![\"\"](\"https:\/\/feedingandrew.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Pixie-Tangerine-cake.jpg\" "\\"Pixie")
<\/a>\n\tOjai Pixie Tangerine Olive Oil Cake with Walnuts and Lavender<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Back in 1990 I was sitting in my apartment with a close friend listening to her plaintive lament about life in Los Angeles.\u00a0 She decried the fast pace, the traffic, and the unrealistic expectations that life in tinsel town put on the average person.\u00a0 What she wanted, she bemoaned, was an authentic and real life.\u00a0 She painted a picture of how wonderful her life would be if only she could move to a little small town somewhere where magnolias bloom and church bells ring.\u00a0 She told me that she wanted a home with a white picket fence and a windowsill that held homemade pies as they cooled.\u00a0\u00a0 As I silently listened to her weave a visionary tapestry of some future life she longed for, I sat at my chopping board cutting herbs for our dinner that I had clipped from my potted garden.\u00a0 I wiped my hands on my apron, grabbed her arm and led her into my dining room to show her the two pies (well, French tarts anyway) that I had sitting on a makeshift cooling rack that I had rigged on my window sill.<\/p>\n
We sat down again and I told her, \u201cLaura, if you want to have pies cooling in your windowsill, then bake pies.\u00a0 If you want a little garden for fresh produce, then plant seeds.\u00a0 If you want to be a stay-at-home mom, then learn to be a stay-at-home person.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need a white picket fence to live a soulful life.\u00a0 You need to be soulful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Happiness is an elusive emotion for many people and I don\u2019t claim to have all the answers, but I think I stumbled onto a key component of it early on as I laid out my first pies on a rickety makeshift windowsill so many years ago.<\/p>\n
I guess you might call it my \u201cZen and the Art of the White Picket Fence\u201d philosophy.<\/p>\n
My friend eventually left Los Angeles for greener pastures and whiter fences, but with the exception of a few detours along the way I have stayed the course in Los Angeles.\u00a0 My home is bigger now and my garden yields a bit more produce these days, but I still measure distance by time spent in the car (as in, Q: How far to the beach from your house?\u00a0 A: Depends on what day and what time you leave, but anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes).\u00a0\u00a0 I also continue to confront daily all the other evils of life in the big city: traffic, pollution, crime, play dates\u2026.\u00a0 But the truth is that I\u2019m happy.<\/p>\n
Andrew is happy too.\u00a0 Well, he\u2019s happy until he gets a bit of money in his pocket.\u00a0 Money starts to stir in him a grand desire for acquisition.\u00a0 It gets even worse if he sets his heart on something he can\u2019t afford.\u00a0\u00a0 The disparity between desire and acquiring eats away at his happiness like spray paint on Styrofoam; I can actually watch him melt into a lumpy pool of envy and greed right before my eyes.\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing I can say to pull him out of these momentary lapses into consumer despair.\u00a0 I can only offer advice on how waiting can be a virtue.\u00a0 Yeah, yeah, I know.\u00a0 He\u2019s 14. But I\u2019m 48 and I\u2019m not immune.<\/p>\n
I have to admit that on any given day I do yearn for a more pastoral setting for my life.\u00a0 I often imagine how it would be to walk out of my tastefully restored turn-of- the-century farm house and scatter seeds for my free-range chickens in exchange for fresh eggs.\u00a0 I can picture perfectly the exuberance I would feel making cheese from the goats grazing upon the green hill just beyond my organic fruit orchard.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, I would drive into town in my Range Rover to pick up some wine from the local vineyard.<\/p>\n
We all have our dreams and fantasies.<\/p>\n
The trick is to not allow our dreams to overshadow the beauty and potential of our day-to-day lives.\u00a0 It\u2019s even trickier teaching our children how to do the same.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not impossible.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t afford a beach house, but I can spend the weekend at the beach with Andrew and friends.\u00a0 I can\u2019t afford a cabin, but we can backpack 10 miles into the Sierras and enjoy a timeshare that comes without maintenance fees.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have an orchard, but I can go to a farmers\u2019 market and experience produce that was plucked the day before.<\/p>\n
I know I won\u2019t be able to explain it to my son in words, but I hope the Zen of the white picket fence sinks in.\u00a0 I hope he looks back on his life and remembers the nights I had him crack 10 pounds of olives for curing or how we used a brick to weigh down the curds as we pressed them into a cheese.\u00a0 Perhaps he\u2019ll be nostalgic for shucking hundreds of fresh favas or deboning a myriad of sardines.\u00a0 I know he won\u2019t forget turning wine into vinegar and holding his first oak barrel or brilliantly stopping the fire I caused when heating up vodka for homemade vanilla extract!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These are not exciting activities and they can\u2019t compete with the Xbox for an adrenalin rush, but I have to believe that soulfulness comes from soulful experiences and happiness comes from being at peace with where and who you are right here and right now.\u00a0 And, perhaps a little bit of faith that tomorrow will be as good or better than today.<\/p>\n
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New Oak Ranch Olive Oil Cake with Walnuts and Ojai Pixie Tangerines<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n