You’ve heard little from me over the past year or more.  Which may tickle your curiosity and spur you to read on or it may make you feel “oh not her again, doesn’t she ever quit?”

I make no apologies for my sporadic tenacious nature or my absence from these pages since life can get busy and hard and there is always binge-watching that needs to get done. How about that binge-watching? Has there ever been an easier way to escape from life than watching fake people live fake lives filled with devastating problems they solve in ingenious ways while looking amazing? All that and you never have to leave your living room or get dressed!

I’m noticing that binge-watching is not only a widely accepted, even cherished pastime,  it has become a central topic of conversation. We’ve taken it on as a part of who we are, what we do and what defines and unites us when we actually meet up with people in person. The next time you get together with a friend, another couple, a business associate or you just run into a neighbor and talk, keep a mental eye on how long it takes before you hear or utter the words “are you watching (fill in the blank)?”

Suddenly your mutual enthrallment with the royal doings of The Crown or the chaotic madness of Westworld unites you and whomever you are to talking with. You have something to discuss at length and with enthusiasm without ever really talking about or revealing anything personal, except perhaps your taste and tolerance for entertainment. (You actually like Cutthroat Kitchen? Ew.) A competition ensues in which you each rally around your favorite shows and insist that the others “have to watch it,” or “can’t miss it” or that you can’t believe they “haven’t seen it yet.” Perhaps in today’s political climate, where getting into real topics can feel overwhelming, hopeless and polarizing, this is the comfort zone.

I get it and often welcome it.  This is how we keep it light and safe. Nothing wrong with that, except that it is making me yearn for something a little more personal; riskier. What would happen if we sat around with friends and talked about what mattered to us, (besides TV), what moved us (off the couch) and what motivated us (away from our screens?) What would happen if we dared talk about what we still dream, hope and long for?

What happens is magical. At least that’s what it feels like when a small group of women gathers with me in Italy with little cell phone use, zero TV and dozens of opportunities to engage with each other, and the gorgeous Tuscan countryside, food, wine, and culture. Immersed in the immediacy of the senses, we see, taste, touch, savor, cook a little and sip. We roll food, wine and words around our tongues and have a unique opportunity to be in the glorious present. From here, with a little gentle stirring, we each start to get a taste for what we are truly hungry for, what may satisfy our souls, and what ingredients we can bring to the table to make our lives a delicious feast.

I’m not going to belabor the food metaphors or go on and on about the trip. It promises to be life-changing, the way beauty, great food, new friends, great conversations, new challenges, and travel can be.

Read more about it here. If it’s right for you, you will just know. (And then call me or email me immediately because we only have 4 spaces left.) If you are looking for a gorgeous, luxury get-away but want more than just sightseeing; if you are facing an imminent transition in your life and having the support and camaraderie that like-minded women and a chef exploring Tuscany can give you; if you want life-long memories you will cherish, and plans for your next reinvention, then I hope you will join us in October 2019!

My father was a man of strong appetites and emotions. He was born in 1922,  a Sephardic Jew in North Africa when it was occupied by the French.  He grew up speaking French, Arabic and some Hebrew and later mastered six other languages traveling the Mediterranean Sea as a merchant marine in his 20s and early 30s. He had a tough childhood, losing his mother when he was only a toddler, then got bullied, battered and molested by his alcoholic jail-keeper father. I don’t know much more about his early life, but I know it shaped him into a man who flew off into rages and landed physical and verbal brutal punches.

His hunger, for love, sex, food, control, respect, and complete dominance gobbled up my childhood innocence and spit out my often-tortured adult psyche. After a lifetime of introspection, seeking and picking away at the keloid scars being his daughter left me; after years of talk therapy and post-traumatic stress work, journaling, hypnosis, meditation and whatever else I found that could possibly give me a moment’s peace or let me have a normal, loving relationship with a man, I found that I could finally remember a time when I loved him. I could remember, dimly, being happy and loved and loving in his presence. I was maybe 5, or younger. After that, it was all “I hate you!” and self-guarding. It was all longing to be SOMEWHERE else, be SOMEONE else with a different, cleaner, prettier story. My life became about waiting to escape and I’m not sure it ever stopped being about that until now.

