Three Perfect Things

Preface
This is not really a food post.

Introduction
Today I went walking on the beach past Davenport and I found three perfect things:


Chapter 1
The first was a flat round stone. It looked black when it was wet but then it dried in my hands to a dusty gray. It is extremely circular, which made it stand out. It feels nice to hold and pat back and forth between your palms. It has such a nice feel that your fingers itch to skip it across water, but if you did that you couldn't hold it any more, and plus you're not that good at skipping rocks anyway.

Chapter 2
The second was a crab claw. It is complete (as much as any part divorced from its body can be) and undamaged and the joints are still working. You can pinch things with it, if you felt like it, and bend it around and make it gesticulate. There is no meat inside but it smells peculiar and pungent. The pincers are black, like they've been dipped in ink, and the rest is a lovely beige that merges with salmon-pink. There are charming brown speckles all over.

Chapter 3
The third was a small shiny white fleck of shell, I think from abalone but I can't be sure. It has the iridescent shimmer of mother of pearl. Something about the size and shape of this water-smoothed bit of shell makes you want to put it in your mouth and suck it like a lozenge. One side is completely smooth; the other has indentations that look like the paths worms make through apples and other fruits. Ocean worms? This merits further research.

Conclusion
I'm not sure why I find these things so pleasurable, but I do know that they are more pleasurable together, removed from the too-full beach and the other, less perfect, shells and stones and claws.

Raw Food = Raw Deal

I admit it - I'm a sucker for health fads. I've read every diet book that has every been published, including (but not limited to) The Zone, Dr. Atkin's New Diet Revolution, French Women Don't Get Fat, The Okinawa Diet, Sugar Busters, The Best Life Diet, The Paleolithic Diet, Suzanne Somers' Get Skinny on Fabulous Food, Protein Power, and who knows how many more. Not that I actually practice what these books preach; to do so would be physically impossible, since they all preach something slightly different. But I like to stay informed, and it's good to throw a little healthy reading in with the Barefoot Contessa library and the Dean and Deluca cookbook, both of which tend to pad the waistline even as they please the palate.

One fad I haven't tried has been the raw food diet. I'm a cook, for crying out loud. I like to cook things. Futzing around with sprouts and blenders holds no appeal and even less glamor. I've always thought vegans looked a little gray around the gills; now imagine no eggs, no dairy, no HEAT.

But I live in Santa Cruz, where everyone does yoga, everyone drinks Kombucha, and raw food is on display at every supermarket. So I tried some spring rolls and a slice of blueberry "cheesecake" from La Vie, downtown Santa Cruz's go-to spot if you're into that sort of thing. I can't say that I am. At roughly 8 bucks, the spring rolls are the opposite of a steal, especially when you consider that they're made of zucchini, beets, carrots, and cucumber. That's it. Seriously. But the point isn't to be full, is it - if that were the case, I'd stroll on down to the El Palomar Taco Bar and swoop two snapper tacos for 6 bucks, which would give me the opportunity to get my salsa fix, becuase I swear their salsa is laced with crack. You can't stop eating it.

But I digress. The point is not to be satiated, but rather to be healthy, right? I suppose. I can't even begin to delve into the kinds of class issues this kind of eating entails; I would probably still be hungry if I didn't happen to have a terrible stomachache.

I think I'm allergic to raw food. I'm also $16 poorer than I was twenty minutes ago. Hurrah.

I want a hamburger.

This may sound strange. As a general rule, I don't eat hamburgers. I could count on one hand, for instance, the hamburgers I've eaten in the past ten years. There was the time I was driving down from Tahoe after a girls' weekend with a carful of my then-boyfriend's female relatives. We stopped at In-N-Out, a place I've eaten only once or twice (and I'm from California. I know, I know.) I ordered a hamburger. Pretty simple, right? Little did I know that you're supposed to order a cheeseburger, and a hamburger sans cheese is actually a disgusting foodstuff not worth consuming. At least, that's what the revolted looks on the faces of the Clan told me: "No cheese? REALLY? EW! WHY NOT???" (Seriously? Is cheese that important? I don't think you can even taste the cheese on a hamburger - there are so many other flavors going on - but clearly I'm not an expert. Clearly.)

I had been living my life under the woeful misapprehension that ordering a hamburger was a simple proposition; I didn't understand that hamburger eaters are a part of a particular, if not particularly exclusive, subculture. The way you eat your hamburger (or don't) can align you with (or exclude you from) a group of people, potential in-laws included.

So I don't eat hamburgers. I know some may find this a sacrilege. For some, hamburgers are a food group entirely their own, a basic form of sustenance meant to be consumed, along with other meat-and-bread combinations, as often as possible. Not me. Too many apples and ice cream to be had, I suppose. I guess I think it's strange that hamburgers, along with so many other American staples, have never really entered my personal food lexicon. Part of it, I think, has to do with being a girl, and a health-conscious one to boot. The other part has to do with spending formative years in boarding school and in France, where hamburgers were few and far between (Quick and MacDo notwithstanding). And then I became a foodie. Why order a hamburger when there are boquerones and ceviche and tartare and duck to be sampled?

The bigger question, at least right now, is this: so why do I want a hamburger now? We're talking about an honest-to-goodness, full-bore, legitimate craving. It's not for a fast food hamburger, either, which are the only hamburgers I've eaten in recent memory. I want to sink my teeth into an inch-thick patty, rare and juicy, on a thick, squishy bun. I want sauteed onions and blue cheese on top, and I want a pile of shoestring fries on the side. And ketchup.

This is so weird. I don't even know where to get such a thing. I may have to make it myself.

To be continued...