Samin's Page

i so, so, so should be asleep right now, but am high on caramel-noyaux ice cream (can i just mention it's the most delicious thing i've eaten in a long, long time?). i'm mildly obsessed with noyaux right now--the other day as i was making an apricot tart, i decided next time i'd have to make the frangipane with some noyaux. i mean, can you even imagine?

i turned in my next piece today, for another magazine (this one's nationally distributed, so you can go to your local independent bookshop and drop ten or twelve bucks on it!), and it was an amazing relief. i took a subject that's been talked about for over thirty years, and told a story (i believe) hasn't yet been told about it. that's what i want to do with all of my writing.

i could do this for the rest of my life.

i haven't exactly chosen passions that are rewarding in any traditional sense--mine are amongst the least sustainable professions i can imagine. but sometimes, like last week when i was interviewing for the story, and i realized i was at the home of someone i've looked up to and respected for over a decade, i saw that sometimes, my path rewards me in other ways, ways that could never be bought with money (and good thing, because i don't have much of it). people are what give me joy, and fire, and luckily, i've met some really amazing people thus far. i hope it only continues...

not much to say today, except how awesome is this?!?

celebrating my two favorite ingredients:




just. kidding. dad.












yikes! i'm pooped. we got a boar in today from riverdog. the whole transaction was kind of cloudy and i had no clue how big the pig would be.

when the driver came and asked for three large men to help unload the pig, i knew we were in trouble. problem is, we don't really have many large men around in the morning. i'm the strongest, and that's not saying much. so it took five of us to lift all 212 pounds of it out of the truck and bring it into the walk-in.

cl made light work of breaking it down, and i jumped in and did what i could with the loins and shoulders. i kept telling myself, it's just like a lamb, only bigger. a thirty pound lamb, i can break down and clean up in fifteen minutes. a two hundred pound pig is another story. it was still impressive that it didn't quite take an hour for the two of us to break down and clean up the whole thing--even more impressive, when i weighed all of the cleaned up parts, their cumulative weight was 209 lbs. only three pounds of waste (mostly glands and soft fat) from the entire thing!

i can clearly remember when i realized i wanted to write--11th grade advanced english. i'd always eaten up books voraciously, and that class renewed my passion for reading after several years of super-duper dorky seminar level classes where i stopped caring about books and only cared about grades. we read, and we wrote, and i realized it was what gave me peace.

i've always loved to tell stories, and as a writer, i have always done best as a story-teller. i made it my new year's resolution to publish at least two stories this year, and now, i am halfway there. after the class with mp last year, i felt encouraged to reapply for the fulbright. with a recommendation from him, one from alice, and one from my shakespeare scholar professor, i felt like my application was impeccable. five years ago, i was the first alternate for a fulbright to italy to catalog traditional and endangered food-making techniques. i felt like this time, i could only do better. my writing was better, my idea more focussed, my recommenders knew me better--i had a great shot, right?

well, i was wrong. i was out in the first round. more than being devastated, i was shocked. i realized i had a decision to make--fall into a funk, or fall into action. mp, just as bewildered as i was, encouraged me to just write. so i did. i planned to write an article about garlic, and along the way, met chester aaron, a man whose story i knew i couldn't do justice to in just 1500 words. but i foolishly tried, and amazingly, ended up with this. how it became the cover story, i'll never know. i think it was because of winni's beautiful photos.

the best part about all of this is that it gives me some momentum, and some faith in myself. i've been saying i want to write for so long without having anything to show for it. i turned down so many chances that didn't feel right, and have missed many opportunities i thought were my only shot. but now, i've started my way down the path i've been waiting to walk for so many years, and i can see that this is the way it was always meant to be.

***i'm not sure if they'll put the story online, but i have a hunch that they will eventually, so keep checking!

let it be recorded here that i will return to italy, and i will get my project done, somehow, someway, someday. i will not lose the language it took so many headaches to learn. i will not let go of my italian friends and family. and i will not forsake the dream i've had for so many years.