So why even try to remember the love? He was a dick, a child molester, and a bully, right? Why not let him live forever in the dickhead hall of fame! You can be sure that I didn’t start out doing all that work to cut HIM a break. I did it to free myself. At some point, I realized I had to do did it because I’m 50 percent HIM. I look in the mirror and I see his smooth olive skin and black hair. I laugh and see his shining white teeth lined up like Chicklets. I look through my eyes and see his dark, sometimes sorrowful ones. I look at the shape of my hips and ass and see his. I’ve felt anger shred through me and explode, making me cry with shame because it reminded me I have that in me too.

I can be proud of the fact that I broke the cycle of abuse in my life and became a loving mother who never raised a hand to her children or crossed an inappropriate boundary. I wasn’t a perfect parent, (who is?) but I fiercely loved, supported and spoiled my children to the best of my ability. Could I say the same thing about how I treated myself? Could I ever completely love myself as long as I categorically hated him?

I came to understand that my father was a man in great pain whose only perceived avenue of expression was to create more pain. If I was going to ever fully love myself, fully heal, I’d have to find a way to forgive the HIM in me. His own self-loathing created appetites and impulses that starved him even further. He was a man who was forever hungry. He died alone, a father whose five children were all lost to him.

This dish is for my father. It’s full of the flavor, color, charisma and warmth of North Africa that lived in him too. Exotic, spicy, sweet when you don’t expect sweet, comforting and filling. It’s simmered gently until the meat is tender and the flavors have melded into a happy co-existence. When my kitchen is filled with the aroma of this dish, when I taste it, I remember something, somewhere in time, that was very, very good.

Chicken and Chickpea Tagine
Adapted from Mark Bittman, NY Times Cooking

This is the view I see every day when I take my dog, Phoebe, and my grand dog, Whiskey for a walk. I call it the Vizsla Vista. It’s Alston Park, an off-leash park that is surrounded by reserved land planted with grape vines.

Did I mention I’m spending the winter in Napa Valley?

I was invited to stay with my son and lovely daughter-in-law to escape the Northeastern winter and work on my new website &  project Recipe For Reinvention. It’s a rare thing if your grown child asks you to come and stay, so there was no way I was going to say anything but “yes” and do whatever I had to do to make it happen! This included finding a tenant to sublet my house for 5 months and getting a letter declaring I need a “therapy dog” so I could bring my elderly Viszla, Phoebe along for the plane ride in comfort.

So far, so good, here in Napa. My daughter-in-law, Theresa, who is on the wine team at The French Laundry has been arranging tastings for us at small, unique wine producers through out the valley. It’s been wonderful to meet these passionate hard-working people who work the land and create these delicious, unique wines. You may never find their work on your local wine shop shelves because they just don’t produce the volume for national distribution, or they sell a bulk of their wines to high-end restaurants with great wine lists, but they all have wine clubs and will ship wine directly to consumers. And having a tasting with these small producers is more like being invited into someone’s home, as opposed to the “bus tour” feel of tastings in the larger, more familiar brand tasting rooms that line the highway.

One I really loved was White Oak. Just a beautiful vineyard, friendly people and a nice picnic table overlooking the vineyard that would make a wonderful stop on a Napa Valley Curated Culinary Tour (I’m hoping to put together for late summer or fall of 2017).

For Thanksgiving we had a big “Friendsgiving” with 20 or so of the young staff from The French Laundry, (where my son is a Sous Chef), who find themselves far from home. Needless to say it was a helluva potluck with all of these talented culinary types bringing dishes.  My son had a fresh ham brining for days and made a rich pork stock with the hoof and bones. The skin is drying out and there will be homemade pork rind to crunch on. I made my Turkey Leg Confit that is based on Thomas Kellers Duck Confit recipe from Bouchon Cookbook and the cornbread stuffing that I posted here a few years back (see link below). Every counter and surface in my son’s little bungalow was covered with food and drink.

So much fun!

Sorry, I did not post this in time for Thanksgiving, but here are a few recipes that may do well for your Christmas feast or potluck. Happy cooking!

