I have a very simple history with fried dough. I adore it.

As a 16-year-old, my driver’s license meant I could finally transport myself to Merritt’s Country Café in Boise, Idaho, anytime I pleased to sneak doughnuts behind my mother’s back. Rotund servers ferried heaping plates of fried dough slathered in sugar to tables of rude, hungry teens—no questions asked. Doughnuts represented deliciousness, yes, but also an opportunity to experiment with a type of misbehavior that was far more rebellious, at least to me, than sneaking out to drink.

Fast forward to late last summer, when an editor called looking for a writer to do a baking book about Seattle’s famed Top Pot Doughnuts and its owners, Mark and Michael Klebeck. Apparently she’d heard I could write a mean recipe. The idea of devoting myself and a slice of my career to something so blatantly fattening was exhilarating. And so it happened that I signed a contract to write my first cookbook. The kicker? I had five weeks, instead of the usual 52, to write it.

Let’s do some math: Fifty recipes. Five weeks. That’s about ten doughnut recipes to test per week. But actually, I’d also need time to bring the doughnuts to Top Pot to compare them to Mark and Michael’s versions. I’ll spare you the figures, but that meant making roughly two batches of doughnuts per day for 25 straight days—assuming I got every single recipe pretty much right on the first try.

Like the sensible gal that I am, I refused to panic. Deep-frying doesn’t scare me. I’d done doughnuts before—plenty of times. I’d made and decorated two hundred Halloween-themed orbs with a Mormon friend for her Bible study. I’d tested gorgeous cider-glazed gems for a friend and cookbook author. I’d whipped up batches of beignets when memories of New Orleans haunted me.

I sort of imagined I’d find an inner Doughnut Queen as I wrote the book. So, armed with a Type A personality and a bag of cake flour so hefty I couldn’t lift it alone, I started setting daily doughnut goals. My September 2010 calendar reads something like the diary of a doughnut polygamist. Tuesday: Pink Feather Boas, Valley Girl Lemons, Chocolate Old-Fashioneds. Wednesday: Peppermint Snowdrifts, Orange-Pistachios, Blackberry Fritters, Pershings. You see what I mean. (Hey, you must make the Pershings. You’ve not experienced bliss until you’ve tasted a cinnamon roll made out of raised doughnut dough.)

I began with a few intense trips to Top Pot’s bakery. Peering awkwardly over the pros’ shoulders in my sexy baking jersey, I learned the proper way to fry, flip, and transfer a doughnut. I memorized the difference between icing and glaze. I observed how to drop cake doughnuts into chocolate icing from just the right height. And I fell madly in love with agar, the seaweed-based stabilizer that helps glazes set up nicely—so nicely that doughnuts can be handled without leaving telltale fingerprints.

But not everything a commercial bakery does can be translated to the home kitchen. Top Pot makes upwards of 1.3 million doughnuts each week. A single batch of raised dough at Top Pot roughly resembles the dimensions of my down comforter, except in a far more soothing cream color. Although I was handed a corporate recipe file for reference, I still had my work cut out for me.

I was thrilled by the challenge. Initially, anyway. I couldn’t wait to jackhammer apples into the fritter dough the way the Top Pot bakers did, poofing giant clouds of cinnamon in my kitchen. I ached to stir vats of chocolate icing into smooth submission. I mentally practiced standing over hot oil, holding a wooden chopstick in each hand just like that lithe woman at Top Pot, poised to turn my old fashioneds exactly the right way. Queen of Doughnuts, indeed.

You know that little ditty about how practice makes perfect? Some doughnuts required more practice than others. The first time I fried blackberry fritters—the very fritters whose dough I made rise so nicely with my nifty water-on-the-floor-of-the-oven trick—I failed to account for the extra moisture in the dough from the fruit. I ended up with greasy purple bricks. My earliest maple bars? I picked them up with my hands instead of sliding a spatula underneath them to support their weight as they went into the oil. They looked like oversized, floppy Band-Aids. And Bavarian after Bavarian exploded on me before I figured out that when I stuffed them with cream, I had to hold them in my hand rather than place them on the counter so I could feel exactly when they’d been sufficiently plumped.

I slowly came to understand that “practice,” in terms of doughnut making, actually means “repeating something until every molecule in your home smells like it’s been fried.” My dishtowels reeked of oil. My clothes reeked of oil. My hair reeked of oil. My child’s hair reeked of oil. And as the weeks wore on, as I pulled into the driveway after yet another Costco run for what amounted to, in the end, more than $1,200 worth of doughnut-making necessities—mostly oil—I could smell my entire house reeking of oil.

My poor house. My kitchen is painted a lovely French azure—or was, until the first batch of yeast-raised rings blasted the wall with hot oil until it resembled a Jackson Pollock. This, naturally, led me to obsess about the BP oil spill even weeks after it’d faded from the news. For a while I was convinced I was tainting my neighborhood’s groundwater with oil. (I wasn’t frying with crude, but still.)

Yet I was born under a stubborn star. I tinkered and tweaked and tested and tasted. I lined the kitchen wall where I did the frying with aluminum foil to prevent further acts of errant artistry. I twirled the dough in myriad different ways, again and again, until I had a method that was as easy as it was beautiful. I fashioned chocolate-chili doughnuts with varying degrees of incendiary burn until I found just the right intensity of sweet, gentle heat. And somewhere between dulce de leche and chai-spiced cake doughnuts, I became that Doughnut Queen.

In all my hours of studying and frying and dunking, the only thing I’d never reflected on was just how difficult it might be to demolish ten dozen doughnuts a week.

I assume I’m not the only one who considers it terrible gustatory luck to throw away homemade doughnuts. At first I tried what seemed the obvious solution—I ate them myself. I ate doughnuts at breakfast. I ate doughnuts instead of lunch. Doughnuts pair best with coffee, and my firm limit is six cups a day. So I learned to eat doughnuts alone. My only rule was that I rewarmed and nibbled only the imperfect specimens I didn’t feel comfortable pawning off on anyone else.

The increasingly impressive test results I gave away. I spent hours packaging doughnuts into makeshift boxes folded like origami from grocery bags. I proudly presented doughnuts to my neighbors. I dropped doughnuts off at doctors’ offices. I left them out for the garbage men. I left doughnuts for my mail carrier, even though she’s cranky and undeserving. At some point I started making doughnut bread pudding—and might have forgotten to tell friends what it contained when I served it. And I learned that the nerdy tween siblings across the street cleverly designed a special tasting-notes system specifically for my triweekly visits. They’d also created a doughnut-themed comic book involving squirrels. (Wait. Were they feeding my doughnuts to squirrels?!)

Ironically, just as I got the hang of the different doughs and had begun to twirl and churn out perfectly puffed twists and airy apple fritters, something strange happened. My neighbors stopped wanting doughnuts. My husband stopped eating doughnuts. My nanny stopped eating doughnuts. My child’s playmate’s father’s co-workers stopped eating doughnuts. For the record, people are much more inclined to accept doughnuts if you give the box to your 18-month-old and have him foist it on them with a sweet smile. Yet no matter how hard I tried, I could never quite rid my house of doughnuts.

About a week before the project ended, right after I’d hit a rhythm of four batches a day, I bonked. I didn’t want to fry any more doughnuts. I didn’t want to eat any more doughnuts. I began to hate everything about doughnuts in the exact same way I’d come to hate the girl who wouldn’t let me join the fourth-grade jump rope club. It was as if the doughnuts were out to get me. They snuck flour into the back pockets of my jeans. They smeared dough onto my pigtails. They emerged in my dreams—or should I say, nightmares—jolting me awake in a panic that I’d flipped cake batter the way I was supposed to turn old-fashioned batter or vice versa. They even snuck under my skin, in soft pockets about four inches to each side of my belly button.

