A HOLIDAY WEEKEND WITH MY SANTA CRUZ CREW

Those of you who have found copies of Eat My Globe languishing on shelves at the back of a charity shop somewhere in Northern England, may well be familiar with the short chapter in the book on a memorable Thanksgiving spent in Santa Cruz.

The invitation to join the celebrations came from one Tana Butler. I did not know her at the time but, put my trust in the travel gods, and lugged my rucksack, Big Red to the coast just in time to see a large turkey being stuffed. My brief stay there turned out to be one of the many highlights from my year on the road and I hope I captured at least some of the warmth and generosity shown to me by the people of that crazy little city in my book.

Three years on, I now count Tana as a dear friend and try to get up to see her and her extended network of friends and family as often as I can. It is becoming more hard with my increasingly busy schedule, however, when Sybil announced that she was going to NYC with her girlfriends for the long Labour Day weekend, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to borrow her beat up old car and point it northwards on the I-5.

It’s a long old drive. Five and a half hours to be precise. So, by the time I pulled into Tana’s driveway, I was both exhausted and ravenous. I should not have worried. I met Tana through Internet food discussion forums (remember those?) and recalled that most of her waking thoughts are about what to eat and what her many farmer friends are growing.

One of the best meals of my first stay with her was a simple meal of roast chicken shared with her, her husband, Bob and their young grandson, Logan. It was memorable for all sorts of reasons, the joy of discovering new friendships being first on the list. This visit we began our weekend of good eating in the same spirit. Tana plucked Padron peppers from her garden and made hamburgers patties using grass fed beef from Morris Ranch. I contributed some chilled sherry, Marcona almonds a few slices of decent Manchego and Bob grilled more vegetables from the garden over chunks of guava wood.

We were joined on this occasion by Cynthia Sandberg, the owner of the legendary Love Apple Farm, suppliers of fruits and vegetables to the gastro destination that is restaurant Manresa. She came bearing gifts, including a bottle of very passable wine, which was soon opened and just as soon disappeared. It was joined by enough other wine to ensure that I fell into a deep sleep the moment my head hit the soft pillows Tana had placed on my bed for the night, the sofa.

We made a late start the next morning. After a good breakfast served to soak up some of the booze from the night before, we headed out for a quick tour of Love Apple Farm’s stunning new location on land, which had once been a vineyard owned by The Smothers Brothers, no less. It is still very much a work in progress, but, although Cynthia was hard at work digging beds for the hundreds of varieties of plants she grows, she was happy to take a break and give us the tour. It is going to be a remarkable space, with cabins for farm apprentices to stay in while they learn the ropes, areas to hold classes and about five times the land of the previous location. I can’t wait to return and see it when it is in full swing.

The tour just left us with time to make a pit stop for some provisions on the way home and then back to Tana’s place to begin cooking once more, this time for a ‘pot luck” supper involving fifteen of her friends and relatives. My role was to prepare the protein for the evening, which came in the form of beef and pork from TLC Ranch (run by Tana’s close friends, Rebecca and Jim) and two glorious ducks from Massa Organics.

It didn’t take much pondering to decide what I should cook. By the time the guests began to arrive, the ducks had been stuffed with apples, garlic, onions and herbs and were sizzling to a golden brown in the oven. The beef had been cubed and was reducing in the fiery sauce of a Malaysian rendang and the pork had been filled with a gremolata of herbs, lemon zest and garlic before being wrapped in foil and slow cooked with apples.

The skin and fat from the pork had not been wasted, of course and, by the time Jim and Rebecca arrived, I was able to feed them pork crackling from one of their very own oinkers. Other guests did not come empty handed. There were gloriously rich and savoury baked beans, salads, green bean casseroles, some stunning truffles from Chef, David Jackman of local restaurant, Chocolate and, of course, plenty and I mean plenty of wine.

