If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, as full of heartaches and of remorse as his own…how much kinder, how much gentler he would be. ~ William Allen White

(Red berry hedge, with swan. Nature’s Valentine.)

I was fortunate enough to grow up with a dear friend who taught me a lot about enjoying life’s simple pleasures. Cindy comes from a long line of simple-pleasure-seekers, people of the land who had an apple orchard downstate and who have property that they call “the woods,” just to hike and camp there and commune with nature. Cindy’s mom grew up a city girl but is made of the same ilk; I distinctly recall as a child observing her take a bite of a Twix bar in such a way that I discovered that one bite could, in fact, satisfy. All of those simple pleasures take keen sensitivities, the kind that make great poets, which is precisely what Cindy grew up to be.

Cindy’s world enchanted me, a world of old things, vintage things that had been saved for generations. She opened the door and invited me in to the world of dollhouse miniatures, and together we collected tiny things for many years. When we were up north, where her family also had a house for a time, one that was itself like a dollhouse, we would make an afternoon of lunch at Jesperson’s—grilled Swiss Dill with a milkshake (someone recently asked me what would prompt a kid to order the unusual Swiss Dill sandwich the first time, before knowing how good it is. My response was: Cindy).

After lunch we made a bee-line for Games Imported in Petoskey, which had the finest display of miniatures around. One of their doll houses had lights that actually worked, a marvel at the time. Back home in Lansing, some great Saturday afternoons were spent scanning the miniatures aisle at Frank’s Nursery and the magazines next door at Community News.

It’s not surprising to me that one of my most memorable Valentine’s Days was at Cindy’s house when we were in middle school—Valentine’s Days like the one when I waited for three hours to be seated for dinner with a guy at a restaurant in Ann Arbor, only to be unable to eat a thing because I’d now had more than my share of wine, are better off forgotten. Cindy’s mom turned an ordinary winter day into a special time by making us a surprise. Next thing we knew we were seated at the dining room table with pretty linens and tall glasses filled with pink strawberry milkshakes and a little plate of chocolates. We dubbed the shake a “Strawberry Dream” and have been referring to it for years in the Valentine’s cards we send each other.

February has never been the dull winter month for me that it seems to be for others. Valentine’s Day, and just preceeding that, my birthday, and just after that, my sister’s birthday, have always kept things lively. My mother made my February months memorable by giving me sumptuous Valentine birthdays, with pink hearts all around. One year I came home from school to find a tiny mahogany dining room table, complete with chairs and brass candlesticks, perched on a cake platter in front of my chair at the head of our own dining room table. In the center of the miniature table was a pink and white birthday cake, a replica of the pink cakes she’d been baking me for my birthday always.

This year I’ll be at the dining room table here on Main Street on my birthday and Valentine’s Day, where I have the miniatures out for the first time in a lot of years. A leg is broken off the table and an arm off the chair, but they’re clean breaks. It’s the kind of brokenness, like the kind I’ve known, that doesn’t in the end detract but rather signifies a good long run of it, and still standing.

I’ll be serving up for myself a little plate of chocolates from Howse’s and a frosty strawberry milkshake, but with a twist, adding a drop or two of rosewater. This aromatic flavor pairs perfectly with the strawberry, as we tasted with strawberry-rose lemonade last summer. I’m indulging in the off-season berry because…well, just because. Hopefully it will snow on Valentine’s Day too, falling softly outside my window and letting me know once again that the simple pleasures in life are the best of all.

Strawberry Rose Valentine Dream
Fresh strawberries, of course, are not local this time of year. Perhaps you have a big bag of berries from your summer garden in your freezer, as Cindy does. Those would be ideal, but in their absence, I went for a handful of fresh berries from California. They have real berry flavor, which was a surprise and a pleasure. I like to use Haagen Dazs ice cream (scooped with my Zeroll scoop) because it’s so smooth and creamy.

6 strawberries, hulled and chopped
2 teaspoons sugar
5 scoops vanilla or strawberry ice cream
2 tablespoons cold milk
1/8 teaspoon rosewater

Sprinkle sugar over the strawberries, mix together and macerate (let sit) for 15 minutes to bring out the strawberry juices.

In a blender, add all ingredients and pulse for 30 seconds. If it’s too thick, add a bit more milk. If it’s too thin, add a bit more ice cream. Beware not to add too much rosewater—a little goes a long way.

Pour into two frosty chilled glasses and enjoy with a good friend.

Find a PDF of this recipe here.

Growing up in Lansing, Michigan may not have provided gustatory excellence where restaurants were concerned, but when it came to ice cream, that town has always served it up. Barn Hills, where every kid wanted to have a birthday party, had a candy counter that rivaled its ice cream. The showstoppers were huge jawbreakers in glass containers, so enticing they could drive a kid to lie, cheat and steal to get one. I confess that at Bobby Fata’s birthday party there, we played Pin the Tail on the Donkey for a giant jawbreaker, and I could see through my blindfold. I didn’t tell a soul. I pinned the tail right where it belonged and walked off with the prize.

The Country Parlor was another late great ice cream haunt, one of those places that had a 30-scoop sundae and gave t-shirts to anyone who ordered and finished it. Then there is the Tasty Twist, the ultimate soft-serve which is so dear to my heart that I’m going to hold off on saying more now, for a dedicated post at another time.

