Summer is here. For Floridians it’s easy to note:  humidity and hurricanes. Lots of talk of both.  What used to be a pleasant sit outside, to read, to walk, to lounge, suddenly becomes a friggin’ sauna.  It’s okay. It’s all right. We Floridians are used to it.  Or we are all transplanted New Yorkers and used to kvetching.  Either way, it works.

But needless to say, summer brings on the glorious tomatoes.  The little ones, big ones, ugly ones- you name it, we have it.  I always feel a tad guilty eating just any old tomato.  You have to be careful nowadays, resourceful.  Make sure that baby is politically correct and not the byproduct of social injustice.  Our tomatoes got bad rap for that reason in the past.  So now I am diligent.  I go to my local farmer’s market, or, I grow my own.

Those that know me know I curse everything I grow. Everything.  Save for Lilly, my first baby, my lovely and sprawling Hibiscus plant. She loves me even if I sorely neglect her.  She sprouts neon pink flowers everywhere, spewing her love over the fence to the neighbors, spreading her happiness uninvited.  That’s Lilly.  She’s been around for twelve years now and is here to stay.

Which is why I thought it wise to plant my cherry tomatoes next to her. Maybe she could impart some wisdom upon them on how best to survive Alona Martinez. Or at least a gentle word or two when things went south, or at very least a pretty pink flower for the damn dying tomatoes to look at.

But a funny thing happened: the tomato plant and Lilly became fast friends.  And now there is a web of green, pink and red love tangled about in my back yard.  Embraces of Hibiscus and tomato reign, sing, dance shamelessly in my garden; flourishing in my neglect, they have each other and each other seems to be all they need.

I am grateful for this cohabitation. And a tad selfish too.  I am guilty of going out there and plucking the divine little round fruit of sunshine and claiming it mine.  It is really not. It belongs to Lilly.  But what is she going to do? Really?  So I’ve become a bully of sorts, you could say.  But I satiate any guilt by occasionally showering Lilly and her buddy with organic fertilizer. There.  Some people repent with diamond earrings.  I repent with fertilizer.  Organic fertilizer.

Those little round bursts of sunshine soon add up, and combining them with my farmer’s market tomatoes makes for a killer tomato soup.  Life isn’t whole without soup, particularly a lunch soup.  Want to win my heart? Make me soup for lunch. It’s that simple.  Really. So I am one step ahead of you and already on the go.  Lilly and Tomato Plant (yet to be named) are much appreciated and have won my heart already with this delicious soup.  Yum.  And thank you.

Mysterious bags of dark powders now line my azure kitchen counter.  They are next to my interminable row of specialty salts, giving the space its own market feeling.

I could put them in glass jars.

Tupperware.

Away.

But I choose not to.

I’ve left them on the counter, not only because their quasi-drug look reminds me with pride how they all passed unnoticed through rigorously-trained olfactory senses of airport beagles, but also because they represent the constant, intoxicating chaos of the Mexican market I recently left behind and still long for.

It’s all good here, of course.

Suburbia is nice.

The grass is mowed.

The kids are clean.

The DIRECTV guy came when he said he would.  Even fifteen minutes early.

But chaos?

What is it about chaos I long?  Miss?  Crave.

Is it the rowdy pedestrian streets of Sabana Grande in Caracas where I grew up?  The ones my best friend and I use to own when we were sixteen? We’d plop our rebellious bodies smack down in the center of the walkway and engage in a made-up Krishna chant that would draw curious crowds around us? Man I loved that.

Or the cramped Tel-Aviv roads, the ones I learned how to parallel park my 1964 Volkswagen Beetle when I was a college student?  If you didn’t know how to squeeze into the miniscule space in the first five seconds you’d have a group of nosy passerbyers tapping on your window telling you to turn more to the left, and then another group ordering you to turn to the right.  Then a heated discussion would follow.  Man I loved that.

Perhaps it’s the classic feel of New York City, where I was fortunate enough to finish my studies and explore early adulthood?  I was one with the patchwork of cultures, customs, and cuisines there.  I was the Dominican Republic doorman eating his snack of tostones. I was the Turk dining a dizzying array of appetizers at a miniscule yet rowdy restaurant, wrapping it up with an aromatic Keskur (coconut pudding).  And I was most definitely the gregarious Frenchman rollerblading through Central Park with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and a cold beer nearby.  I was all of them and I was me.  It was glorious.  Invigorating.  Challenging.   Man I loved that.