After supper, we decamped to the sofa and Tana flipped on a recording of my appearance on “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” It was my food Network debut and to share it with my Santa Cruz crew was a real thrill, even if they did think that the make up person had made me look like I was wearing lavender eye shadow.

On my final day in the city, we made one more visit to a farm. This one was part of UCSC and is particularly close to Tana’s heart. However, it was not so much the farm she wanted me to see as one particular person who had come to study farming techniques there for a few months.

Hari Mohan Pant is one of the more remarkable men I have ever met. Sixty-nine years of age, he is a retired Brigadier from the Indian Army. On leaving military service, Hari returned to his homeland of Bhimtal, in the foothills of the Himalayas to develop a homeopathic medical practice and to teach local people how to farm more effectively. His own studies had brought him to the unlikely setting of the UCSC farm, where he could be found staying in a cabin and living the communal life with other students some forty years his junior.

They may well have had a few years on Hari, but when it came to sheer energy, he had them beaten all hands down. After making us a cup of chai to warm us in the low laying fog, he gave us the grand tour. It was all we could do to keep up with him and his love of the land and the people was tangible. At the end of our time with him, he grabbed a bag from the back seat of our car and insisted on filling it up with fruits and vegetables for us to take home.

That just left time for one more quick meal, at the Bonny Doon Cellar Door Cafe before I had to brave the traffic on my way back to L.A. It was an even longer drive than my outgoing journey as so many people fought their way back to the city. But, it was worth it. Just as it had been worth taking a leap of faith three years ago when Tana sent me an e-mail saying “come and spend Thanksgiving here with us in Santa Cruz”.

And, just as I did three years ago, I left feeling nurtured, nourished and refreshed. God bless my Santa Cruz crew.

P.S - If you are wondering why the pictures look a bit more professional than usual, that's because they are. Tana took them and she knows what she is doing when she points and shoots

HERMANO SEGUNDO LOST IN LA LA LAND: DAY FIVE/SIX/SEVEN IN SANTA CRUZ

At the end of May, as I sat in Spain ploughing my way through my notes trying to bring some shape to all the adventures that were EAT MY GLOBE, I made a list of places I wanted to return. Mexico was right up there, so was The Philippines, but at the top of the list was Santa Cruz.

In my short few days there during Thanksgiving 2007, I was adopted by a crazily beautiful and beautifully crazy extended family fronted by the then unknown to me Tana Butler*. After the misery of my time in Brazil, I found myself swaddled in the good humour and good energy that can only come from a community that uses the word “goddess” without any sense of irony at all.

There was no way, on this trip, that I was to miss a return visit and with Sybil begging for an opportunity to fumigate the flat, I hired a tiny little Japanese car and pointed it Northwards with only the sounds of “EZ ROCK” to keep me company.

When I arrived at Tana’s house, things were much as I had left them almost a year before. The woman herself was fussing about her house while Logan, her irrepressible grandson, oversaw glorious and bloody battle between his knights in armour “knife guys” and assorted superheroes.

As the year before, my first contribution to proceedings was to cook a selection of Indian dishes for her friends and family. I was far too busy telling people what to do in their own kitchens to take pictures, but there are enough images of my ineffectual attempts to replicate the food of my fathers on here for you to look at if you care to search for them.

In any event, the meal seem to be enjoyed and I was particularly gratified when one of the guests, local chef and restaurant owner, David Jackman invited me and Tana to be his guest at his Santa Cruz eatery, Chocolate, the next day. Chocolate is exactly my sort of place and David my sort of cook. His passion for hearty meals is derived from his training in Italy and, while a dish of Chicken mole was good, it was a special dish of fresh lasagna pasta layered with butternut squash puree, rolled and cut into rosettes that had us wiping the plate clean with our fingers.