Shortly after that iffy era I submitted the manuscript. And suddenly it was all over as quickly as it had begun. The vats of oil on my stove cooled completely for the first time in weeks. I scrubbed the borrowed friolater and returned it. The neighbors stopped ducking me. The only trace of the prior five weeks, besides the indelible mark on my psyche and the pudge around my hips, was that after a lifetime spent snagging doughnuts whenever I possibly could, I proceeded to methodically avoid them for the next six months. Actually, make that a year.

Now the book is on shelves, timed to coincide with National Doughnut Month. And while I’m not sure I’ll be able to ever make doughnuts again, I’m once more okay with eating them. Maybe, to celebrate, I’ll receive a box of assorted doughnuts from Mark Klebeck, because he’s that kind of guy. (I’m hoping he’ll send some Pershings.) I’ll eat one because it’s not every day a girl gets a box of doughnuts delivered to her and because deep down, there isn’t anything I can do about my love for doughnuts—or that little frisson of mischief that still runs up my spine each time I choose a doughnut over a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. In fact, there’s a good chance I’ll eat two.

Jess Thomson | Top Pot Hand-Forged Doughnut Secrets | Chronicle, 2011 | Makes 6 servings

If you’re a bread pudding fan, nothing tops a slice made with day-old yeast-raised doughnuts—except, perhaps, a drizzle of a warm vanilla icing or a scoop of vanilla ice cream. And because some of bread pudding’s typical ingredients are already right in the doughnuts, this dessert is quick to make.–Jess Thomson

LC Mmmm…Doughnut Pudding Note: We’re at a loss for words, we’re so agog over the magnificence inherent in this creation. It’s all we can do to gather our wits and grab a spoon. And it just goes to show that when life hands you too many doughnuts—yes, such a thing is possible—all you need to do is make pudding. Doughnut pudding. Words to live by.

Active time: 5 minutes | Total time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

Doughnut Pudding Recipe

Directions

Want it? Click it.

Cloaked in a bolt of royal blue cloth that revealed only a nose, a braided grey beard, and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses, the man I approached at my farmers’ market looked something like a modern-day executioner. I knew there was no rational reason for me to be nervous. Someone I had trusted had given me the hook-up to Washington-grown saffron. But I’d been expecting a hipster, not a hippie.

Surrounded by tables of baby succulents, the grower was busy discussing the particulars of a plant I’d never seen before with another customer. I lurked, observing how the guy’s hands were permanently creased with dirt, almost as though the hands themselves were half-plant. When he noticed me, I shyly asked if he knew who sold saffron. A bright, welcoming grin burst out from behind his hood and he opened his eagle arms wide. With no small drama, he swooped a hand under the table, brought out a small tackle box, and extracted a tiny cellophane envelope filled with abnormally long, red threads. I had to remind myself that what I was doing was perfectly legal. I took a deep breath. “How much?” I ask.

The Pacific Northwest, with its mild, wet climate that’s similar to that of southwest Asia where saffron originated, is actually home to a number of saffron producers, mostly on Washington’s Olympic peninsula. At the market where I shop every Sunday, Jim Robinson isn’t exactly known for saffron. His outfit, Phocas Farms, is mainly a succulent business—he’s the guy who grows really cute plants in rocks. He just happens to do saffron on the side. After I’d pocketed my little packet, I decided I had to know whether $30 per gram is a bargain for the amount of work saffron requires. So I asked.

Jim Robinson, the hippie saffron farmer

Jim was quick to point out that this has not been a stellar year for saffron around here. He explained that there have been toads of biblical proportions, and while the amphibians aren’t harmful to crocuses per se, they do make excellent excavators. The situation had clearly inspired some contemplation on his part. “I find myself thinking about a possible twist on that old English classic Toad in the Hole, made with chorizo and topped with a saffron cream sauce…?” he said, clearly familiar with saffron’s Spanish accent. We arranged for a visit.

“Welcome to the shambles,” Jims boomed as I stepped out into the rain at Phocas Farms. The farm is, in his words, a decades-old work in progress. It’s a rambler deposited at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by what looked to be a sprawling study in succulent genetics with a ring of DIY deer fencing around the perimeter and a security force of not entirely domesticated cats.

It turns out Jim had an arroz con pollo habit back in the early ’80s. That’s how this all started. One day after his wife, Kathy, coughed up enough cash for them to buy some good Spanish spice, but they decided to instead try growing their own as hobbyists. In 1984, Jim and Kathy ordered and planted 100 Crocus sativus corms. (A corm looks like a bulb and acts like a bulb but is botanically a bit different from a bulb. It serves the same purpose, though, acting as a winter storage unit for all of the plants’ unfinished business.) Sixteen long years later, the Robinsons started to sell saffron at farmers’ markets.

Jim is a man of a certain age: He’s old enough to have entered his anecdotage, but not so old that his tales are no longer interesting. Having spent most of his life gardening and farming, including a stint as an agricultural Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, Jim thought he could easily handle picking flower stigmas from a crocus plant that blooms only for a few short weeks each year, after the traditional harvest season.

But there’s a reason saffron is the world’s most expensive spice: It’s exceptionally demanding. Unlike many flower-bearing bulbs, saffron corms are sterile. They only reproduce with the aid of a human helicopter parent willing to lift, separate, and replant the corms every few years. Then there’s the actual saffron picking process, which also requires exact timing and precision. Saffron is proof that humans’ tendency toward anal retentiveness has existed for at least three millennia, which is as long as saffron has been cultivated.

Still, Jim moves with unexpected agility among his crocus beds, gracefully dodging the meshing that keeps his cats from pawing at the dirt. Straddling a long row of plants, he looks like a bearded Bono gone botanical as he patiently begins the story of saffron’s growing cycle.

“She’s a backwards plant, from the bizarro plant kingdom,” he says in a slow surfer drawl lightly tainted with the Queen’s English. Translation: Under normal weather conditions, instead of first shooting up greens first and then flowers like most plants, C. sativus sends up its blooms and then follows with the rest of the plant. Those spindly green shoots covering the corm beds that I’d presumed were precursors to a good paella are actually the aftermath of the harvest.

“So where’s the saffron?” I ask. Jim points a yellow-stained finger to a crocus that’s about to flower. It’s shaped like a little lilac-colored torpedo, but unlike some of the smaller flowers, it has tips of red. “La rosa de saffron,” he announces. The rose of saffron does indeed look like a tiny rose, as if the flower bud itself is puckering up for a kiss. It clearly doesn’t realize it’s signaling to Jim that it should be destroyed immediately.

Watching Jim, I quickly learn that picking C. sativus is in no way an ambiguous process. He grasps each flower at its base, pushes down—we hear a small pop, which is the sound of the petals ripping off their base—then pulls up, taking the entire flower head off of its stem. Jim uses his fingers to roll the petals off one by one, revealing three skinny red threads whose tips only seconds ago formed the red spot above the blossom. I realize that we’re stripping the flower naked and I wonder for a moment if it minds.

I ask if I can pick one. Jim bristles, and I instantly know he’ll say no. He explains that because it’s been such a bad year, he has to be absolutely sure that each and every stigma gets dried into saffron. I try hard not to be insulted. My own anal-retentiveness has never actually been called into question, but I get it. The economic reality of a poor harvest means I stay standing.

“Do you think of yourself as a type A person?” I ask. He smiles. “I have to be precise to produce as good a product as I do,” says Jim. “So sure, maybe. I was born on Winter Solstice. But I’m more complex than that. Though born under a Capricorn sun, many traits of which are classically type A, my astrological predisposition towards intransigence was softened by having a moon in Gemini, an ascendant in Cancer, and the majority of my planets scattered among air signs.” One more mark for a subject I didn’t expect to cover with the saffron guy. We move on.

