Mary Mary

"It seemed like a good idea at the time..."

I'd blame Michelle Obama, if I wasn't afraid she could beat me in arm wrestling (those biceps!). The kitchen garden got all trendy this year. Now, I'm not one to follow trends so much, but one that makes this much sense is hard to resist. Cheap food of the highest quality with a minimal carbon footprint. Sign me up!

So it just happened that I moved into this great house in Hampton Bays with a ginormous sunny backyard, and my neighbors just happen to have a roto-tiller. Why not?

Why not? I'll tell ya why not. Bugs, sunburn, pulled muscles, incessant weeding of remarkably tenacious and prolific crabgrass, and unexpected expenses, for starters. Trust me, I could go on. It's been backbreaking and heartbreaking - hours of labor and days of soreness, watching tender young plants I put into the ground suffer under attacking bugs or imperfect weather conditions. Summer thunderstorms are no longer cause to sit on the front porch with wine, enjoying the view - now I have to wonder if my beanpoles and tomato cages are being blown over yet again.

But.... but. In late May, I had a patch of dirt and packets of seeds. We started seeds and planted more in the garden, weeded, staked, fed, and watered. And today, I have food. Real I-went-out-back-and-cut-stuff-and-made-dinner-out-of-it food. Seriously.

I've harvested at least a dozen summer squash so far, along with spring mix lettuce, swiss chard, and four of the prettiest chile peppers you ever saw. I'm watching eggplant, pole beans, brussels sprouts, three kinds of tomatoes, onions, and even corn grow taller by the day. I fed houseguests and my roommate with very truly homemade squash au gratin and veggie lasagne. I show up for dinner parties not with my usual bottle of wine but with mesculin mix that was cut from the ground not an hour ago. It's beyond the power of words to describe.

I can't help but think how much better off we'd be if more people could say this. I made this. I grew this. I could go on for hours about the connection with the land, with the sun and rain and dirt and the circle of life and all that, but it'll sound unbearably hokey. All I can say is... I grew my own food, and it's amazing.

Twinkle Twinkle

One thing that happens, living in the New York metro area for a number of years, is that you get into a number of habits - things that come instinctively to true New Yorkers that transplants like myself attempt to emulate. There are also certain habits you get out of, and one of those is looking Up. There's nothing Up in New York City. Rain and snow and stuff might fall out of the sky, and the sun or maybe the moon is up there somewhere (probably behind a building), but if you live there long enough you start to forget about stars.

We have a glorious starry sky out here in the Hamptons. The villages generate their share of city glow, but we're talking fireflies compared to the bonfire of New York City. So, since I've been here, I've been renewing my acquaintance with Up. This led me out to the beach last night, well after midnight in clear and frigid weather, chasing falling stars.

Stardate.org gives this info: "The next meteor shower is the Quadrantids on January 4, 2008. The shower is named for the extinct constellation Quadrans Muralis, which honored an astronomical instrument. The constellation was between Boötes and Hercules. This obscure shower produces some of the fastest meteors, and can put on superb displays at times. But it doesn’t last long, and it occurs during the dead of winter, so it’s not very popular. This year is fairly good because the Moon is a thin crescent in the pre-dawn sky."

I had read some articles about the shower that seemed to indicate the peak would occur sometime around 2am - which, on a school night, didn't seem that practical. However, the Quadrantids are known for a brief but intense burst of activity, with one or more meteors per minute in a fairly narrow area at its peak, for for a novice like myself it seemed like a sure thing to actually catch one of the little guys. Around midnight, just when I thought it was time for a pre-star search nap, I happened across another article that seemed to indicate that the peak was coming early - like, right at that moment.

So I traded my jammies for multiple layers of warm clothes and took the Jeep to the beach. There was just enough time on the drive for things to warm up nicely, but lemme tell you, soft-top Jeeps don't stay warm in 11-degree weather, and there's ALWAYS wind at the shore. Brrrrr.

The beach in this area points more or less northeast, so I knew I was oriented in the right general vicinity. It took me longer than it should have to find the Big Dipper, but hey - those evening stargazing expeditions back at my grandparents' place in the woods of central Wisconsin are decades behind me! I spent a lot of time looking directly under the Big Dipper, where I thought the meteors would appear, getting frustrated and cold as my eyes started to freeze open.

Looking off a little more towards the water and a little higher, though, suddenly a faint streak of light caught my eyes. Was that it? I stayed with that place for a while, and sure enough, every few minutes, there would be a spark. They were very fast and each lasted about as long as it would take to say "He--", as in "Hey, I think I see one!" Mostly they were kind of faint, but one or two was as bright as the surrounding stars. In the background, I could hear the surf as the waves hit the frozen sand.

I could have sat out there all night - except, as I mentioned, it was 11 degrees outside, and my fingers were freezing. So having seen a handful of them, I turned for home. But I forgot to make any wishes.

