Everything about our day off smacked of wonderful, awash in the vivid primary colors everyone needs in their lives right now starting with the sky, a Mayan blue with diaphanous white clouds and not a hint of smoke in the air, praise be. We were surrounded by paper bags full of the most glorious red, yellow and green peppers, all grown by our friends at Blue Leg Farms. We had plenty of Modelo and a few bottles of good Rosé we felt compelled to finish, it being the first day of Fall. And though we had an objective - to coax lingering heat with loads of complexity out of those peppers into a hot sauce worthy of Jordan and Neidy’s new brunch menu (which starts up Sunday), no one was in a rush to get there.
Lukka and Dan had set up an outdoor kitchen but with a slight wind blowing nobody felt the urge to actually start a fire and cook over wood as planned. So we pulled the old propane barbecue out and worked through the day, grilling, seeding, chopping and blending various combinations as the mobile kitchen slowly expanded, chairs flung out around the grills trailing off into the chestnut trees. We talked travel, skydiving, My Octopus Teacher (on Netflix, a must see), watched Frankie the pup tumble around on wood chips and wade through the grass. The clouds did their thing. All talk of Covid, the fires, and the election was banished.
Though we came to this impromptu food lab on the mountain with no recipes in mind, we had many years of living between us, some of it spent forming opinions on what makes a great hot sauce. We agreed on a few things: add some apples and pears from the orchards to supply subtle fruit notes, our aged apple cider vinegar and maybe some of the Datu Puti vinegar Jordan had brought (along with a mysterious jar of spices) for acidity. We had a bag full of Bernier garlic - to which we added a few heads of Preston - always good measure. No decision was pressing - scallions or onions, apple cider syrup or honey, it didn’t seem to matter so long as we recorded everything. No idea was off the table.
The only question was how to recreate whatever we fell in love with in the kitchens down in Healdsburg in the months to come. The sun moved across the sky and dipped below the ridge, the solar jam jars bursting into fairy light one by one as dusk grew to night. Hot sauce is above all things, an anomaly - insanely beautiful colors that all but disappear as you cook them down, transforming into incandescent flavors that channel other spirits. There is a reason every culture has one. At heart they are a gentle slap to the senses before you dig in to a dish, urging you to wake up, and be present.
Blue Leg Farms, a ten acre certified organic farm in the heart of Sonoma County currently has 40 varieties of peppers. They can be found at the Healdsburg Farmers Market and Santa Rosa Luther Burbank Center Market, and online bluelegfarm.com. All Photos: Jil Hales & Dan Carlson.
Photo: Paul C Mille
In Memoriam
We will always remember the day Ruth Bader Ginsburg graced Barndiva with her presence to officiate at a wedding in our gardens for two of her beloved former clerks, Miriam and Robert. You could see why she was so admired and loved in the way she treated the couple that day, honoring Jewish religious practice by inviting everyone in, yet somehow keeping it intimate and private for them. It was a masterclass in capturing the moment. This tiny woman so elegantly dressed, speaking just above a whisper, held everyone enthralled.
The secret service had swept the property several times in the days running up to the wedding, I think they swept most of Healdsburg. The whole time she was there they formed a courteous phalanx around her that somehow did not prevent her - though she did not mingle - from acknowledging everyone she came into contact with, no matter how minor to the day. Lukka is usually unflappable but his hands shook at little when she asked him to hook her collar on, a special one from her (voluminous I’m sure) wedding collection. At the end of the ceremony it was thrilling for everyone gathered to hear, probably for the only time in our gardens “By the power vested in me by the Constitution of the United States of America, I pronounce you husband and wife.”
Justice Ginsburg was the epitome of a fully engaged mind, a champion for social justice in ways that should transcend the ugly partisan divisions now driving us apart. Not above the law, but of the law, informed by the arc of history but not a prisoner to it. That she believed and protected a woman’s right to choose made her an early hero of mine, but even when I disagreed with her decisions over the years I could see how she had arrived at them. They were usually around the corner, where we needed to be.
RIP RBG.
Baruch dayan ha’emet.
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