Everyone wanders here: professors escaping students, students escaping classes, fisherman with small hopes and young people in love. Today I watch a scruffy pair climb the little limestone bridge and embrace, sure that in one hundred and forty-three years of campus life, they are the first to find this tiny green miracle.

In 1986 Greg and I also found the bridge, and in one photo I’m lounging on grass, wearing a long yellow sweater and white leggings and white sunglasses. Now I’m in black shorts, black jacket, running shoes and a black lab, but this weepy tree looks the same. Growing up on Chicago’s north shore, willows swayed and rustled everywhere, but they’re a more unusual sight here in Kansas, and since I visited this tree in 1986 – still oblivious, wearing white flats on the muddy green – so I am drawn to it today.

But this morning I’m not full of rustling branches and love. It’s mid-May, and I am thinking about salad. For years I’ve read that in certain regions of China, the buds and leaves of spring willows are marinated and served as salad. This intrigues me – eating the willow, with chopsticks! – and today I pull the tree’s long leaves toward me and sniff, rice wine vinegar waiting at home.

Students walk by. Dude. Crazy lady smelling the tree.

It just smells like…tree. But tree is plant, and plant is salad. Surely there’s a reason…but I can’t find a recipe…and, glancing around…it seems a bit unwise to start yanking stems. Cleo and I step back and when we look again, it’s like a cartoon tree – I’m starving and it’s one big salad. It looks like it could feed a few villages. Still, I trudge back up and the willow escapes the bowl.

The latin name for willow is salix, which is where you get salycylic acid, which is how you get aspirin. So it has medicinal qualities…but the taste? Does it taste like pain reliever, or like young love in the ’80s? Is it a pain-relieving first course? The burning question of weeping willow salad has plagued me long enough. I’m not normally into global recipe hunting and the chopping of exotic plants, but I just love this tree. Maybe enough to eat it. Anyone had Weeping Willow Salad, home or away?

If I ever do decide to snack on my favorite tree, I’ll rely on Craig Claiborne & Virginia Lee’s The Chinese Cookbook for guidance. This 1972 classic has been my trusty companion through many a stir-fry, and it was snagged from my mother’s shelf. Sorry, mom. No Sichuan Green Beans for you! This cold dish is the closest the authors come to cooking wild plant life – and even if you don’t make it, it’s an awfully good read. “Rinse each leaf individually?”

Cold Chrysanthemum Leaves with Sesame Oil

1 lg or 2 small bunches chrysanthemum leaves*

1 piece dried brown bean curd

1/4 cup light soy sauce

1 tbsp dry sherry or shao hsing wine

2 tbsp sesame oil 1 tsp sugar

salt to taste *

available in Chinese markets or by mail order

1. Cut off and discard the tough ends of the chrysanthemum leaves. Normally the leaves have a great deal of sand, which must be washed away, so drop the whole leaves into cold water and wash well. Rinse each leaf individually and when thoroughly clean drain in a colander.

2. Bring enough water to a boil in a saucepan to cover the leaves. Add the leaves and turn off the heat. Stir with chopsticks for about 1 minute, then turn the heat on high and cook 2 minutes longer, stirring. Drain and run under cold water immediately. Squeeze between the hands to extract as much moisture as possible. Chop the greens fine and put into a mixing bowl.

3. Bring more water to a boil, drop the bean curd in, and let simmer about 10 minutes. Let stand until thoroughly cool. Slice the bean curd very thin, then stack the slices and cut into very fine dice. Add the bean curd to the chrysanthemum leaves. 4. Combine the remaining ingredients and pour over the chrysanthemum-bean curd mixture. Serve cold.

6-8 servings

Surely it’s no coincidence that we moved back here and they win again. Our pleasure to help out, Coach Self – any time!

In other news (there’s other news?) Lawrence landed on Prevention magazine’s list of the 100 most walkable cities in America. Woo-hoo, number 38! If you live near the historic center of this college town, it’s true – you can walk to school, banks, drugstores, restaurants, movies…and a lot of very good coffee.

I was going to write a whole serious-sounding piece on why it’s really important to have walkable cities, but last night’s basketball bonanza reminded me why living near a lively downtown full of sidewalks isn’t just important…

…it’s fun!