So those dusty plastic bags of earth-colored mole I bought in the Mexican market are worth more than gold to me, it appears.  I almost thought I’d never use them.  But then I did.   I had some leftover chicken, a casualty from my chicken soup. It sat in a Tupperware awaiting its next destination, which was unknown.  Until I realized one day while I watched the city workers in orange shirts, the only folks wandering about the neighborhood (save for the occasional dog walker) diligently watering the magnolia tree they had planted on my swale (city property:  city watering), I realized then and there that tonight I must open the bag.  Use the chicken.  Make mole.  Make magic.

And so I did. It was easy, quick, and ravenously delicious.  The chicken shred itself willingly and danced happily in the blessing of chocolate, chili powder, and other mysterious elements.  It was quick.  A dash of broth, a squeeze of lime, a hot tortilla, and I was back.  One bite and I was back.  To crowds. To cities.  To people. To life.  Man I love that.

If the sip of a crimson drink will take me there, I will go.  I will go freely and happily, just as this tart, crisp flower that stained my water to a delicious and refreshing memory lures me back, I will go willingly.  Because even though the traffic is horrendous, the likes of Bangkok’s gridlocks and Cairo’s chaos, and even though the news of crime and kidnap and danger ricochets from its warm and forgotten embrace terrorizing those outside its magic and charm, I will go, gladly,  I will go back to Mexico.

I gravitate towards the most crowded spot in the city, the Mercado de la Merced, the Saturday market, a labyrinth of tiny alleys and passageways leaking with cow guts and blood from pigs’ feet, where chickens dangle upside down in skinned nudity, waiting to be snatched and boiled into some tasty broth or mole or taco.

The spaces are small and dank and festering with people, some toting their goods precariously stacked on wheelbarrows which they deftly navigate through the city that is this market. Whistling serves as their horn to warn others of their passage.  And many would feel claustrophobic in this dimly lit chaos, nauseous perhaps: the smell of life and death are pungent; inescapable.  But I, I am invigorated here, shoved along this wave of food and people.  I feel embraced by the millions of stands overflowing with produce and meat, and even though I am the only fair-skinned, blue-eyed woman in the entire market, a guera, I am embraced by the Mexican’s characteristic courteousness:

“Bonita, guera, aqui, bonita, aqui.” ‘Here pretty blondie, here’, the vendors coax, offering up free samples of fresh cheese, a slice of a mango, a piece of tripe.  They are curious of me and my camera, each peering out from behind their stalls loaded with their life’s work, becoming bashful and hiding safely behind a bag of tacos or a mountain of fresh nopales when I turn to shoot their image.  But still they all call after me, wanting me, and we share a moment of laughter, a smile, and a taste; always there’s a taste.  I apologize that I can’t buy their goods: I have no kitchen of my own here in Mexico and it aches to leave empty-handed.  I am too weak with temptation.

An aged lady at a corner stand senses my eyes softening and draws me in, offering up dried flowers the color of rubies, placing a bunch delicately in my hand:

“Bueno para el corazon, bueno para la mente:  un pedazo de Mexico,” she promises and I reflect on her wisdom as it echoes my whole experience of this country:

“Good for the heart, good for the mind, a piece of Mexico.”

And so I buy a bagful of these beautiful flowers, called Flor de Jamaica.  They are dried Hibiscus.  I will cradle their delicacy amongst my lingerie, brushing away the image of a U.S. Customs dog attacking my suitcase to confiscate my goods.  I risk it all because they are lovely and when boiled with water and chilled they make the unmistakably Mexican drink of Agua de Jamaica, a little piece of my experience I refuse to let go.
I take the bag from my Mexican muse and hug it close to me.  I hear the bustle of life.  Something cold drips on my toe and I dare not look down.  I am in Mexico.  I am in the market. The waves of passer-byers behind me feel like a mammoth embrace.  A man carrying several sacks of jalapeños on his head brushes by.  A woman slices a lime and it explodes with juice, leaving a trail of citrus oil within smelling range. A row of pig feet salute me in the next stall.  I breathe in the flower’s fragrance and feel myself irrevocably drawn into this country.  In this culinary chaos I am home.

There is one day when the stove and I aren’t friends, where the skillet looks at me with suspicion, and the kitchen might as well be cordoned off in yellow crime scene tape. It is on this day that I am forced, even though my maternal clock has insisted I rise at 6:30 and no later, to stay in bed and feign leisure. It has a fuzzy metallic taste, leisure. I use all my brain power to try and recall what it truly feels like; to sleep in, to take a long shower, to go to the gym in the middle of the day just because. That all evaporated many moons ago when a bundle with chunky cheeks, beautiful eyes and a persistent squirminess was handed to me in a hospital room over eleven years ago. ‘You are a mother now,’ the bundle seemed to proclaim, as I held her in a panic, wondering what the hell to do next.