Another little detail in saffron cultivation is that you must pick the flower before it opens or wilts. An open flower begins to spit pollen onto the stigma, which taints the final product, and  a wilted flower compromises quality. So each day during the height of the season, which usually falls in late October, Jim picks about 1,500 flowers in the hours just after dawn. To ensure that he can process all this saffron in the short amount of time allotted, he turns to cutting-edge technology: an old almond-colored Whirlpool refrigerator. This is where he stashes the flowers to prevent wilting while the picking’s good. Only after he’s hauled all the flowers in can he start plucking the actual saffron threads out of each individual bloom.

Transforming the blood-red trifurcated stigma of the crocus plant into botanical gold is a simple enough process. Unlike some “crokers,” as saffron growers were once called in England, Jim only dries the reddest part of each stigma, breaking off the lighter orange or yellow style that connects the stigma to the flower, which is often used in lower-grade saffron. He arranges the blood-red stigma in rows on paper in his warm processing room—an odd space that’s one third kitchen, one third garage, and one third jury-rigged recovery room for his wife, who’s about to have a knee replacement—and lets them dry for two or three days. That’s it.

Only that’s not really it. By Jim’s count, an average day during high harvest requires four hours of crouching followed by about 12 hours of meticulous processing. Not counting weeding, mulching, soil prep, planting, and packaging, that averages out to about a minute per flower. That may not sound like much, but early next spring, try something. Walk outside and bend down to pick a crocus. Stand there for one entire minute halfway between crawling and walking with one hand on the ground, like a model for someone drawing one of those posters that shows the stages of human evolution. Unless you’ve played a lot of football, you’ll probably be happy to pay someone else to grow your saffron the next time you feel like making bouillabaisse.

Jim finally got around to explaining that a government-funded study in New Zealand concluded that the amount of labor required to produce saffron made it impractical as a crop in a first-world or industrialized society. “No surprise in that, eh?”

No surprise at all. But Jim isn’t exactly obsessed with practicality. He calls growing saffron his avocation—as opposed to his vocation, which is growing succulents—precisely because it’s a beast of a crop. The corms get eaten by all manner of bugs, slugs, and rodents (hence the cats), and they require careful feeding and fertilizing. Wet years, like this one, result in poor yields.

There’s no substantive evidence that Jim’s saffron smells sweeter than the little vial I brought home last year from Spain, or that it lends a more opulent yellow hue and a more intensely earthy taste to my cooking than the threads the other local growers sell. He’s never had it chemically analyzed for flavor and aroma compounds, as many producers do. He has no idea whether the levels of safranal, the oil that gives saffron its characteristic scent, in his product are off the charts or not. The fact that his saffron is relied on by well-respected Seattle-area restaurants, including The Herbfarm and Allium, is proof enough for him. And from what I observed, no one in his right mind would voluntarily straddle crocus beds in as awkward a position as Jim does, for as many hours as he does, if he wasn’t obsessed with growing the best saffron possible.

At home that night, I rip open my little dime bag. It contains a neat half gram, good for five, maybe ten dinner parties, depending on the dish. I crush a pinch of it in the palm of my hand. The threads smell like a mix of honey, hay, and hard work. That scent is the reason Jim’s cut back on the saffron use in his own kitchen in recent years, just like the Dutch curtailed their spice use once they figured out they liked world domination more than well-seasoned food. For some, saffron doesn’t taste that luxurious knowing that your money could be in your pocket instead of on your plate. (For the record, Dutch food has never recovered.)

Thankfully, I have no compunctions about polishing off Jim’s saffron. I slide some chorizo in the oven. I love Jim’s idea of topping a dish as old-school as Toad in the Hole with something so glitzy, partly because I’m curious, partly because of the whack factor. It’s an awfully raucous collision of cultures—English and Spanish cuisines are not habitual bedfellows—but it works. Although for a poor man’s dish, them’s some awfully spendy threads.

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. But in contrast to the previous few weeks of feeling generally crummy, this time, the wind was literally knocked out of me. By my doctor.

A few days earlier, she’d tested me for celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that prevents a person from properly digesting gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and, let’s be honest, just about everything good in this world. Now she’d just called with the results, informing me that some of the tests were positive, some were negative. This wasn’t normal. “Everything may still be OK,” she explained. “But we’ll have to do more bloodwork to be sure.”

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What my doctor didn’t have to say was that if the second round of tests came back positive, all of my relationships and habits surrounding cooking and eating would be annihilated. Even before I’d gone to the doctor, I was shaken by the events of the previous few weeks. Without my habitual food cravings, I feared the food writer’s equivalent of a divorce: loss of appetite.

Now, with the looming loss of gluten, it wasn’t just the potential forfeiture of bread that made me feel sick. It was the whole shebang: No more soy sauce. No more good, thick chowders. No more bedtime bowl of Cheerios. It seemed that my entire relationship with food—and, by extension, my entire sense of self—might fall apart. I struggled to breathe, mentally catastrophizing my career in a matter of seconds. My doctor said she’d call Monday with the results.

It was Friday. Friday, as it turns out, is a very long time from Monday. So I did what any self-respecting lover of all things food-related would do: I decided to spend the entire weekend having fabulous, unprotected sex with gluten.

I slammed two sticks of butter onto the counter to soften for chocolate-chunk cookies. Feeling stubborn and suddenly hungry for the first time in a month, I grabbed a pen and started scribbling down what I creatively titled “Things To Eat This Weekend.” I concentrated my efforts outside of my own kitchen, desiring those things that weren’t exactly practical to pull off at home. When I stopped to read what I’d written, I realized that these were the foods I lived to eat—foods that I could avoid only if I stripped my tongue of taste buds and invested in a considerable amount of hypnosis. If I was facing abandonment, I wanted a final fling. I’d savor a good, greasy kiss from the double-bacon deluxe with cheese at Red Mill Burgers. I’d lick a hundred translucent shards of impossibly flaky croissants from my fingers, eyes closed, thanks to Café Besalu. I’d slurp ramen at Samurai Noodle, memorizing how it felt as the noodles slithered in my mouth, my lips slippery with pork fat-flavored ChapStick. It would be a long, slow, tortuous dance through my culinary Eden.

As I pondered my list, it occurred to me that it’s perhaps not a coincidence that “glutinous” and “gluttonous” are spelled so similarly. Nothing without gluten would pass my lips until Monday. I’d eat my way through the pain of pending rejection, savoring every detail, every quirk, every crumb.

That night, I gorged on an immodest number of cookies. I went to bed early but spent a couple of hours tossing, distracted, comparing my potential split with gluten to a very real separation. I pondered whether to call a friend of mine who’d just been dumped, thinking he might be able to help me feel less forsaken. After all, our situations seemed pretty identical, save for the minor detail that my break-up, should gluten and I permanently part ways, wouldn’t leave me searching for a new apartment. I decided that at least I had that going for me, which calmed me slightly. I took a Xanax and passed out.

I spent the next day edibly etching the word “last” across my renewed appetite. My husband and I started our Saturday here in Seattle as we always do during ski season: with sausage-and-egg breakfast sandwiches. The last time I’ll dig English muffin crumbs out of my ski boots, I thought. A full 20 minutes later, we stopped for a Frisbee-sized cinnamon roll slathered in orange-tinged icing. The last time I’ll buy pastry that could double as a Princess Leia headdress. I had a BLT for lunch before polishing off the rest of the cinnamon roll. My last sandwich. We met friends for a drink later in the afternoon and I downed a hefeweizen. My last beer. Dinner was at Tavolata, my favorite Seattle pasta joint, where I swooned over my spaghetti studded with anchovies, chilies, and garlic, committing its flavor to memory. My last meal here. (OK, maybe that was a little dramatic. I could always go back and order something without gluten. But why subject myself to the hauntings of a hundred happier moments?) Afterward, I still had room for doughnuts.