Oh yes indeed it’s fun to run right out the front door, walk two blocks and take your kid to a drunken all-night street party. It builds character.

Are we parents of the year, or what?

Rock Chalk Jayhawk — ’cause who knows when it will come again.

The 1988-2008 circle is complete. I can now resume my schedule of not really caring about sports – until next season.

Editor’s Note: Readers have been asking why my husband and daughter look green, and well, a lot of people looked green that night, and also hurled at policemen’s feet – but that’s not it. Their green faces are attributable to our beautiful old downtown street lamps, which cast a greenish white light over everything.

It made the party even more surreal, like an alien championship win!

They will play in San Antonio, but here in Lawrence, people are losing their minds. I know, I know, it’s just a stupid game – but when you live in the very center of the game, the damn Naismith birthplace of said stupid game – well, there is no beating them. So you might as well join them.

And that means Rock Chalk – please!

It’s a pretty even match, but everyone can use a little luck, right? Good luck.

The kind of luck only a bronze pig snout can bring.

This big beautiful guy is on the “Country Club Plaza” in Kansas City, Missour-ah, one of the first outdoor shopping-leisure-pleasure zones in the country (thank you!), dating from 1922. It’s home to incredible art, great shopping, and amazing Spanish-style architecture.

Yep, right in Kan-sas City. BBQ and Seville-replica clock towers make an oddly perfect match!

This boar sculpture – he’s one of the only early reproductions of some famous Florence sculptor’s work – Borricelli, Botticelli, Vermicelli, I don’t remember – but he is more than that. He is a lucky pig.

I know ths because everyone who walks by him on the Plaza has been rubbing his snout for luck. For decades. As you can imagine, and as you can see, above, this has not left a lot of bronze on the snout.

But he has, apparently, brought luck to a lot of people. That’s Josie’s hand up there, rubbing off bronze — please, well-sculpted lucky boar, let it be for the Jayhawks. I want a happy family in the off-season.

Porky PS: the post title is inspired not only by Chinese food – just writing “Lucky Bronze Pork” made me want to dial up some twice-cooked, and a few dumplings – but by the very funny and talented cartoon blog Lucky Pork, she of the amusing drawings and the delicious name. Thanks to Jean for the blog tip – and be sure to check it out!

Well Rock Chalk Jayhawk and all that, but the only game I control is in the kitchen, and that means whether our beloved Jayhawks win or lose win, the situation calls for serious snacks.

So I make Sugar Curried Almonds.

They have easy grab-ability and hit every major snack point: crunchy, salty, sweet, and plentiful. Nutritious almonds redeem the crystallized crust, and believe me, that’s good – because on the muncher’s addiction scale, these toasty little gems rate very, very high.

Time to get nuts! Almonds, curry powder, sugar, salt, egg white.

Toast the almonds on a baking sheet and cool slightly. Transfer to a bowl, and breathe in their sunburned goodness; now you know the meaning of almond joy.

Whisk the egg white to frothy with a little water, and pour over the cooled almonds.

Add sugar the way Chef Kader, my mentor, would – “like the fallen snow.”

A little curry and a little salt…

…and now we stir. And fold, and stir. And fold…

..and stir. Fold and stir until the mixture comes together and completely coats the almonds.

Spread the almonds on a lightly sprayed baking sheet, pressing to make an even layer.

Bake about one hour, occasionally pulling the pan and carefully turning the almonds.

You may leave the kitchen, but it won’t be for long. Few aromas are this cunning and spicy and curling. This is a smell that demands you stand by the oven and wait.

It can linger in your kitchen for days -

- but the snacks won’t last half that long.

Sugar Curried Almonds

1 pound (about 5 cups) whole almonds
1 egg white
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon salt

Preheat oven to 250 F.

Toast almonds on a baking sheet about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until fragrant. Cool to room temperature.

In a large bowl, whisk egg white with 1 teaspoon water until frothy.

Stir in the almonds and sprinkle with sugar, curry powder and salt. Mix well.

Lightly coat the baking sheet with vegetable cooking spray. Spread the almonds in a single layer on the sheet. Bake approximately 1 hour or until nuts are dry, stirring once or twice.

Store at room temperature in an airtight container, up to one month.