Not Your Mama’s Greenbean Casserole

Red Wine Poached Pears with Vanilla Marscapone Cream

Cornbread Stuffing with Bacon, Leeks and Pecans

Pinot Noir Spiced Cranberry Sauce

Give yourself the gift of a Recipe For Reinvention culinary tour in Italy with Chef Rachel. Cook up what’s next for you in your life!

I bought a spiralizer and now I am putting curly-cues of zucchini in just about everything. Or spaghetti-like carrots. Or sweet potato shoe-strings. Think back, if you can, to the Play-Dough Factory you may have had as a kid. I remember there was this distinct thrill in pushing that soft, fresh primary-colored dough into the plastic extruder and then compressing it with the plunger to create star-shaped, or triangle shaped tubes that flowed out of the other end. This is where the spiralizer gleefully takes me.

Can’t you just smell that sweet Play Dough aroma. I love how smells never leave you and take you back in an instant.

Back to the future. Because the nice people at the William Sonoma store in my hometown of Montclair, NJ invited me to do a little demo with the Paderno Spiralizer, I’ve been playing around with some recipes I think might please a mixed crowd of adults and kids. William-Sonoma also happens to sell my favorite gluten-free flour blend, Cup 4 Cup, so this Zuchinni Chocolate Brownie recipe was looking like a great candidate for the demo. Even though the original recipe calls for whole wheat pastry flour, with Cup 4 Cup, I was able to substitute the blend, well, cup for cup, for the wheat flour and still get a great result with a nice texture. I love this GF blend because it’s light, not grainy and the results are consistent, but also because it’s GMO free.

Because it was on the fly at the demo, I didn’t get the best pics, but let me just say that the brownies were Hoover’d up in no time by the Saturday afternoon crowd at the shop and over 40 people signed up to receive the recipe. The final result was moist, chocolaty and even kids gobbled it without a hint of zucchini “EWWW!” Try it either GF or with regular flour or whole wheat. And even if you don’t have a spiralizer, just grate the zooks on a regular old box grater.

For a moment, come with me to Ravello, on the Amalfi Coast of Italy.

Imagine you are seated at this table. In front of you are lemons just picked from the trees that crowd the terraced landscape of the family farm you have been invited to, to learn and feast. Just beyond the railing of the covered patio where this beautiful table is set, is this view:

The day is spent alternating between being in the kitchen with the ultimate “nonna” (grandmother) Mamma Agata, —whose classes and kitchen have been populated with food lovers and celebrities since the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Greta Garbo twirled spaghetti here and discovered the quiet beauty of this place—and sitting and eating what is produced there.

Like this impossibly perfect “farmers’ spaghetti” with freshly plucked tomatoes and a dash of alchemy.

Mama Agata and her daughter, Chiarra treat us like family and for a day we feel as lucky as they are to be living and working in this paradise.

After this blissful day of shared food memories, great conversation, local wine, artisanal breads, homemade Lemoncello and unrelenting smiles that make your face ache, we walk down up a short incline to our private villa, where you retreat to your room for a nap, or grab a book and lounge on the patio to soak up more of the dazzling Mediterranean view.

That evening might be spent taking a slow walk into the village that dates back to the 9th century to sit in the piazza, have wine, some small plates of food and watch local life unfold.

And that is just one day of a 7-day journey that is a trip-of-a-lifetime, that includes private dinners with 5-star chefs, tours of family owned vineyards and hands-on experiences in the workshops of cheese, candy or bread artisans; visiting lemon, olive and cherry orchards and doing tastings, private tours of historical sites and cultural events punctuated by amazing off-the-beaten path meals; staying in private villas or boutique gem hotels, being driven by private drivers, and ushered into exclusive experiences.

Wanna come? You can. I’m ecstatic to say I am partnering with my newest friend and associate, Carol Ketelson of Delectable Destinations to bring these amazing trips to life. We did our first trip together this past May 2016 (she’s been doing these for 15 years), and it was a delicious, life-changing trip for everyone who came along, including me. For more details, read here; or visit Delectable Destinations and Carol’s glorious galleries; or contact me with any questions.

In the meantime, until we meet at Mamma Agata’s make her Farmer’s Spaghetti and dream….