Dancer, Baker, Ice Cream Maker, narrative memoir, and Julie & Julia Revisiting blog

Check it out www.food52.com, it is a community based cookbook, and great site.  Do you remember Julie and Julia, the movie? Julie cooked 524 recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in her small Manhattan kitchen and blogged about it. My kitchen is small.....smaller than hers! Evidently, Julia was looking for something to do in the day, Julie too when she wrote the book. Well, me too. My hope is that all foodies will enjoy my successes and failures of the recipes. Moreover, I am sure that I will learn something in the process. It will be a challenge but I am up for it. I will put an image of the finished product on the Julie & Julia Revisiting page, I blog about it. Mind you, I am no chef but I can create a great goat's milk cheesecake and goat's milk ice cream! Happy cooking and any comments from the memoir are welcomed.  Sidebar: If you notice that I was red head in the goat pictures on the site, you are right. The red hair color was fun but I am back to blonde.  Am I having more fun? Yes.

Healdsburg


I am the village idiot.  Just kidding. When I moved to Healdsburg about three years ago, I felt a sense of community and spirit right away. I didn’t know anyone. I went to the farmer’s market on Saturday and walked among the bounty. Had coffee from Jimtown store booth, bought garlic and shallots from Yeal Bernier’s Farm.  Signed up to volunteer for Farm to Pantry.  What a great way to meet my new neighbors! I learned about gleaning. Gleaning is collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested. Ancient cultures gleaned: old practice. Melita Love, founder, and volunteers, will pick surplus vegetables, fruit, from the property owner, farmer or gardener. Melita will take the vegetables and fruit to the local food pantry, shelter or soup kitchen.  Healdsburg's scenery is beautiful and the vibe is laid back with big city tastes. Healdsburg is all about local. It is a farm community, yet local wine making, five star cuisine restaurants, inn keepers are right up there with the big city. Don’t forget the music. In the summer, every Tuesday, the whole town comes to the plaza to hear music for free! The town welcomed me in. They are engaging and open in my short years, here, I feel that I have become part of the community.  When I started Speechless Cakes, many businesses helped me like Herb from the City of Healdsburg, Will, from Costeaux French Bakery, Nina from Laramore Communications for press releases and Shelton's grocery who took my first product, Goat's milk cheesecake bites and put them on their shelves!  I volunteer for Farm to Pantry every week, walk the dogs and assist my friend Linda who is a great photographer, to shoot the dogs in a favorable light for Healdsburg Animal shelter’s web site.  I am a gym rat at Park Point, doing Yoga, five practices a week, Zumba and weights. I live on a twenty-acre ranch four miles outside of town. When I moved in, it was a working ranch; we had thirty sheep and Betsy, the llama. I have a little guesthouse with a small kitchen. Where I will cook the Winter recipes from the Food 52 Cookbook. It is small but, I open the front door, I see vast of acres to roam and there is room for my garden. The garden is bigger than my place! The winter garden is sprouting with kale, Chinese lettuce, garlic, potatoes, radishes, chard, turnips and leeks. My sweet Betsy, I love her. She always was protecting the babies; seven ewes were born last spring.  You can see Betsy on www.youtube.com (“My friend Betsy”). I shot her while she was eating: I fed her apples and shot! I looped her mouth and put dialog with an English accent. She is talking about Speechless Cakes. It is pretty funny. My landlord Lorraine who is 80, wanted to simplize her life. She sold them BUT they will come back to graze on the ranch in the spring. Yippee.  

Time to cook? Visit the Julie & Julia Revisiting page

 Speechless....Narrative

Chapter 1

The Loma Prieta earthquake also called the Quake of ’89, or the World Series Earthquake, rocked the San Francisco bay area on October 17, 1989. Three weeks after this major event, my world was rocked again, that changed my life forever. I was 35.  I was born in Newton Mass. Feb. 19, 1954, to Sally and Sammy White. My mother was a United stewardess and my dad was a catcher for the Boston Red Sox: 1950-59.  Sam jr. my brother was born in 1951 and Debbie, my sister was born in 1955. Dad was a “Tiger” in the day, like the golf hero Tiger Woods…. my dad chased the girls! However, my dad was a solid defensive catcher, with a good arm and the ability to get the most out of a Boston pitching staff teams that include Mel Parnell, Ellis Kinder, Bill Monbouquette, Mike Fornieles and Frank Sullivan. An All-American college basketball player at the University of Washington, he signed his first professional baseball contract with the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League in 1949. After the 1949 minor league season ended, the Minneapolis Lakers asked my dad to join their National Basketball Association team. But the Red Sox, who had acquired his contract during 1949, were furious and prevented dad from doing that. Later, during his career with the Red Sox, dad opened a bowling alley, "Sammy White's Brighton Bowl," not far from Fenway Park, and became a professional bowler. I remember, dad playing the saxophone in his office while I dance for the customers in the coffee shop. Dancing for the customers in the coffee shop, told me that I was a show off! By 14, I wanted to be famous! Then, after baseball, dad moved to Hanalei, Kauai, Hawaii, where he became a professional golfer for the Princeville organization. When I was 15, sophomore year in high school, I was not going to school. I was heart broken from Kelly, my first boyfriend. He was 21 a motorcyclist and so funny.  He rode a hog but he wanted sex. I remember mom saying never have sex before marriage. I didn't listen and when I tried to get him back with having sex with him, it didn't work. I was despondent and cut school. My mom sent me to live with my dad in Haena.  I went to Kappa high school in Kappa, Kauai.  We were living in Haena, in a modest home twenty-five miles away from school. When it rained too much, (Kauai’s rainfall is 460 inches per year). School was dismissed for the folks living on the north side of the island because the bridges could collapse. We went barefoot to school, smoke cigarettes on the baseball field! One day, I was in the lunch line; minding my own business, two Hawaiian girls cut in line. It was scary, because ‘howly’ (me) were not their favorite people. The girls asked me to join the basketball team! Dad taught me how to play basketball. What a great teacher! He went to all the games around the island, three high schools. I felt that dad was proud! I was happy there. But in June, I wanted to go back to San Mateo to finish high school at Aragon, in 1971, which I graduated early in 1972. Dad sadly, died eating a sandwich, in 1991, at the age of 64. It was sad. So, I am back to the mainland, I went to school at the College of San Mateo. Playing basketball, swimming and gymnastics.  I was thinking about becoming a teacher. My professor said, that there was a shortage of teachers for the disabled…as I remember. But I told my mom that I was not comfortable with the disabled. What a comment!