Sunday morning. Before the newspaper had even hit the porch, I’d torn into a ham-and-Gruyère croissant. My husband and I cruised the farmers’ market while munching on a crusty baguette. Then I ordered a slice of thin-crust pizza from the market’s mobile wood-fired oven. I forced a vegetarian pal to come to Red Mill with me, where I picked the burger bun apart and obsessively rolled it into little balls before eating it. She just stared at me, not knowing what to say. We’d invited friends over for dinner that evening, so I made spelt risotto and, after licking my plate, gorged on pain de campagne dipped in olive oil.

All the while, something deep inside my brain, a little nagging whisper—or was it my husband’s voice?—reminded me that there’s more than one way to make a cinnamon roll, a slice of bread, or a strand of spaghetti. That, in fact, there’s more to eat in the world than wheat. But, like a bitter divorcée-to-be, I had no interest in reason. I couldn’t see a way forward without what I couldn’t have.

With each bite that weekend, celiac disease seemed more and more probable. You know how sometimes something happens—or doesn’t happen—and you make up a completely irrational explanation and then convince yourself that it’s true? That’s how I was with gluten. By bedtime Sunday, I was taking it personally. Gluten hates me, I thought. Then suddenly—OK, finally—it registered. No one had ever really broken up with me. I was being dumped for the first time. By a protein. Or not. I wasn’t sure. And that was the problem.

I spent most of Monday staring at my phone, realizing that the last time I’d willed someone to call like this was when I was still wearing braces. Now, like then, I wanted validation. I needed resolution. I thought about sending gluten a handwritten note with two boxes:  Check here if you like me. Check here if you don’t like me. To distract myself, I made pizza with nettle pesto, kale, and semi-dried tomatoes, ate a panini while it was still too hot, and rattled around the house looking for other foods to cry over.

Late Tuesday afternoon, I got my call. The test results were all normal—except that stubborn antigliadin antibody, which some believe is the leading indicator of celiac disease. “You probably don’t have celiac,” were my doctor’s opening words. “But we can’t say for sure without a biopsy. You could try not eating gluten for a while…Although, that might not be the solution, either.”

I should’ve been elated. It seemed that gluten wanted me back. Mostly, anyway. So what now? Make-up sex, I decided halfheartedly. Spaghetti bolognese. And the next day, I’d go for that ramen I’d missed over the weekend. No protein dumps this girl.

But when I opened the pantry, I saw a bunch of needy, non-commital pastas and flours staring back at me, daring me to prove to them—and to myself—that I needed gluten. Now that gluten had decided to crawl back to me, head hanging, it looked rather pathetic.

One of my friends is Shauna James Ahern, a.k.a. Gluten-Free Girl, who’s quite possibly the only person on the planet who makes eating gluten-free sound downright sexy. Maybe if I called her, she’d do break-up duty, commiserating with me. Reassuring me that no, I didn’t need gluten. I tried for a moment to pretend that going gluten-free could be an adventure. Character building, even. I’ll admit, I was curious to learn about all those flours I’d marveled over but never actually used in baking. I was sure Shauna would show me The Way. So I called her.

Some of her tests had come back negative the first time, too. Yet when gluten rejected her, she turned her back on it, defiantly and irrevocably, head held high.

I decided that mostly wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to be the girl who was lucky enough to maybe get a second chance. No woman wants to be loved conditionally.

I was going to give eating gluten-free a try. It wouldn’t be easy. I’d miss the burger joint. But what if I actually started feeling better?

I had my answer.

“It’s not you,” I said, staring into the pantry. “It’s me. I just need some time to myself. Some time to think.”

And with that, I packed up all of gluten’s things and tossed him out.

© 2010 Jess Thomson. All rights reserved.

When Graham showed up almost two months early, we knew we were fortunate because he had good lungs and a willingness to fight the e. coli infection that sent me into labor. And (be still my beating heart) he apparently inherited my rock-solid digestive system. There was just one minor detail: he’d skipped the part of fetal development in which we learn to suck and swallow. So instead of waiting until toddlerhood, when kids typically begin refusing any food whose assembly they don’t personally witness, Graham decided we needed to fret over what he did or didn’t ingest from day one. For seven weeks, we watched our child learn to do what most kids are born doing.

Graham spent the first week of his life in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), then the next two weeks at a similar but slightly less scary ward called the Infant Special Care Unit (ISCU), both at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. If you’ve never had the pleasure of visiting these places twice daily for weeks on end, you’ll find a close approximation, minus the cow sounds, at your nearest feed lot. Here, in I’d say half the cases, small but otherwise healthy children are nourished through a tube, their every nutritional need calculated and analyzed, prioritized, and criticized. There are charts and protocols and many, many syringes. Lactation consultants—nipple nazis, we called them—float from cribside to cribside, encouraging new moms to pump breast milk for their babies, touting it as nature’s perfect food. New mothers hide behind curtains, hooked up like modest, half-clothed heifers, but most of the babies end up on formula, because it’s often the most effective way to get calories in—and in the ISCU, calories count for everything. In other words, the ISCU is where babies become veal.

In the NICU, we learned to love our little meat baby, tubes and all. We dreamed his legs would grow into little ham hocks, and imagined a day when his fat cheeks might rest right on his chest like fleshy jowls. But to the nurses, he was just another calf to fatten. There in room 11B—a corner of a room, really, where he was literally tethered to the wall with cords—Graham was creatively tagged Baby Boy A. I found it strange that after all the naming shenanigans my husband and I put ourselves through, the hospital refused to use the one we’d actually picked. As if they’d decided they didn’t approve. Or maybe they just didn’t want to get too attached. You know, before the slaughter.

From the get-go, Graham was an intestinal champ, scarfing down miniscule quantities of my breast milk with record-breaking regularity. Every day, we’d show up for his “feed times” like anxious children at a human zoo, gazing through his incubator’s Plexiglass until the nurse on duty informed us we had a fifteen minute window in which we could touch our son before his next feeding. I’ve heard so many women say there’s no feeling in the world like the moment someone puts your squirmy newborn into your arms. I missed that one, but watching your very little boy decide his very little stomach is ready for food must rank a close second. Day after day, we cheered for him to get fat.

It’s no accident that the NICU’s feeding process, the one by which premature babies take milk (or something like milk) through a tube that runs through the nose and into the stomach, is called gavage. Gavage is the French term used to describe the systematic overstuffing of ducks and geese for foie gras, and save the honking, the processes are essentially the same—only with birds you’re plumping to kill and with preemies you’re not planning to eat them. That’s what we assumed, anyway.

Eight times a day, for three weeks, Graham was gavaged. And eight times a day, almost every single time, he digested it all. Talk to any devout foie gras eater, and he’ll tell you the geese come running over when the food and funnel come out. I’m not sure that’s the case, but after watching gavage after gavage, I will tell you this: Graham really did seem to like it. After being fed, his eyes would flutter and roll, and he’d collapse in the same heap of satisfaction I reserve for the almost post-coital period that follows a really excellent Sunday brunch buffet. By the end of our stay at Swedish, I’d made a mental note to order foie gras more regularly. And honestly, I sort of wondered what it would be like to have that full belly feeling without actually having to chew and swallow. Some days, that sounded sort of nice.

A problem arose when Graham was upgraded from Sensitive Teeny Baby to Less Sensitive Growing Baby. Unbeknownst to us, it was determined that he qualified for an engine additive. In his case, a powdery substance called Human Milk Fortifier (HMF) would be added to my carefully expressed breast milk at every meal, with the goal of increasing its energy content from 20 to 24 calories per ounce. We noticed something different one day at the 12 p.m. feeding: our normally iron-clad little Graham began yakking up half his meals and failing to completely digest what stayed inside. When I asked the nurse for an explanation, she waved away my worry, saying some babies just don’t take to the HMF well. I wasn’t satisfied. Why was only half the amount of my super-charged breast milk preferable to a full dose of the natural stuff? “This is the way we do it,” she said. I thought of my beloved veal piccata, and wondered if cow mamas get pissed off when their calves’ milk supply is altered with whatever petrifying array of chemicals the beef industry might add. One more checkmark for natural milk-fed veal.

