A Literary Feast

La Dolce Vita, Deep Fried

Posted on March 18th, 2013

I hate planes and suitcases, so I’ve never been much of an international traveler. But I did see the better part of Italy and Greece on a whirlwind Mediterranean tour back in the 1990s. When I tell people this, they usually share tales of their own travels: their honeymoon in Rome, sightseeing in Florence, a memorable walking tour of Pompeii…

Of course they also talk about food: the arrabiata from a back alley trattoria, the little cafe with the flaky sfogliatelle, the beauty of a classic margherita pizza.

I smile politely and nod, but I wouldn’t really know. Sadly, I went on the french fry tour of Italy.

The trip was organized through my high school and run by one of those educational touring companies that offers all-inclusive trips abroad. Everything – from the plane tickets to the meals – was included in a single fee, paid for with money I saved from my summer waitressing job. Our tour group was made up of a ragtag group of 15 tenth graders, three teacher chaperones, and an Education First (EF) tour guide.

Education First was founded on the principle that the best way to experience a distant land is through the window of a high-speed bus — with the strict goal of seeing (and photographing) 10 to 15 monuments each day.

From the very minute we boarded the plane, a cloud of bad luck seemed to follow us. Inclement weather forced our plane to circle the Heathrow Airport strip for hours. EF’s completely inflexible schedule meant that, after 36 hours in transit, we would have to immediately begin a jet-lagged walking tour of Rome. To make matters worse, two of our teacher chaperones discovered their love for each other on the flight across the Atlantic, transforming the rest of our group into the world’s largest third wheel. It was up to the remaining chaperone, a sweet but inexperienced young teacher with a reputation for breaking down in tears, to manage a group of teenagers in a foreign country with no drinking age. The situation was less than ideal.

And I haven’t even gotten to the food.

Our first meal was in the hotel in Rome which, like the rest of the places we stayed, was chosen primarily for its low cost and bulk room availability. And it wasn’t cheap in a cool, European way – more like a Days Inn with weird bathroom fixtures.

The restaurant seemed normal enough when we checked in, but by the evening it had magically transformed into the cafeteria from Oliver Twist. The tables were pushed together and covered with plates of identical gooey food (something like chewy Chef Boyardee). My roommate fared a bit better; indicating that she was vegetarian on her application had resulted in receiving a non-canned vegetable. We hated her for it.

Vatican City wasn’t much better. Our tight schedule didn’t allow for enough time to venture out for a meal at one of the open-air cafes, so my friends and I ate in the basement cafeteria of the Vatican Museum. The curly fries were not particularly memorable.

Mid-way through the trip our chaperones promised us a special night out, which turned out to be dinner at Rome’s very own Planet Hollywood. A plate of soggy french fries later, we were rushing back to the hotel.

The bad luck continued. One of the kids managed to lose his passport while we were on a ferry in international waters, necessitating an unscheduled trip to the American Consulate. A student in the tour group traveling with us suffered a mental breakdown and had to return home on an emergency flight. In a rare moment of spontaneity, a dozen or so kids decided to take a swim on a rocky Mediterranean beach. Moments later, the first one came running back out and collapsed on the beach. I turned to see four large sea urchin spines emerging from his heel. Soon the beach was full of high schoolers receiving impromptu urchin-ectomies. It was like a real-life Bad Luck Brian joke. Cute girls ask you to go swimming on a beach in Athens. Sea urchins.

The stress and sleep deprivation wore on all of us. My roommate eventually cracked under the pressure to photograph every classical treasure in the ancient world. On the sunny streets of Florence, after yet another night of 4 hours sleep followed by the 5 AM hustle and bustle to board the tour bus, she gleefully flung open her camera and exposed two days of photographs. I put away my camera and the rest of our day in Florence was, thankfully, peaceful and picture-free.

Our trip was coming to an end and I had no memories of pasta, pizza, marinara sauce, risotto, or antipasti. But it wasn’t all bad – I did enjoy one excellent Americano (which remains my favorite espresso drink) from the hotel in Rome. There were also the juicy white peaches, purchased by the bag from street vendors, and the many, many cups of icy gelato on the Isle of Capri.

I braced myself for a plane crash on the way home, nervously watching the wing slice through the clouds in the air. We landed safely at JFK and I breathed a sigh relief. We boarded the tour bus – an American one this time – for the final leg of the journey back to our upstate high school. I had smuggled three remaining white peaches from Italy in my carry-on. As I reached into the bag, a funny sputtering sound emanated from the rear of the bus. We pulled off to the side of the highway and the driver got out. He returned a few minutes later and announced that we had broken down and would have to remain parked on the shoulder until a replacement bus came, which should only be a few hours. Someone called the parent contact to inform her we would be late. I believe she laughed.

I bit into my peach, and it tasted like Italy.

Categories: Uncategorized

Hawaii Five-D’Oh

Posted on March 18th, 2013

I’m not the best food planner. This was evident when I decided that a block of cheddar cheese was a wise grocery purchase to keep in my tent during a week of tropical camping. I rumbled into the park on my moped, the sun dipping low out of sight as the island wind rose to a ferocious peak and the sky opened up, dropping a thick blanket of warm rain over the beach. Ripping open my tent flap I threw my body under the canvas just in time to avoid sleeping in a stinking nest of damp, dirty clothing. Pleased with the success of finally having beaten the storm home, a feat I had not yet accomplished as it rained every evening and I was always out roaming, I stripped off my dusty jeans and army crawled over to my food pile, stomach rumbling.