Happy New Year

Hamptons New Year's Resolutions:

1. Finally go to the Parrish Museum in Southampton Village
2. Other local stops: Hallockville Museum Farm and Atlantic Marine World Aquarium
3. Join a CSA for summer produce (ties in with my "eat healthy/eat local" resolution)
4. Expand collection of running tshirts with more 10k races and ... dare I say it? Maybe even the Hamptons Half Marathon!
5. Drive out to Montauk to observe any one of the meteor showers I keep reading about
6. Pick My Own strawberries

Red Bar

While the Hamptons may lag behind NYC in sheer quantity of restaurants, there's plenty of really good food to be found out here. I've already raved about Le Chef, but Red Bar is sneaking into second place in my list of overly-indulgent restaurants.

Just before Mom arrived on her visit, I had a great accomplishment at work that really required celebrating, so I wanted something special for our first dinner in town. I had heard good things about this Red Bar place (and I just really liked the name) so off we went. From the time we looked at the drink menu, I was pretty sure that we'd made a good choice. First, they serve Chimay ale, which I love. They also had a very nice collection of Long Island wine, including several favorites from my friends over at Channing Daughters.

And then we heard about the specials. They were doing really astonishing things with Nantucket scallops that evening, and we had a wonderful scallop ceviche along with a salad loaded with pears, candied nuts, and Stilton cheese. After that, there was another scallop entree (can you really have too many scallops in one meal?) and a whole roasted red snapper.

Now, the snapper was a little intimidating. When the food came out, my mother was presented with this rather large whole roasted fish, bones and head and all. The women in my family won't let much come between us and our seafood, but we really were both stumped as to how to proceed. Cut the head off? Pick off the good bits, like a lobster? Are you supposed to eat the fins??? What are we supposed to do now??!? Mom was looking like she thought she'd been cheated and was eyeing my scallops in a most distressing manner.

Just when I started to think I was going to have to defend my entree with little more than a butter knife, help arrived in the shape of a Brazillian waiter who traded a few snippets of Portuguese with Mom as he quite deftly turned the Plate O' Monster Fish into dinner and whisked away all the icky bits. He warned us to watch out for more bones, and we did have to be careful. Totally worth it.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Why, oh, why would a blogger ever leave home without a camera? I ask this because words will certainly fail to do justice to my latest favorite Hamptons moment. The thing is, when a Hamptons girl is stopping by the drugstore on a Saturday evening for some Chapstick, she just wouldn't expect to need photographic documentation - which is why I don't have a picture of the fire truck parade.

Mom was here for a visit over the weekend, and at some point on Saturday her Chapstick went missing. So on the way back from duck pizza at World Pie out in Bridgehampton, we stopped by the local chain-drug-superstore. Chaos ensued, as it turns out that Mom is just a little bit picky about her skin care products (we don't think of ourselves as high maintenance... we just want it how we want it. I come by it honestly). Mission more or less accomplished, we headed back to the Jeep to the sound of blaring sirens rolling past.

Refer back to my post of 9/11 of this year if you need a refresher, but that many sirens that close to me does still make me a little bit skittish. All downtown NYC 9/11 survivors, I think, quickly identify and assess such things - almost without realizing it. In my case, I couldn't smell anything burning, so I looked around to find the emergency vehicles. They were on the side road at the intersection with Main Street, and they didn't seem to be moving very fast, so Something was clearly Up.

But... they seemed brighter than usual. A LOT brighter than usual. And looking down the street, there were a bunch more coming along.

So it turned out we had stumbled upon a parade. All of the fire trucks were wrapped up in string after string of Christmas lights, from the front bumpers to their ladders. There were wreaths and light-up, blow-up reindeer and Santas on the roofs, and assorted light sculptures attached to the back ends. The firemen were following along behind in their gear. The very last truck was carrying Santa and Mrs. Claus through town, presumably to preside over the Village Christmas tree lighting in the park.

What else could we do but stand out there in the cold and watch Santa drive by?

Naturally, immediately upon returning home, the Chapstick turned up in Mom's pocket. So the trip to the drugstore was a wasted one... right?

Several lessons learned, here: Sometimes it takes a little insignificant chaos to get you into the right place at the right time. Take the &%*@! camera - it's small. The best holiday moments are the unexpected ones. But most importantly: You don't ever have to be too old, too stressed out, or too jaded for Santa Claus.

A Question

The apple orchards are closed for the year, but you can still see fruit on the trees as you drive past. Why is the local grocery store inviting me to buy a holiday meal for needy families in the area - a meal made up of canned and processed meat, starch and sweets, all of which have been trucked in from who knows where - while fresh local apples are rotting on the trees?

Post-Turkey

One of the things I love about the Hamptons in the holiday season is the decorations. Now, back home in Kentucky, there's always the traditional drive around town to look at the Christmas lights on the houses. We have a lot less of that here, as the uber-riche in the estate district really discourage people from gawking at their homes, no matter what the time of year. But the Town puts up Christmas trees covered with colored lights, lining the downtown streets in each little village. It's quite pretty, especially at night.