That night, I opened Graham’s little refrigerator to find the nurse had added the powder to a full day’s supply of my pumped breast milk. I know formula is a wonderful alternative to breastfeeding if the boob’s not for you, but there in the beeping darkness, I felt like I was at the butt end of a backward interpretation of Deceptively Delicious, that Jessica Seinfeld cookbook that helps parents trick kids into eating their vegetables by sneaking, say, beets, into a batch of brownies. My mind whirled. My pride hurt. Might as well stir pulverized Cheetos into the milk while you’re at it, I thought. We demanded an audience with the nurse practitioner, who agreed to give him straight breast milk until doctors’ rounds the next day.

It’s worth mentioning here that the ISCU also doubles as a training camp for new mothers: The less I could control what happened to my son, the more guilt I felt. The minute my husband and I hit the elevators, I burst into tears. My kid’s diet had been taken out of my jurisdiction before he weighed five pounds. I know someday, someone will give him grape soda, and I won’t be there to stop him from guzzling, but T-minus six weeks seemed a bit early to face the issue. And more than anything, we just didn’t understand: Weren’t the nipple nazis telling us that breast milk is nature’s most perfect food? And who the hell was the crackpot who named it Human Milk Fortifier? Was he trying to freak out new parents? Was there a toy chemistry set hidden somewhere that had a menagerie of animal milk fortifiers? I wanted to prove my kid could grow on my milk alone, but I knew I might not get the chance.

The next day, I went all Michael Pollan on the ISCU docs, issuing my request to feed my baby real food. They rolled their eyes. Oh, she’s one of those. Finally, we were given an ultimatum: Graham would have to gain at least one ounce a day for five days, and pass lab tests assessing how well his body was accepting nutrients from my milk, or go back on the HMF, which apparently allows preemies to digest more nutrients than their bodies are naturally capable of doing at such a young age. (Moo, anyone?) We held our breath and watched the tube.

Between shifts at the hospital, I ate as well as I could, trying to pack enough of that love into my milk so the hospital could test it. I picked squid tacos, because someone told me squid is good for milk supply, and drank fenugreek tea. I envisioned nutrients flooding my body, and dutifully trapped them in miniature sterilized plastic bottles for Graham’s consumption. I pumped and I pumped, and then I pumped some more. I pumped so much milk I began to consider making breast cheese using the contents of what I now know was our appropriately named chest freezer. And each time we visited Swedish Hospital, we gave encouragement. Eat local, buddy, we pleaded. It doesn’t get any more local than this. When the time came, we passed the test—Graham was given permission to continue on plain breast milk.

Since then, he’s thrived. He learned to eat from a bottle—suck, swallow, breathe, we chanted—and did it frequently enough that he could be discharged. He came home and has mastered breastfeeding. His disengaging sounds like a bike pump being ripped off the valve stem at 100 psi.

In fact, Graham now has three chins and saddlebags, and we couldn’t be prouder. He’d be great to eat, I’m sure, if I was into that sort of thing. For now, though, I’ll stick to veal picatta and foie gras. My son will have his basic organic boob milkshake, until he’s big enough to start throwing his vegetables across the room. In public, I’ll whine appropriately with the other moms about how hard it is to feed a two-year-old. At home I’ll just smile, thrilled that Graham grew old enough and strong enough to choose what goes into his mouth.

© 2009 Jess Thomson. All rights reserved.

7:45 a.m.
I fuel up at Le Panier in downtown Seattle. I’ve had breakfast already, but it’s going to be 90 degrees in Wenatchee, so I down a flaky croissant, in case the day turns into eight hours of volunteer labor. Andrew, who must be tall enough to harvest cherries without a ladder, picks me up in his Prius wearing a lovely pressed shirt, slacks, and trendy lace-up leather shoes. He has the self-assured smile of a very successful car salesman. Back home, I’d been so sure sturdy sneakers and an old t-shirt were appropriate, but now, I’m not so certain. Thank goodness I remembered my cherry-print bobby socks. Andrew notices them immediately.

In high school soccer, I was a forward. I had neither the speed and endurance required of a midfielder, nor the ball skills required near the goal. I thought it was a pretty good gig, hanging out up past midfield, waiting for someone to pass me the ball so that I could score and dance around like I’d actually accomplished something. That is, until one girl started screaming “cherry picker” every time I scored. That made it less fun.

When Andrew, the Washington State Fruit Commission’s resident cherry expert, said he’d take me cherry picking at high season, I jumped. I had no reason to believe I wouldn’t be good at the real thing, especially if I didn’t actually have to grow the cherries myself. And it would be awfully nice if no one hollered at me.

11:00 a.m.
We pull into the packing plant at Bluebird, one of the state’s biggest cherry-packing plants, in Wenatchee, Washington. We meet a man I’ll call Bob, a well-respected cherry grower. Andrew’s arranged for me to pick fruit on Bob’s land. A good-natured old boy who acts a lot more burly than he looks, Bob gives me the once-over and makes a joke about letting me “pick” a box of cherries at the plant and getting me back to Seattle.

Only, it’s not a joke. I feel branded: City Girl. Unfit to pick. It burns.

“I can’t wait to see your land and get up in the trees,” I say, smiling like a champ. Bob steers me into the plant.

A cherry-packing plant is a lot like the inside of a beehive, if modern cartoons are any indication, only there’s a lot less Jerry Seinfeld, and a lot more Spanish. There are two packing lines, which run 24 hours a day during high season: One for the easy-bruising, pink tinted Rainiers, the sweet glitterati whose every move toward a pricey grocery store clamshell is coddled by a gentle stream of cold water, and one for cascades of the rough-and-tumble reds, the cherries universally dumped into the category labeled “dark sweet.” Today, Bluebird is packing for Costco Korea.

I learn that cherries, like shrimp, are categorized by size—only, instead of by pound, it’s by diameter, or how many cherries fit in a row in the bottom of a standard box. A farmer brags about a crop of nine-row cherries, and I wonder out loud whether cherries could be sold by varietal and size, like apples. Andrew and Bob stare at me like I have three heads.

Someone hands me a toolbox-sized container of dark sweets, and we leave the plant.

11:45 a.m.
We blink back the sunlight, and I tell Bob I came to pick the dark sweets, like the ones I’m already munching on. I’d love to taste a few different varieties, and see if I can tell the difference.

“Did you bring your bucket?” asks Bob.

I admit I didn’t. But I brought a good hat, and harvested all the Ziploc bags my house could provide. I’m still smiling, because I’m pumped to pick, but it occurs to me that it’s possible I won’t.

“I tell my pickers they have to bring all their own equipment. No bucket, no picking,” says Bob. I wonder whether he skips his kids’ birthdays. “But I’ll show you my trees.”

I smile again. I can’t think of anything else to do.

12:00 p.m.
Bob’s orchards are beautiful; each tree has a box seat in a gently undulating stadium overlooking the Columbia River. He guides me through a newly planted block, explaining how most growers plant different varieties of dark sweets to extend the picking season. (Bob harvests the burgundy-hued Chelans first, then moves onto the light-fleshed Bentons, then the traditional Bings, then to his Vans, which taste slightly more sour.)

“You see them in the markets,” says Andrew, picking some of each varietal for me to take home and taste. “You just don’t know you see them.”

I spot the ladders. They’re shaped like flattened Eiffel Towers, and seem almost as tall, with a big adjustable pole shooting toward the ground (for balance, I presume, but it does look like a great way to get hurt). I watch some of the pickers maneuver them around, plunking the last fruit off a few almost-empty branches into the big metal buckets they’ve strapped to themselves with old GM seatbelts.

