The Baseball Hero Ate Broccoli and other notes

After an uncertain season, Jacob’s Little League team won their play-off game last night. He came out to the cottage afterwards, bearing a hot dog on a plate, and I gave him the buttered broccoli I had fixed. I cooked it out here partly because he likes the way I cook it—mushy beyond belief—and partly because his dad really does not like broccoli, so I thought I’d spare Christian the cooking odor. Jacob ate the whole crown by himself. So wonderful to find a vegetable he likes. Tonight, he came out when my dinner company was just leaving. Jacob was polite and cute, and when I turned around he had disappeared. I called his phone and asked if he had something on his mind, and he said no. I guess he just came to be here, and I’m so sorry I missed that opportunity.

My dinner guest, a colleague from TCU, brought me a chopped sandwich and potato salad from Heim’s Barbecue, a relative newcomer to town. I had been there once really liked the bbq and was overboard about the potato salad. It’s twice roasted potatoes, far superior to the potato salad usually offered in barbecue joints. Good dinner tonight.

I had an intimidating lunch guest today. She didn’t mean to be, but Heather is a lunch-time lead cook at Café Modern in the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art. (I’ve been mistakenly promoting her to sous chef.) She’s also an old friend, who brought lunches and conversation to me when I couldn’t get out. I figured it was my turn to cook, but what do you fix for someone who daily cooks in an upscale restaurant? I settled on bean salad on toast, a recipe I’d found in Bon Appetit, I think.

Dishes on toast are quite the thing these days, and it makes me smile. When I was a child, my mom frequently served asparagus on toast or mushrooms on toast. She would not, I admit, have thought of beans on toast. I wanted cannellini beans but settled for pintos. I doubt my thoroughly midwestern mom even knew what a pinto was. But I made an oil and vinegar dressing, with lots of assorted herbs, mostly what I had on hand or in planter boxes, and soaked the beans overnight. Today I salted them, which made a huge difference. They were delicious. Served with a tangy avocado and cucumber and feta salad. Quite good.

The result of all this food activity is that I have more scrumptious leftovers than I can deal with, and I will be out for several meals in the next couple of days. Jordan and I thought we’d have a girls’ dinner tomorrow and make a dent in some of it, but Christian has a church meeting and Jacob has another play-off game. I’ll be eating leftovers alone. That’s okay.

High lunch

People speak of high tea. Well, I had “high luncheon” today (and I so wish I’d taken a picture because the presentation was skillful). A friend brought me lunch—chicken salad made with tarragon and lemon, smoked salmon rolled around a seasoned cream cheese filling, and a salad of dark greens with roasted peaches and blue cheese. Dessert was small strawberry tarts with whipped cream—and I don’t usually eat dessert. I poured wine, and on this lovely fall-like day we lunched on the deck, with Sophie occasionally trying to snatch our food—she didn’t succeed.

The story behind this lunch is as interesting as the food was good. Heather Hogan (now Heather Hogan Holt—since last Saturday, but that’s another story) was an intern in the TCU Press office at least 15 years ago. She went on to work at Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich when they opened a branch downtown, and when they began to eliminate positions and people she was one of eight survivors—but she could see the future. To stay with Harcourt, she’d have to relocate to some unappealing places…and she didn’t want to leave Texas. Publishing didn’t have much future for her—low pay, precious little chance of advancement.

But she had a cooking history. As early as the age of ten, she’d been attempting Julia Child’s recipes. She says the results were probably fairly awful, but her parents were tolerant. So looking for a new future, she turned to food. Even in bad times, she figured, people would go out to eat. She went to the Cordon Bleu School in Austin and then worked in a winery in the Hill Country. Great place for tourists, not much social life for a single girl in her late twenties. She came back to Fort Worth.

Melinda, from TCU Press, and I met her for lunch, early after her return, at Lili’s Bistro, one of my favorites—and Heather loved it. Next thing I knew she was cooking on the line there. Then to Live Oak, where they serve good food and better music. Next her dream job: kitchen manager at the Presbyterian Night Shelter. She loved helping the homeless people, meeting the challenges of creating a meal out of donated food, etc. But to her great disappointment, it didn’t work out. Now she’s on the line lunch time at the Modern Art Museum.

The homeless remain a cause dear to her heart. For a long time she had a friend she knew only as “Old School,” but she met him only on the street and tried to help him turn his life around. Today she said there’s a vacant, dilapidated building on Hemphill that would make a great halfway house. She can see asking men to use their skills to repair it against their rent in the future.

So there are two passions in her life—food and the homeless. And the third is her new husband, Morgan Holt. They were married Saturday, Sept. 26 at a small chapel in the mountains near Jackson Hole. I wish them every happiness. Heather is a remarkable person, and she deserves the best life can give her.

And thanks, Heather, for the elegant lunch.