But I stuck it out and the kid grew on me. Enough to have another, this one a son equally as cute and blessed with those same damn long eyelashes (ones I try, I try, I try to duplicate and never come even remotely close to getting.)

So I dove into my dizzying whirlwind of motherhood; of pampering and nurturing, cuddling and fixing, demanding and guiding and on and on and on until, before I knew it the clock has fast forwarded in a frenzied rate to eleven years later.

So on this day, Mother’s Day, I am commanded to relax. I lie stiff on my bed, attempting to remember leisure, as my two children and their father wreak havoc on my culinary turf, just as all children and their fathers do on Mother’s Day. I imagine burnt toast and spilled orange juice and bits of sugary cereal drowning in insane amounts of tepid milk. But I forget, how easily I forget, that these children are a bit of me, and that in this house there is no sugary cereal to speak of and instead, while I pretend to sleep and wonder, feverishly wonder, ‘what the hell is going on out there?’ the three of them have it covered, so covered.

Husband is already brewing my Venezuelan espresso coffee while Daughter will be gently simmering the slices of lox that will be carefully added to the slow-cooked scrambled eggs she specializes in making just like my mother (whom she’s never met) used to. Her brother will argue, adamantly argue (because they regularly get into discussions of this sort) as to which herb to pick from the garden for Mom’s eggs: the dill or the chives.

My son will demand it be dill, because he is a traditionalist at heart and dill and lox are married in flavor. My daughter likes life a bit more piquant and will insist on the way chives tease the egg and lox out of their comfort zone. My husband will proudly and quietly observe this rigorous dialogue worthy of a United Nations assembly. A tear or two will quickly form in his eyes; he wears his heart on his sleeve; that’s one of the things I most tease him about (and most love him for) and then, ultimately, they will all decide in a very kid-like manner: flipping a coin or a game of rock-paper-scissor. They will be respectful of said decision. They will be gracious about the victorious herb and move on to other aspects of the dish (plating, flowers, notes and homemade gifts: all to celebrate my lack of leisure.) I lie and await a meal that will be memorably theirs and delicious because of it. There will be nothing burnt, for they have been intuitive observers and willing participants in my kitchen over the years.

The three of them will hobble noisily to my room to ‘wake me’ with a tray full of love and culinary bravado and I will act surprised and inhale the comforting and salty aroma of butter, eggs and lox and I will see a lovely family, my lovely family, by my side. My husband will hand me my coffee (because he knows I must have a sip of this elixir first) and I will feel lucky, so very lucky, that for this I have forgotten the meaning of leisure.

I am renewed.

I am salivating.

I am stunned.

I am digesting.  Yes.  Lots of digesting, both physical and literal, took place at the IACP Conference in Portland last week.

Big shout out to old friends and new. We now Facebook.  We now Tweet, I promise to become a tweet whiz like my good friend, Jacqueline!  Eating through laughs is as good as it gets.  Fun games played, I’m thinking namely Human Bingo at Nourish Network’s mixer event – where a crowded room of strangers learned bizarre details of one on another in desperate attempts at shouting out BINGO.  We are a competitive bunch.  And yes, I have been to Africa, for those needing that spot filled.

Jaden Hair, from Steamy Kitchen,  was a burst of sunshine in the charismatically grey Portland day, offering up tips and advice and always a helping hand to those mastering the world of social networking. Be searchable, was a key phrase I came away with.  Dragon Crestwood, filled with spunk and creative energy (and with that name, how could one not be in for a good time!) delivered with her Deep Feast Writing, as we explored our writing lens through a baking potato.  Amy Sherman from Cooking With Amy, reminded us about the importance of knowing your voice and having a niche and agents Jenni Ferrari-Adler and Lisa Ekus-Saffer offered useful tips on queries, book proposals, and platform.  Oh but I leave so many out, I know I do.  Of course Kim Severson, from The New York Times and the food goddess herself, Ruth Reichl, made a memorable duo (requests to host the Oscars are already pouring in), and, Mark Bitterman, was there to offer his salty inspiration and directions to his shop, The Meadow (a dangerous, dangerous place for my credit card, I soon discovered).  Author Virginia Willis and  publisher Bob Dees offered new insights from opposite perspectives, Scott Givot doled out support and fashion statements and Michael Ruhlman seemed to create a buzz wherever he went.

But let’s get down to it. The food. It was amazing.  From the various events hosted by IACP to the morning bakeries to the grungy street cart festival under the bridge, Portland enchanted me with its culinary bravado.  I can’t speak enough about it. But I’ll stop now.  A picture says a thousand words. Enjoy the feast!