“Can I pick some?” I ask. “Sure,” says Bob. He points to four cherries hanging from the lowest branch of a nearly naked tree. I pretend he’s kidding. Andrew starts looking nervous. I might be about to ruin his relationship with this guy, one of the finest of Washington’s 2,500 growers.

“Are there any other parts of the orchard with ripe cherries that haven’t been picked yet?” I ask. On the road to Bob’s house, we saw trees roped with ruby fruit, and I know there are 37,000 acres of cherries in the state, all ripening now. One of them must be here.

“Yup,” he says, pointing north. He turns south to head back to the car.

Maybe Bob’s playing Little Red Hen. Maybe I wasn’t here early enough. Or maybe I really don’t have the chops to pick.

There must be more to cherry picking than picking cherries, I decide. I mean, I’m not exactly a frail-looking person, and I don’t think I look that inept, and it’s no secret that I came for a reason. I’m wearing the socks. I try again.

I point to my four cherries, and ask Bob what it takes to be a cherry picker. Is there a special technique? How much training is involved? I ask him to show me how to pick, thinking a roundabout approach might actually get me up a tree. I didn’t put sunscreen on to stand in the shade all afternoon.

Bob tells me he hires people by the day, and submits them to a roughly ten-minute safety session each morning. Since the limbs lay the groundwork for the next year’s blossoms early in the season, it’s important not to actually yank entire branches off the tree, but the difficulty is in the hours his workers spend picking—starting at dawn—rather than in the actual picking technique. They’re told to pick cherries from the stems, instead of just yanking on the fruit, because cherries that are ripped at the junction between the fruit and the stem won’t pass inspection. Other than that, picking is picking. He picks my four Vans off and tosses them on the ground nonchalantly. I rescue them.

“So, where can we pick?” There is nothing indirect about my question this time.

“Well, a few years ago, there was a U-Pick place down Grant Road,” says Bob. Then: “Thanks for coming.” He starts loading cherries onto his truck for another trip to the packer.

12:30 p.m.
Back in the Prius, Andrew and I stare at each other. He’s obviously sorry.

“So…I guess we’re not picking?” I ask.

“I guess not,” says Andrew. “I don’t understand.”

We label the cherries and stuff them into a cooler, like a science experiment, and head out to Grant Road, which proves to be a cherry-picking hotspot, if you’re in the cherry-picking industry. There are no U-Pick signs here, or at any of the orchards lining the Wenatchee roads we drive for the next 90 minutes, searching for a place to climb a ladder.

My stomach begins to get raw, either because Andrew and I have downed a pound and a half of the cherries from the packer, or because I can’t figure out why Bob was so protective of his crop. Maybe the orchards are cover for a county-wide meth operation, and I’ve inhaled too much dust. Or maybe I just can’t stomach the math Andrew’s spewing, trying to calculate the carbon sink potential of the Northwest’s massive cherry acreage.

2:00 p.m.
A few people tell us there haven’t been U-Pick cherry orchards here in years. Apparently, Washington’s cherries are in such high demand that growers hold out for top dollar for every single cherry.

That’s nice for Washington, but I’ve come halfway across the state in cherry-print socks to not pick cherries.

We decide to call it a day, and weave our way back to Seattle, stopping at every fruit stand we see, so I can at least come home with the booty I’ve promised my neighbors. I want to search for sour cherries for David, who needs them for a recipe, but Andrew tells me we’re in the wrong part of the state for sours, which make up a miniscule percentage of the state’s crop, anyway.

3:15 p.m.
Andrew buys me a coffee milkshake at Twin Pines Burgers, about halfway back to Seattle. It dulls the pain.

6:00 p.m.
In my kitchen, I arrange six cherries (one of each of the varieties Andrew picked) in a little huddle, stems out, and notice that like people, they’re all a little different. The Vans and the Benton are wearing big ’80s shoulder pads, the Chinook is apple shaped, and the fat Bing—well, let’s just say she’s built for comfort, that girl. The Rainier looks entirely out of place, and I remember the time I overheard a woman tell her daughter in a grocery store on Cape Cod that “rainy-er” cherries—pronounced with three syllables—come from the wetter climates near Seattle.

I close my eyes, and pop the first cherry I touch into my mouth. Badda bing—it’s that big cherry flavor, underneath a skin that’s so fresh and taught I can hear it break between my teeth like the crack of a bat. It’s my first taste, but it must be the best one of the six. I cheat instantly, glancing at my guide: It’s not a Bing, it’s a Vans. The flesh inside is curiously light colored. I bite into a Bing to compare, and indeed, the Bing’s ruby meat is significantly darker than the Vans’s crimson, but I like the Vans better; its afterbite is more astringent. The Chinook is even darker inside than the Bing, almost blackish, and much more tart. Next, the Chelan’s skin is the most crisp of them all. Bob told me his Chelans are super sweet now, since it’s already late in that variety’s season, and indeed, it tastes like a strawberry.

Just the Rainier and the Benton left. I start light. Compared to the dark sweets, the Rainier is so mild, it hardly tastes like the same fruit. It’s like eating a cherry with my nose plugged. I toss it to the dog.

But the Benton—he’s got a thick, snappy skin, and is more acidic than the others, even the Vans. I nibble back and forth between the Benton and the Vans and the Bing, and it’s no contest. The Benton is a cherry lover’s cherry. I know instantly it’s male because he makes me want to speak in Jane Austen: Oh, sweet Benton! He’s my clear favorite.

I do remember the day I fell in love with cherries, before they had genders. Come to think of it, it was the same day I learned how dangerous they can be. I was driving across Washington with a girlfriend to visit colleges on the West Coast, with a fat bag of Bings from the tree in front of my parents’ house. Only, they weren’t quite ripe, so by the time we hit Ellensburg, a couple hours from Seattle, my tongue was pickled pink and my stomach churned with the acidic torture of unripe fruit.

Come to think of it, I’d picked them myself. Maybe Bob was onto me.

Article © 2008 by Jess Thomson. All rights reserved.

Though their flavor is often compared to spinach, the thickness and texture of nettles make them a better candidate for the kind of coarse pesto that clings to high-quality pasta. Spread the leftover on sandwiches, swirl it into aïoli as a dip for artichoke leaves, or thin it with a little additional olive oil and use it as a pizza sauce.—Jess Thomson

convert Ingredients
For the pesto
1/2 pound nettles
3 large garlic cloves, smashed
1/2 cup toasted pecans
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

For the pasta
1/2 pound high-quality bucatini or thick spaghetti
1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish

Directions
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a simmer for the nettles. Add the nettles directly from their bag and cook, stirring continuously, for 2 minutes. Dump into a colander to drain. When the nettles are cool enough to handle, wrap them in a clean dishtowel and wring out as much moisture as possible. You’ll have about a cup of cooked, squished nettles.

2. Pulse the garlic, pecans, salt, and a few grindings of pepper in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the nettles, breaking them up as you go, and the lemon juice and whirl until the nettles are finely chopped. With the machine running, add the olive oil in a slow, steady stream through the feed tube. Add the cheese, pulse a few times, and season to taste with additional salt, pepper, and lemon juice, if needed.

3. Cook the pasta until al dente, according to package directions. Meanwhile, heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the breadcrumbs and toast for a minute or two, stirring frequently, until the crumbs are golden brown. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.

4. When the pasta is done, reserve a cupful of the cooking water, then strain. Return the pasta to the pot and mix with a heaping 1/2 cup of nettle pesto and about 1/4 cup (more or less) of the pasta water. Stir in the breadcrumbs and the 2 tablespoons Parmesan, and serve immediately, sprinkled with additional cheese.

Variations
Instead of toasted pecans, try toasted walnuts.

For a spicy pesto, saute 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, until fragrant. Cool, then add to the pesto with the rest of the oil.

Recipe © 2008 by Jess Thomson. All rights reserved.

