Rancho Gordo beans

I never knew I could feel so passionately about beans.

Rancho Gordo beans are the best I have ever eaten. Yes, I adore the story of how Steve Sando started saving heirloom varieties of beans from New Mexico and Central America, growing them before they died out entirely. And I feel grateful for the tried and true recipes featured on their website, which have always worked for me. (Our friend Nina created a mole sauce from a Rancho Gordo recipe, and we all licked our lips as we ate the chicken she had barbequed with it.) And in the end, all those beans are so pretty.

But really, what matters to me most? All that work and passion, the dedication and experimentation has produced some of the best beans I have ever tasted. Canned beans will never be the same, like a shadow self imagined instead of a real, imperfect person standing before us. Try some, and you'll see.

Last month, I ordered the European sampler for our house. The Borlotti and Scarlet Runner beans are so pretty in the jars I arranged on the shelves that I'm tempted just to save them.

But when Rancho Gordo beans taste this good, I can guarantee you those jars will be empty soon.

bacon from A & J Meats

For the past ten months, we have been on the search for the perfect bacon. We've tried organic bacon, applewood smoked bacon, bacon from Whole Foods, bacon from the Market, imported bacon, and the cheapest bacon available at the grocery store down the street. They have all pleased us — it is bacon — but not one has been the platonic ideal of bacon that our mouths have been imagining.

Why is it that we sometimes have to go so far from home before we realize what we have?

A & J Meats sits six blocks from our home. When I walk into the wood-panelled room with glass display cases, I feel like I have walked into a butcher’s shop from the 1950s. The tops of the cases are lined with bottles of locally made tartar sauce, barbeque spices in tins, and an old-fashioned ticket dispenser for the customers who throng into the place. Milling about the store are neighborhood moms and dads, their toddlers running toward the hot dogs. If it is Saturday morning, then the woman in her eighties comes in for a single lamb chop; she is given preferential treatment, because she has been a customer at the shop longer than some of the butchers have been working there. Behind the counters walk friendly men and women in crisp white aprons, ready with smiles and advice. I ask my favorite butchers — one of whom is a woman — what is good that day. This curiosity and trust led me to cook my first flank steak, pork tenderloin, and duck breast. Every time, the butchers walked me through the process of searing or roasting, both with their handouts copied on colored paper and their murmured words of encouragement. Even if the meat shrink-wrapped in supermarkets is slightly cheaper, the personal service I receive at A&J’s is worth the extra cost.

And the bacon? Oh, the bacon. It is dense with meaty flavor — how do I name the flavor of bacon? smoky? earthiness? a certain chew? In the days when I was a teacher, I probably would have brought bacon in for my students and asked them to chew some and describe it. But me? I'm stymied. There's some elusive depth that is beyond my comprehension. Maybe that's why I go back to it. Exploring the infinite wisdom of bacon.

Have you ever noticed how much fat is in commercial bacon? Some brands, it seems that each slice is swathed with white fat, with only a thin thread of pink meat to make it seem that you are eating bacon. But A and J's? Well, look at it. Of all the bacons I have eaten lately, this one is the most bacony.

The other day, when I stopped by for another half pound, I asked a silly question of one of the butchers. "Where do you find this stuff?"

He looked up at me, puzzled, and then said, "We make it ourselves." Take some pork belly, brine it in sugar and spices, let it sit, and then slice it thick.

Oh that's right. Every butcher used to do this — make their own meat.

If you live in Seattle, no matter what part, it's worth a trip to A and J's. Aside from the apricot pork sausage and the house-cured brisket and the top sirloin so juicy it just glistens? You really just need to buy some bacon.

In fact, with all this writing, I just figured out what we're having for breakfast tomorrow.

Saigon cinnamon from World Spice

Cinnamon harvested in Vietnam is actually called cassia. ("True" cinnamon is actually much milder than what we have grown accustomed to, in this country.) In small villages in Vietnam, people grind the older bark that is lower to the ground, rich in pungent oils and just more so than the branches above it. This ground cassia is shipped to Seattle, and sold to me at World Spice.

It sits now in our kitchen, a pinch ready to mingle amidst apples to make a truly extraordinary pie. If we need cinnamon, for Moroccan dishes, we use only this "Saigon cinnamon" from World Spice, now. The cinnamon I lived with for three decades before this feels flat and dulled on my tongue.

We try to buy it in tiny amounts, however — Saigon cinnamon is so strong that only 1/8 of a teaspoon spices an entire dish — so that we can have that experience, again and again, of returning to the spice store, together, to share new tastes.

Nielsen-Massey bourbon vanilla

I've become overly partial to this bottle of vanilla extract: Nielsen-Massey's Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla. Smooth and sweet, with little hints of something deeper, this vanilla enlivens every baked good I make. And with Christmas season — and my gluten-free sugar cut-out cookies — approaching, I made sure I am stocked up right now.

This company, which is one hundred years old this year and based in Illinois, works hard at gathering the best vanilla from around the world: Madagascar, Indonesia, Tahiti, and Mexico. They also have a vanilla bean paste that Joycelyn at the ever-beautiful Kuidaore swears by for her exquisite creations. That's enough for me.

Even better, this summer Nielsen Massey was the first major ingredient supplier in the United States to be certified gluten-free. Any company that has Cynthia Kupper's stamp of approval is all right with me.

Better yet, the taste. Oh my — I emit a low moan.

So, if you want to feel safe that you are using gluten-free vanilla products, and fold the best-tasting vanilla extract into your baked goods for Thanksgiving, go pick up a bottle of this. You won't regret it.

pomegranate molasses

Okay, maybe the entire foodie community has already discovered pomegranate molasses, long ago. But it just started creeping into my consciousness. Molly mentioned that she had carried a jar back from Manhattan on one of her last jaunts. Hm, if it’s that special, why am I not eating it? I noticed it in scrumptious-looking recipes in Cooking Light. I usually quite like their recipes. What did they know that I don’t know? And finally, after my foot had been broken, my friend Dorothy brought me a little jar of the elixir. She had been so obsessed with the idea of cooking with it that she had bought a jar online, probably for ridiculous prices. How kind of her to share with me. She’s like that, Dorothy.

So I dipped my little finger into the dark liquid, and sipped from its tip. A wave of that tangy, assertive sweetness from pomegranate seeds, followed by the dark allure of molasses. Bright and alive, no blandness here. And it lingered, long after I had sucked the last dregs from my finger. I knew right then that I had to cook with it.

Vignalta sea salt

A note about sea salt. I'm a raving loonie when it comes to this stuff. It's only in the last year that I even ventured into the expensive bottles of salt area of the store. I'll never go back to regular salt again. Twice the flavor with half the sodium. It makes all foods pop out. My latest find is the one pictured here: Vignalta from Venice. Buy it. You won't believe how good it is.