Few people in my lifetime have done things in my honour, so I was touched when Tana announced that her friends, Laura and Robert were going to open up their staggeringly pretty garden to host a cook out for around twenty people. It took me right back to the previous year’s Thanksgiving feast as guest arrived bearing trays of food, cakes and bottles of powerful Californian wine. Tana contributed meaty lamb chops, which I marinated in a mix of yoghurt and spices for a few hours before they were cooked to a perfect char on the grill by her husband, Bob. Another memorable night in Santa Cruz.

Amongst all the goodies on offer that night, pride of place went to two baskets of colourful tomatoes and vegetables brought along by Cynthia Sandberg of Loveapple Farm. Being a close friend of Tana’s, she was kind enough to invite us to join her the next day where I walked off my hangover from the night before as she gave us a tour of her property. Cynthia is one of the leading authorities on tomatoes and plucked ripe specimens from the vines for us to sample as we wandered around. In return, we prepared a simple lunch of pasta and a salad using some of her own incomparable produce.

If I can’t think of too many better ways to spend a day, I certainly can’t think of many better ways to spend an evening and to conclude my all too short time in Santa Cruz as I enjoyed a simple family meal with Tana and her husband. A creamy risotto with blood orange zest, roast chicken and courgettes cooked in Lime infused olive oil. As we sat in front of the T.V, food on our laps and watched a tape of the presidential debate, Bob and Tana offered regular barbed comments. I could not help thinking that the world needs more places like Santa Cruz and it certainly needs more people like Tana Butler.

* Amongst other things, Tana is an excellent photographer and all of the decent ones on this post are hers. For more of her work, check out http://smallfarms.typepad.com/

SANTA CRUZ: THANKSGIVING, ALL IN THE FAMILY

I am almost at the end of this leg of the EAT MY GLOBE trip and to be perfectly honest, I am running on empty at this point. Admittedly, the fumes I am bumping along on are filled with the pleasing scent of all the BBQ, Hot Dogs, Tacos, Po’ Boys and Philly Cheese Steaks I have consumed in the last two months, but fumes never the less and the last few days of the trip are proving quite tough.

So what better, when one is tired, than to be welcomed into the bosom of a family for that most American of celebrations, Thanksgiving?

This was not my first experience of a Thanksgiving meal but it was the first time, in all my many visits to the USA, that I had found myself in the country on the day itself.

This, however, was no ordinary Thanksgiving nor, indeed, was I going to be joining an ordinary family.

When I first floated the notion of heading off around the world to stuff myself silly, the very first invitation I received was from my new chum, Tana Butler, to join her and her extended circle of friends and family in Santa Cruz, the weirdest of Californian cities.

Dinner was to take place in her friend, Laura’s house that evening. But, first I found myself at Tana’s place helping to lug around a 25lb turkey ( yes, I said 25 lbs) and preparing her other contributions to the night’s meal, devilled eggs, dressing and shitake gravy.

We cooked, we talked, we played with Tana's little grandson, Logan and we listened to Louis Prima. I did quite a bit of drinking too, both of the incredibly view from her back yard and from a bottle or two of quite decent pinot. It was all incredibly restorative and by the time the bird was cooked, I was ready for the full blowout.

First of course, the best bit of the whole turkey, the giblets which Tana’s husband, Bob and I shared before we drove over in a car over burdened with Thanksgiving delights.

We were greeted by nearly thirty people all of whom had brought their own contributions to the meal. Cranberry sauce, creamy mashed potatoes, stuffed squash and enough other things to feed about double the number of people who would be sitting down to share this meal.

As I said, this “family” was no ordinary family with ex wives sitting down with ex husbands, half sisters sitting down with step sisters of third marriages etc etc. All very confusing, but all incredibly welcoming to the latest stray to turn up for a meal. That’ll be me then.

It was noisy, raucous and all enormous fun. Guitars appeared, people sang and I returned to the heaving buffet enough times that I have spent the whole night dreaming of high strength Zantac.

At the end of the night, I was invited back for next year’s celebration. I have it in the diary already

Right now, I am just giving thanks for a memorable day and for the fact my stomach did not explode.