Call to Adventure: A Roadtrip that Encapsulated What This Month has Been

Hi guys,

how are you?

First thing I want to say: 

“Thank you for making my cookie mixes fly off the shelves in just a few weeks of operation.” 

I was hoping for a big turn out, but I had to make batch after batch because of how many you bought. And then, you returned for more! I am so happy you are loving them, and the story behind their creation. 

A big thank you also to Lost and Found Shop, in Hollywood, where I used to work a lifetime ago, for carrying two flavors (Earl Grey and Bûnet), in their beautiful home store, as well as to Pazzo Gelato, in Silverlake, for carrying the other two (Meliga and Cappuccino), with their beautiful gelato. 

Thank you. 

As in for July…it’s been such a strange, busy month, that I find it hard to put down in words, so hard that I have waited until the very last day to compose this newsletter. 

Because of how busy I have been, I notice how this blog has become, for me, not only a safe place to share my life with you, but also an exercise in writing personal stories, which I haven’t been able to do as regularly as I used to. I keep wanting to say “in another life” but I don’t like how it sounds. I have the tendency to compartmentalize experiences, to create order, or an apparent form of it, but I don’t think life has to be compartmentalized. All is happening at once, all has repercussions on this very moment, all is because of what has been — same verb, different tense. Cliché, and yet something I need to remember to such an extent I am making quite a long paragraph about it. 

See, I am talking to myself as I write this… this is the exercise I mentioned before, the chatter that goes on my head 24/7, but on paper, on a web page for all to see. 

My therapist asked if I could ever try to see myself as the heroine of all my life experiences (adventures), the good and the bad, the safe and the dangerous, the ones with love as well as those with pain and suffering. And I can’t do that by compartmentalizing, so that I feel more comfortable.

Life isn’t a closet that I keep updating as I age, I can’t donate those experiences that no longer fit me like I donate old clothes, or red shoes with the big logo on them, and I thought would make me feel worthy. 

See, as I write, stream-of-consciousness-style, things come up, and my mood on a Sunday morning becomes brighter. I must tell you about my visit to Murray Family Farms, in Bakersfield. 

I wanted to include one of their amazing preserves in the fall culinary box (more on that next month), and I was invited to tour the farm, including Steven Murray’s greenhouse and experimental orchard.

Murray Jr. is one of the few farmers in the United States that has a license to import seeds from all over the world, and in his breeding field he is experimenting with bergamot, yuzu, with a Californian plant about to go extinct, Redberry (which yields delicious sweet and tart berries), as well as fruits from Afghanistan, Australia, South Africa, and more. 

A short drive from the field, his greenhouse is a magical place where I tasted a passion fruit mixed with apricot, allspice leaves, leaves that tasted like fish soup, others that tasted like beef broth, caper leaves; I saw apples that will taste like rose syrup, once ripened, I ate young peppercorns, smelled Sambuco (elderberry), and munched on myrtle leaves — these will produce myrtle berries, with which, in the Italian island of Sardinia, they make Mirto, a digestive liquor served iced. 

I was so happy that day. 

As I drove along the I-5, heading north, early in the morning, I listened to the radio. As I approached Hungry Valley, in the Tejon Pass, Springsteen’s The River played, and I felt that call to adventure that landed me here, in America, thirteen years ago, that same spirit of adventure that had taken me to Ventura to interview a member of the Hells Angeles, all by myself, the same spirit of adventure, I now understand, I reach for every time that I create: a book, a box full of local food and beautiful accessories, a cookie mix. 

I felt very much alive, that day on my way to Bakersfield. I had missed it!

And I am feeling very much alive now, as I see my doubts dissipate with the intensity of my spirit of adventure becoming big and wide again. 

I can clearly see it now: whenever I am (and was) one with the dream, the inspiration, the energy and the urge to create, magic happened in my life. I am, and forever will be, a dreamer. 

And I have always believed in magic. 

___________

Speaking of magic, Seela.org and I are starting a series of live cooking shows from all the Los Angeles-based farmers markets: Hollywood, Atwater, Echo Park, South Central, Crenshaw, etc. 

These events will broadcast live on Instagram, just like my Monday show, but will take place at the farmers market; they will be mostly oriented towards kids, and parents, to share delicious and healthy recipes to be prepared together with their family, to introduce kids to new flavors, new varieties of fruit and vegetables, new ideas, new ways of accessing and relating to food and where it comes from. 

We are starting in Hollywood, on August 20th, for a Back-to-School Lunchbox episode. I will be cooking alongside some great farmers market vendors, and kids are welcome with their parents to be part of this interactive experience.

They will get the chance to taste the produce, the different kinds of herbs, of condiments, and they will leave with healthy menu ideas for their lunch boxes using ingredients sourced locally. Join me, with your kids, bring your friends, come experience community and good food in the heart of Hollywood. I will share time and specific location on Instagram as we get closer to the day.

As you know, my online store is up and running: you can buy the cookie mixes (they ship on same day, packaged by hand, by me, every time), the cooking classes, and in early September, the fall culinary box. Get your mixes now, gift them to you friends, they are really special, guys, I promise. SHOP HERE

I am heading to Gainesville this week, then a brief stop in the Turks and Caicos to unplug and recharge. There won’t be live shows on Instagram during these two weeks of vacation. I have been working non-stop, and I need to take a break. Catherine has officially finished pre-school, and as you know, I am feeling all the feelings of change, of her growing up, of moving forward. I don’t want to use work to cover up my feelings (which, for those who don’t know me very well, I do).

I want to process them to be ready when she starts the new school at the end of August, and the only way to do this, is to go inward, and take care of myself. 

The shop, however, stays open: mixes ship on the same day, when you order by 12noon pacific time. 

See you next month,

Love,

Alice