My favorite, though, was Melting Moments in East Lansing. The homemade ice cream was ahead of its time, among the first of them to fold Oreo cookies into the mix and make everybody a little crazy. I loved the stuff so much that I wanted to work at the shop during the summer after I graduated from high school.

Mom tried to dissuade me. Just because you like to eat the ice cream doesn’t mean you have to work there, she said. This wasn’t because she didn’t want me to have the experience, but likely because the shop was all the way across town from where we lived. As low man on the totem pole, I worked the late shifts and had to clean and close up shop, a task that had me walking out the door well after midnight. There was not going to be any walking to my car alone at that hour, so my mom would come and get me. But Dad didn’t want her driving across town alone at that hour, so my sister would come with her. You can see how things got out of hand.

At first I was thrilled with the whole situation. I mean, who wouldn’t want a free waffle cone filled with your choice of ice cream every day? But after a week of battering up the waffle irons for the cones and coming home smelling like a waffle cone myself, I started to take a pass on the free cone at the end of my shift.

Then came the harsh reality of working an ice cream counter: scooping the rock-hard flavors. The warm water bath for the scoops was far from enough to cut into the big buckets of ice cream. Vanilla was especially solid, and of course the flavor most often ordered in pints. My scrawny arm rejected my will; there was no mind-over-matter to be employed as tendonitis set in and I could barely lift the freezer display lid, let alone scoop the ice cream. When someone ordered a pint of vanilla, I told him that the Oreo was especially good that day and wouldn’t he like a taste?

When I discovered ice cream scoops with a fluid in them that warms their metal exterior and cuts through cold ice cream like butter, it was a game-changer. I bought two for myself and one for everyone in the family and wanted to supply every ice cream shop I went into with the things. I used to get them at Crate & Barrel, but now I get the Zeroll scoop from Williams-Sonoma.

The only downside to the scoop is that it makes access to a bowl of ice cream that much faster and easier, which can be in direct conflict with the healthy voice on your shoulder, reminding you that you just had some yesterday…

 There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with. ~Harry Crews

(Bay Street drinking fountain from a natural spring in Harbor Springs, still bubbling despite the chill.)

You’d think I’d have appetizers on the brain like all of the other food writers because of the Super Bowl this weekend. While what we’re making certainly qualifies as game-day delicious, I’m thinking of them for other reasons entirely.

Instead, I’ve got wedding on the brain. Brother Tom and the lovely Amara will marry this weekend in Minnesota, a wintry, silvery, luster of a time made that much more beautiful because the two of them are so authentically happy together. When they first started planning the event last summer, there was a lot of talk about the Lebanese food and how it would make an appearance on the menu. They landed on having the cocktail hour with miniature versions of the Lebanese dishes we love: little lemony grape leaf rolls, fried kibbeh balls writ small with tahini sauce, fatayar (soft dough stuffed with spinach or meat), and pita crisps with a dollop of labne and a sprinkling of za’atar.

Last spring when I was working at Boulette’s Larder in San Francisco, some evenings I worked the private parties that are held in the restaurant space—enchanting dinners with food that sent me swooning and an ambience made that much more magical by the twinkling lights of the Bay Bridge just outside the door. As the violet hour descended the chef offered me a small glass of wine even though I was just kitchen help, and there in the twilight with the heady scents of truly exceptional cooking swirling about, I took a deep breath and felt life was very good indeed.

Chef Amaryl made gorgeous hors d’oeuvres for those dinners that included some of my contributions to the kitchen while I was there. The day I made kibbeh balls (“lamb boulettes” is what she called them on the menu) we used the extra meat mixture to make melon-scooper-sized fried balls for one of the elegant appetizers that evening. Skewered on special carved toothpicks and served with a tahini dipping sauce, the kibbeh was a huge hit with the guests (who, by the way, paid dearly for those dinners).

Another night she had me slice the talami I had made that was left from earlier in the week into very thin, long slices and toast them to make a cracker (a real challenge, believe it or not, to get them toasted to perfection—not under, not over). Then we slathered her own rich labne on one end of the toast and sprinkled her house-made za’atar over it. Brilliant!!

I wasn’t feeling so brilliant about the scene, though, when it was fava bean season and I was given the task of blanching a motherlode of them, then peeling them, all on a tight schedule. The pressure was terrific.

So when it came time for Maureenie to pony up with recipes for the chef for the nuptial dinner, I thought immediately of the way we served the Lebanese hors d’oeuvres at Boulette’s. These were refined, passed appetizers, not hearty in the lusty way that Lebanese mezze is usually served and eaten—perfect for a more formal event where you want some savory little morsels to eat with a drink. The chef for the wedding has gone out of his way to stay true to the authenticity of our food, right down to procuring the thin-style pita bread for the pita crisps (which seemed much more reasonable than asking him to make talami and slice it thin for toasting).

The wedding will be off to a wonderful start with our authentic Lebanese flavors, authenticity that translates to the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.

Pita Crisps with Labne & Za’atar

Pita bread, thin or thick style
Labne or thickened Greek yogurt
Extra virgin olive oil
Za’atar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cut pita into 2” triangles and separate into one layer. Place on baking sheet and toast to golden brown, about 4 minutes for thin pita and 7 minutes for thick pita. Watch them closely because they can burn in a heartbeat.

Place a dollop of labne on each chip. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle za’atar over the top.

Alternately, place labne in a small bowl and sprinkle with za’atar. Place on a platter and surround with pita crisps, also sprinkled with za’atar, and serve as a dip.

Find a PDF of this recipe here.