sense of humor who was endlessly interested in her subjects. She never monopolized the conversation with stories about herself or her children, and maintained an effortless style without ever seeming a slave of fashion. Her friends appeared to hold her warmly in the very highest esteem—the most important measure I’ve ever known of a woman’s true worth. She radiated happiness; a poster-girl for the perfect marriage, with a husband who worshiped her. What I would find out a few short weeks later was that for years she had been held on something of a pedestal, and that two summers earlier she had--visibly and catastrophically--fallen off of it. That maintaining her foothold on the rocky precipice of that pedestal was in no way effortless, but rather a delicate and painful balancing act.

Photo: Florence, Italy. Jane supplied the party favors for my final bachelorette party, fifteen years after we first met on the beach. Here, she graciously distributes penis-shaped straws to the assembled twenty-to-sixty-something guests.

October 2: The Hudson Valley
An Old Friend

Now that this summer’s trip to Italy has begun to recede into the well-packed suitcase that holds my memories of travels, meals, and ridiculous inside jokes that are falling-down funny for anyone who was present at their birth and stone-cold boring to anyone who wasn't, it’s time to get to work.
Work, for me this fall, is all about testing recipes. Cookbook number one was due September 18, number two will be due on November 15, and number three on January 1. Including a freelance gig to develop twenty recipes for another book, that comes to, oh, one hundred and seventy recipes to be written, tested, and perfected over a period of less than five months. Please don’t divide that amount by the number of days, because I don’t want to know.
So if I do not post here as often as usual, you’ll know why.

Back in my Spanish days when writing a cookbook was a dream I never expected to realize, this would have seemed like a jolly nice problem to have. But now, of course, as I wrap my mind around the idea of turning in my seventeenth cookbook (Hellooo????), I just feel stressed.
Stressed about making every single recipe perfect, because this is my ass on the line out there. What if someone in Idaho buys the book and makes, say, the Tenderloin Canapés with Spicy Remoulade Sauce? That is the point of this business, after all. If the recipe is not easy to follow, accurate, and drop-dead delicious, I will suffer in heaven. And before that.
Last weekend it was time to test my three-day rustic red-wine short ribs, and it made me think about a time, long ago and far away (London, in the mid-eighties) when I created recipes not because I was writing a cookbook, but because I was assigned the task of using up as much rustic red wine as I humanly, and tastily, could.  Here’s why:

My first husband and his best friend, another oenophile named Jeremy, decided to open a little wine shop on the approach to the train station in Purley, Surry, a bedroom community south of London. Business was building and the two friends were bringing in some interesting wines from France. They decided that Jeremy should combine an upcoming insurance business trip (his day job) with a visit to several wine-producing towns in the west of Brittany, not far from Saint-Malo (an area admittedly better known for Calvados than wine). When he approached the local chamber of commerce in the town of Fougéres to find some local winemakers, the mayor promptly invited him to a banquet, propitiously being held on the very night Jeremy planned to spend in the town. It was a long, many-layered banquet at which a great deal of the local wine was poured and drunk. As these things do tend to go, Jeremy and the mayor of Fougeres became fast friends--virtually blood brothers, from the sound of it. And by the time the banquet was over, Jeremy had bought four hundred cases of the mayor’s own wine.
When he returned to London in triumph, the friends cracked the first post-banquet bottle to celebrate their stealth find and future fortune. The wine was found to be rather, well, rustic.

Another bottle was opened.  It, too, was rustic.

Jeremy’s judgment was gently questioned, and the proposed price-point for the wine was downgraded by several pounds. But the wine would, they felt certain, eventually sell.

Then came the rail strike. Each and every train in England ceased to run for a period of several months. (This sort of thing used to happen there, before John Major’s privatization scheme.) Since there were no trains, there was no reason to go to the train station, i.e. no reason to walk past the lovely little wine shop, now full to the brim with bottles of the Fougéres. Sadly, the business went under, and in the process of liquidating their stock, they were unable to convince the savvy buyer to take the Fougéres off their hands. The two friends were left with slightly over 350 cases of tannic, forward, and teeth-cleaning red wine. They rented a temperature-controlled storage space in Dover and packed it all in. I was put to work using my expensive cooking-school expertise to find and create recipes that called for an entire bottle of red wine.”
“I can do that.” I said.
We ate Coq-au-Vin, ruby red poached pears, Beef Braised in Fougéres (rather than the usual Barolo), endless seared duck breasts with veal stock-red wine reductions, and risotto stirred with a bottle of red wine instead of chicken broth. I simmered my own wine-dark veal stock and reduced it to jelly, then stored the cubes in the fridge for future wine reductions. In the summer, I marinated butterflied leg of lamb in Fougéres and extra-virgin olive oil for a day, then grilled it and served with Cucumber-Yoghurt Sauce, for a cool note. I made Fougéres and grape sauce for grilled spatchcocked pigeons and copied a red wine sauce for salmon I'd tasted in a suburban Paris restaurant. I poached more pears in red wine, then nestled them in frangipane (almond paste) inside a tart crust, and simmered pasta in red wine rather than water twenty years before I would do so again because of a dish tasted in Tuscany. Whenever I served a conspicuously wine-dark dish to Jeremy and his girlfriend Diana, one of them would sing out “Ahhhh—an old friend!”
Some of the wine was sold, much of it was drunk—but only after a more estimable wine started off the evening. A great deal of it was used for cooking. We moved to Spain, and began creating some of those favorite dishes with Rioja. Suddenly nine years—and a marriage—had passed.
I moved alone to California, and Zinfandel became my red cooking wine of choice. By this time many of the dishes were lovingly lodged in my blood.
Some years later I spoke with my ex, and he told me that for old times’ sake he and Jeremy had recently cracked one of the final remaining bottles of the Fougéres.
“It was damned good!” he ruminated sagely. “We should have just bloody well kept the bleeding wine.”
We were left quietly wondering if something naïve--a blithe and untamed new spirit that simply needed time to mature--had been squandered by similarly unfinished, and impatient, people.

I’m not sure we were just thinking about the wine.