Nut note: This recipe is also the perfect cocktail nibble. Put in bowls around your party and watch them disappear.

recipe adapted from Real Simple

Josie made this most excellent “DAD” mug for Greg on his birthday a few years back, at one of those paint-your-own ceramics places. Now it has a nice crackly patina and coffee rings at the bottom.

It’s well-loved.

The news below it, of course, is basketball news – around here, is there other news? Our beloved local Kansas Jayhawks are on the road to the Final Four, and the only word I hear from the radio, the TV, my husband and daughter, is Bracketology.

I think even Cleo may be filling out a bracket.

But – there is a place, a place that is not ESPN, where other things have happened. Here is the kitchen, right before we moved in. The subway tile was finished on the baking center, but the raised bar had not yet been built.

We were told to find support brackets for the bar, which led to a frantic race on eBay.

The bar got built and we had some brackets sent here, quick. There is one, above.

But the bar was so thick and level and sturdy. Dan said he could stand on it. I said I could probably dance on it. He said he’d pay to see that. He also said we didn’t need any brackets.

Bracketology.

The brackets were sent to a special place we call the Island of Unused House Hardware.

They joined many special friends there, including two extra sets of oil-rubbed bronze handrails, the wrong size door stops, the wrong size drawer pulls, and the odd cabinet knob or two that didn’t make the cut.

Know who always makes the cut? The Kansas Jayhawks.

And here is Josie with our big fancy multi-million dollar coach, Bill Self.

Bill: Josie, got any advice for me? We’re headed to Omaha – number one seed, ya know.

Josie: Bill, never buy more hardware than you need.

In closing, I will say what all KU fans and alumni far and wide will automatically say when faced with a challenge – it will fly out of their mouth no matter how dorky it may sound –

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK – go KU!

(and I better hear it from some of you out there – you know who you are!)

And you know, I’ve grown sort of fond of this “casual industrial disarray” look we have going here – broken nails on bare concrete, a tiger trap of electrical cords, the masculine touch of power tools and sawdust.

But we only have a month or so (or less, fingers crossed) to go, and when we are not pondering an eternity of debt, we are thinking about rooms. Like the dining room.

I’m a chef and for me, the eating experience is key. At the same time I like my dining room to be unpretentious and cozy – it should be equally at home serving bouillabaisse or barbecue. My family loves to eat, but they are way, way past caring about chefs. They have a religion far more important, more hallowed than grand meals and much more worthy than dining room decor – Jayhawk basketball.

Our town, Lawrence, Kansas is home to the University of Kansas. It’s a fine old academic institution, but you must live here to realize that this massive school exists primarily to see the famous Kansas Jayhawks play basketball at Allen Fieldhouse – a temple of hoopsterism if there ever was one.

Josie and Greg worship – nay, live, breathe, eat – KU basketball. I went to KU myself; I met Greg there, I experienced The Great NCAA Championship of 1988 win firsthand, and I loved this town and its whack-job traditions enough to make it my home.

So in honor of the first regular-season home game Friday night, I’m setting aside my vision of transferware china and big oak tables – and ordering a round for everyone. I have found divine inspiration for the dining room, and it is at Johnny’s Tavern.

Watching “the game” at Johnny’s is serious business in Lawrence.

Built in 1910, it was a hotel, a grocery, a pool hall and a Prohibition-era gin joint before 1953, when it became the beer-soaked, burger-heaven, Jayhawk haunt we know today. Last March we sat at the same table, in the same seats, wearing the same clothes for each game of the NCAA tournament – until we watched one game at home – and lost.

I don’t think we’ll be making that mistake this year. And don’t you think this is just the right look for my cozy English room?

Romantic lighting…intimate booths…delightfully mismatched silverware – um, plasticware…

Of course, we’d have to import a few micro-mini-skirted college girls to bring Greg beer and onion rings at our old oak table. No chef needed!

And just think – no more arguments about game-viewing during meals. With something like 3 dozen screens, it’s a done deal.

Cherished family photos and wainscoting…

…well-marked path to the powder room…

…elegant wood paneling and tastefully framed artifacts!

Cigarette burns, beer stains and potato skins. What more could a girl want? Well… any Jayhawk who’s going to the NBA to make a bazillion dollars could help finance the dining room.

That would be nice.