Alinea: the Chicago restaurant declared America’s “Best” by Gourmet Magazine. Four food writers. Four hours. Four gorgeous waiters. At Alinea, the entire waitstaff is beautiful, disturbingly sprightly, and impeccably well groomed. They are not waiters, they are model-waiters. And they know it.

After we’re seated, model-waiter #1 glides over with a wine list, but as we begin to ask normal restaurant questions, he makes it clear that we are not in for a normal restaurant experience. When we ask the price of the wine-pairing option, he says the price is equivalent to roughly three-quarters of the cost of our food, give or take.

Give or take what?, we ask. He’s silent.

Winner

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We’ve already committed to a $135 experience in molecular gastronomy, so we switch tacks. Kathy asks for a glass of white wine. Model-waiter #1 sends the model-sommelier over. He strikes an intelligent pose and begins a practiced monologue. When he’s finished, he recommends a glass of white burgundy, whose price he estimates at $5 per ounce. We wonder whether they have a drug list for special customers.

I didn’t bother to look at the menu closely ahead of time because the sample menus online read like a Saturday Night Live skit. “CHANTERELLE: carrot, curry, ham.”

Alinea is food theater. Its directors: the waiters. The curtain rises, and a 15-course food tour begins.

Each course comes with a verbal instruction manual, presented by waiters who arrive together in a wave to arrange the food just so in front of each of us. They detail not only what’s in each dish but how to eat it, and where to put the utensils afterward. We are their gastronomical puppets.

The Chanterelle-Carrot Surprise is our first major course. Model-waiter #2, who I’ll call Derek Zoolander, arranges four square plates in the center of the table, each fitted with crisp linen-covered pillows. He nudges, pushes, and taps them until they’re perfectly aligned, so obsessive-compulsive about the procedure that it takes me a minute to realize he’s just giving us forks. He informs us it’s “against the law” to allow silverware to touch the table at Alinea, both because the wood is scratchable and because they’d prefer we don’t put germs in our mouths. When I wonder out loud why a restaurant would install tables not meant to touch silverware, he shoots me his best “Blue Steel.” I have interrupted his flow.

The course comes in a wide, flat bowl. In its center sits what appears to be a shot glass, its inside layered with the chef’s miniature culinary leftovers: puréed and sauteed chanterelle mushrooms; an egg yolk, poached just to its gelling point; sweet, sticky apricot leather molded around solidified Madras curry; a wisp of dried prosciutto; some carrot foam. The waiters swoop down together and remove the shot glasses, which I now realize are bottomless glass cylinders, and the food collapses together in the bottom of my bowl. I am a little girl and it’s Christmas; I want to clap because I appreciate the surprise, but it would be loud and awkward. And, of course, the waiters would not approve.

But the combination works. We groan with pleasure. I want so badly to ask if they do take-out.

Then things get weird. Tall, bullet-shaped glasses appear to be holding some greenish liquid and a Ping-Pong ball. I realize the mechanism I’ve so casually relied on to identify the food before me is no longer working. (I have never eaten a Ping-Pong ball.)

Still strutting, model-sommelier asks for our attention: “Ladies, these balls are bigger than they appear. There is liquid inside them. We suggest you swallow the whole thing in one bite, and close your mouth so that the liquid doesn’t spurt out everywhere.”

I do as I’m told, and yes, the balls are much bigger than they looked. Celery juice goes down first, and right as the sphere — really a cocoa-butter shell infused with horseradish — hits my tongue, it shatters, releasing a cold, sweet Granny Smith apple juice that chases the celery down, leaving the cocoa-butter shell to sag in my mouth like an empty candy wrapper. I force myself to swallow.

“I think Passover just erupted in my mouth,” says Kathy.

For course six, a waiter sticks a long, thin paddle into our conversation. On it, he balances four small cinnamon meringues filled with an ice-cold duck product of dubious legality in Chicago.

“This is really kind of icky,” says Grace. She’s right; it tastes like cinnamon chalk with foie-flavored mochi inside. I decide to leave it after the first tiny bite, but there are no plates, and Derek is glaring at me, lips pursed, so I’m afraid to set anything on the table. I choke it down.

There is more rearranging, water here, plates there. One person has both still and sparkling water, and the waiters keep switching their positions next to her plate. (Ordering the sparkling water required an interview: “Would you like hard bubbles or soft bubbles? Wine glass or water glass?”)

The waiters return, this time bearing big, square pillows, and I’m momentarily thrilled about the prospect of naptime. As they get closer, an unmistakable lavender aroma envelopes our space, and I think how wonderful it would be if one of these pillows arrived in the middle of a transpacific airline flight, instead of on my dinner table where I think my plate should be.

But there will be no nap. A duck course alights on each pillow, and we’re instructed to eat, quick. Each time I cut into the tender duck, the plate rocks under my knife, and invisible puffs of lavender escape from the pillow, flavoring the meat through my nose.

I’m delighted. Kathy disagrees. “This is like eating my underwear drawer.”

This next taste is a tiny flavor grenade. It’s a wax ramekin, filled with cold truffled potato soup. The bowl sprouts a miniature steel pin, on which a butter cube, a piece of Parmesan, a marble-size puff of mashed potato, and sliced black truffle are carefully skewered. Instructions (always instructions): Pull the pin, which deposits everything into the soup, then slurp it all down together. It’s wonderful, the contrast between the hot potato and the chilled soup. I absentmindedly play with the pin, and watch the woman at the table next to me perform voodoo on her bread roll. A waiter notices her and snatches my pin away.

Now this, number 11, one of Alinea’s poster children: a flat piece of applewood-smoked bacon, drizzled with butterscotch and wrapped in apple leather with a sprig of thyme, suspended from a wire as if on some sort of trapeze. The wire is connected on both sides to a semicircular metal frame of what appears to be orthodontic headgear. We’re instructed to rock it back and forth, and as we do so, the meat slides to and fro on the wire. If Calder did bacon, he’d have loved this for his circus sculptures. We wrangle the bacon off the wire, and taste a sweet, porcine bridge between dinner and dessert.

The waiters swagger over again to rearrange our water glasses; they’re playing a game of chess whose rules only they understand. Grace, suddenly rebellious, starts moving the little silverware pillow-plates around, nudging them just off-center, and one waiter nonchalantly returns and fixes everything.

We’re not sure how many courses remain. We’re giddy, overtired, overstimulated, overfed.

Zoolander returns with course 13, the first dessert, something Alinea calls The Antenna. It’s a small stainless steel disk, sprouting a foot-long flexible wire. At the end of the wire is what appears to be a golf ball-sized chocolate hairball, bobbing on the wire as he approaches the table. It’s something I picture my cat producing, but apparently the others make a more anatomical analogy.

He sets the disk on the hip-height table, tilted toward Stephanie so that the wire settles at a 45-degree angle, the hairball wagging dangerously (and suggestively) close to her mouth. She dodges it to avoid losing an eye.

Model-waiter #1 brings three more Antennas, forbids us from using our hands, and stays with Derek to watch us eat. Now we’re actually crying, watching each other fellate a miniature cake shrouded in spun licorice sugar. When I eat mine, I decide to try my best to act casual, but the way he sets my Antenna on the table, running his hand down the entire length of the wire to stop its motion, makes this impossible.

Beyond this, dessert proceeds uneventfully. We offend the waiters by not loving the dehydrated olive oil on Alinea’s version of a Creamsicle — if I want olive oil, I’ll pour it, thank you — but adore the fried caramel lollipops studded with preserved Meyer lemon and speared with giant cinnamon sticks.

Before I know it, we’re hemorrhaging cash and thanking the waiters. Then we’re back in the steely entrance hallway, then out in the night air, and the maitre d’ is opening the door to a waiting cab. I wonder briefly whether I’ll be able to make it back to the hotel without a model-waiter to guide me, tell me how to properly brush my teeth, but I shake my head a little, and it’s over.

Article © 2008 Jess Thomson. All rights reserved.

I’d like to file a petition to officially divide the spring season into two sub-seasons: “Spring,” which comes after Mother’s Day and is usually lovely, and “Unsprung,” the obstinate lovechild of January and July. I don’t like Unsprung, that prepubescent stage between March and April. Every year, I’m hoodwinked into believing that the rain will end, the sun will come out, and we’ll finally be able to stop eating root vegetables. Instead, week after week, I find the same pathetic produce in stores and put up with two months of petulant weather.

Finalist

Last week, for example, it was 80 degrees in Seattle, and I thought the cold weather was gone. I sailed to my farmers’ market on a boat of absurd optimism, thinking that on some sunny slope within driving distance, a well-tended patch of asparagus might have been bribed out of hibernation. I fantasized about tender, bendy rhubarb and early morels, but the market mocked me. I bought obese parsnips. Again. And kale. Again. And onions. Again. And my hope boat sank.

I listened to David, my favorite forager, give his slow, sad spiel about morels being a few weeks away still, and I felt sorry for him. It’s not his fault he’s peddling dried mushrooms that cost more than my car. I looked past a disappointed customer, into the basket David reserves for fresh finds, and saw a fat bag of freshly picked stinging nettles. They looked like mint’s Mafia cousin—bigger, and, with the ability to cause paresthesia (temporary tingling, prickling, and numbness) on contact, a little scarier.

The first time I tasted nettles, an Italian woman named Fiamma was at the stove. My husband and I were invited to dinner, and there they were, a mountainous tangle of two-inch leaves with Rocky Mountain edges, just sitting on the counter, waiting to sting someone. With my hands knitted safely together behind my back, I leaned closer to see the bed of little poisonous hairs that grows on each leaf.

Fiamma picked one up and ate it. Raw. I recoiled. I’d heard people in the kitchen calling them “nettles” instead of “stinging nettles.” It’s a clever euphemism from a marketing standpoint, but as far as I’d heard, nettles hadn’t (yet) been genetically engineered to mind their manners, and why eat a food that hurts you? I, for one, expect a certain docility from my vegetables.

Fiamma munched on another one, and I started to understand why her parents named her Flame.

“The little needles only grow on the sunny side of the leaf,” she explained. “If you fold the fuzzy side onto itself just right, so your mouth only touches the smooth part, you can eat nettles raw without stinging yourself.”

Easy for her to say. I lost a layer of tongue to a popsicle once, and popsicles never hurt anyone.

The good thing, for those of us who aren’t so great with botanical origami, is that heat neutralizes the bouquet of irritants a nettle leaf carries. So as long as you cook them, which I highly recommend, they’re edible.

Fiamma boiled and chopped her nettles, then folded them, along with sorrel, fresh ricotta, and a bit of nutmeg, into an agnolotti filling. All evening, as we rolled and folded and simmered and (hours later) ate, I wondered if, having somehow sheltered itself from the boiling water, a rebel faction of still-stinging nettles would leap out of the pasta and attack my soft palate. But there were no insurgents, only mouthfuls of a most delicious, herbaceous green filling. So I began cooking nettles at home.

Once tamed, nettles have the iron-rich flavor of spinach, plus a hint of bright herbiness and a touch of tartness that make them decidedly sexier. And since they’re usually stirred into things—as opposed to eaten on their own—nettles pack a nutritional punch (iron and calcium, to start) while conveniently sparing the eater what’s best known as the “tooth sweater” experience, that most offensive texture begotten by a mouthful of spinach.

As far as high-maintenance produce goes, Urtica dioica are actually quite amenable in the kitchen, too. Yes, they’ll give you pins and needles if you touch them, but compared to other prima donna produce delicacies, like fava or garbanzo beans, nettles require very little of the most annoying sort of attention: time.

Cleaning them is the fastest part. You could wash them, I’m sure, but frankly, I don’t bother. David’s nettles come swaddled in an air-filled plastic bag. Maybe the air prevents the stems from tearing through the sides of the bag (and through my market basket and into my armpit). Or maybe the puffiness is just a sign to smart shoppers like me that this bag is different from all other bags. This produce is washed by nature, so I don’t have to touch it.

That’s always been my interpretation. But last week, when I got back from the market, I peered in through the plastic, and saw a little ladybug hanging out on a leaf, having lunch. My first instinct was to highjack Lady’s little picnic by washing all three dollars’ worth of nettles. I opened the bag and nearly dumped the whole green tangle into the bowl of cold water I’d readied in the sink. At T minus zero, I realized plunging my hands into a tubful of nettles would be akin to juggling the hot coals from my Weber. I changed my mind. For a minute, I considered getting out the salad spinner—there was a real, live insect in there, after all—but I had twice the volume of greens that my spinner can handle, and I couldn’t convince myself that I’d be able to clean two batches of stinging nettles and transfer them to the pot without causing significant dermatological harm. So, based on things I’d heard about boiling water being really, really clean, I decided to just cook the nettles. Bug and all.

Lady, bless her little heart, came floating right up to the surface, where she got fished out with a spoon. I wrung my cooked greens out in a towel, like you do with spinach, and whirled them into a nettle-pecan pesto, to be twisted up with expensive bucatini, along with a little grated Parmesan and a handful of toasted breadcrumbs. As my husband and I forked in our noodles, bite after urgent, hungry bite, I made a silent promise to look forward to early spring next year, stinging weather and all.

I got another bag of nettles last weekend to make a batch of the pesto for a friend. As I was standing at the stove, waiting for the water to boil, I wondered what giving nettle-anything says about the giver or the giftee, in the Martha Stewart sense. Maybe it’s the ultimate sting, a symbolic little stabbing for your barb-tongued ex. Or maybe, given to just the right person, a beribboned jar of nettle pesto is a not-so-subtle message to look on the green side, and embrace spring, in each of its patient steps, even if the weather is miserable.

In that case, I’ll keep the second batch.

Bucatini with Nettle-Pecan Pesto
Serves 2 to 4

Though their flavor is often compared to spinach, the thickness and texture of nettles make them a better candidate for the kind of coarse pesto that clings to high-quality pasta. Spread the leftover on sandwiches, swirl it into aïoli as a dip for artichoke leaves, or thin it with a little additional olive oil and use it as a pizza sauce.

convert Ingredients
For the pesto
1/2 pound nettles
3 large garlic cloves, smashed
1/2 cup toasted pecans
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

For the pasta
1/2 pound high-quality bucatini or thick spaghetti
1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish

Directions
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a simmer for the nettles. Add the nettles directly from their bag and cook, stirring continuously, for 2 minutes. Dump into a colander to drain. When the nettles are cool enough to handle, wrap them in a clean dishtowel and wring out as much moisture as possible. You’ll have about a cup of cooked, squished nettles.

2. Pulse the garlic, pecans, salt, and a few grindings of pepper in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the nettles, breaking them up as you go, and the lemon juice and whirl until the nettles are finely chopped. With the machine running, add the olive oil in a slow, steady stream through the feed tube. Add the cheese, pulse a few times, and season to taste with additional salt, pepper, and lemon juice, if needed.

3. Cook the pasta until al dente, according to package directions. Meanwhile, heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the breadcrumbs and toast for a minute or two, stirring frequently, until the crumbs are golden brown. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.

4. When the pasta is done, reserve a cupful of the cooking water, then strain. Return the pasta to the pot and mix with a heaping 1/2 cup of nettle pesto and about 1/4 cup (more or less) of the pasta water. Stir in the breadcrumbs and the 2 tablespoons Parmesan, and serve immediately, sprinkled with additional cheese.

Variations
Instead of toasted pecans, try toasted walnuts.

For a spicy pesto, saute 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, until fragrant. Cool, then add to the pesto with the rest of the oil.

Article | Recipe | Photo © 2008 Jess Thomson. All rights reserved.