The ‘king of the mountain’ rush of having outrun mother nature deflated as I picked up the gelatinous, oily blob that had been my nine dollar block of cheese. I quietly accepted that I had made poor choices with the dairy plan and moved on to the rest of my rations. The tomatoes were sweaty and wrinkled, partially liquefied in their sagging skins. The avocados weren’t much better–it felt as if they had been churned into guacamole and then squeezed back into their hulls. The apples seemed okay, but after I got through the first layer a delicate infusion of rot began to engage my tastebuds and I realized that the core was hollow and full of mold. The peanut butter had separated to a point where there could be no reconciliation, no peaceful re-merging between the oils and the meats. I went to bed, dry but ravenous, having realized that a hundred degree tent and a lack of cooler didn’t lend itself well to food storage. I would just have to find my sustenance as I went.

I awoke the next morning an hour and a half before the sun. I still hadn’t adjusted to the five hour time difference between my snowy New England home and this sunny Hawaiian escape, and between that and the rain-imposed captivity during the late and early hours, I was on an elderly person’s sleep schedule. I read in my tent by the light of a flashlight pinched between my teeth as the the world outside gusted and screamed, flapping the fabric of my sanctum and giving my book an epic aura that the author would have delighted in. As soon as the first light bloomed over the ocean horizon I stuffed my notebook and towel into my bag, unchained my steed, and quietly rolled past the only other tent in the sprawling, palm strewn fields, navigating by the foggy glow of the moped’s headlamp. I kicked the starter, turned onto the empty road, and roared up the coast as the world lightened around me.

After a few miles I came to a collection of pop-up booths, bustling with the activity of the local farmers who hauled their goods to the main strip to peddle them to the buses full of delighted Asian tourists that swamped the island. I hopped off of my bike and began perusing the array of fruits, nuts, plants, and oily, wax-paper-wrapped baked goods. I plucked a handful of thumb-sized bananas and a soft, fragrant papaya from one table, handed over a couple of crumpled bills and moved on to the next vendor. A minuscule Polynesian woman with a tiny, wrinkled face like a fist walked up to me, her visage splitting into a wide smile and said ‘bread banana?’, holding out a soft block of banana bread. ‘Absolutely’, I replied.

Ten minutes later I was sitting on a breezy, deserted beach, my toes squeezing the sand as I arranged my treasures around me, along with a couple of long green coconuts I had picked on the roadside. I pulled the papaya open with my hands like I was the aged shaman monkey in the lion king and plunged my face directly into the pink flesh, seeds and juice raining down around me. I smashed one of the coconuts open on a piece of the dark, jagged lava rock that poked above the surface of the sea and drank the water from the cracked shell. I ate the banana bread, which was moist and spicy and perfect, as I waded in the surf, searching for sea glass.

This was much better than the Triscuits and cheddar at camp plan. I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that food can make a trip. That eating what is related to the place you are in can make you feel so much more present and engaged in your surroundings. Leaving the barren wintry landscape and coming to a place where everything was in full-season bloom was exactly what I needed to survive the cold stretch of icy months back home. I was grateful to the roasting inferno that my tent became in the mid-day heat for necessitating this change of plans.

During my last night on the island I left the jungle and headed to the bustling tourist trap of Waikiki to be close to the airport for my early flight. I bought a beer and climbed high into a tree, perching hidden above the hordes of people that were moving back and forth between the Sunglass Huts and bland, generic restaurants. I nestled my bag into the branches, leaned against the trunk and took a swig of the Longboard ale, feeling utterly content. I snaked my hand into the side pouch of my backpack and plucked the last little banana from the mesh. I turned down the peel and popped it whole into my mouth, savoring its tang and slightly chalky texture. Tomorrow I would land back in the blistering New England cold, but for now, high above the crowds, chewing a piece of fresh tropical fruit, I felt like I would be warm forever.

 

Categories: Uncategorized

A Trip For The Almost But Not Even Remotely Famously Food Rich

Posted on March 18th, 2013

Jan 8th: Aspiring foodie adventurist/traveling hipster doofus Hawksbill “White Raisin In The Sun” Free Turtle  wikiconjures a leeward image of the local USVI food culture.

 

Jan 9th  am:  Lunch pail list completed:

 

1.Try conch, fungee, callaloo, and mauby.

 

2. Eat as much fresh fish as possible

 

3. Drink each of the following local beverages: pumpkin punch, sorrel, soursop punch, banana punch, peanut punch, bush tea and lemon tea among others.

 

4. If all else fails, subsist on coffee, painkillers, and Johnnycakes.

 

Jan 9th pm: Reads friend’s email informing him “Caribbean actually imports most of its seafood!” Notes #2 on list will take some extra panache. Uses the word panache for the first time in his notes. Notes this.

 

Jan 10th: Mission and homemade raspberry strudel in hand, off Hawksbill sails (flies, JetBlue) to the Danish West Indies. Arrives in St. Thomas’ windswept realm of drunken boobs and sunken booty to light rain showers. First peril or pearl, the infamous Cruzan cry “ Free Rum Shots!” Oh brother, did she say free?!

 

Jan 11th:  Breakfast of coffee, Advil, and breath-chortling ocean views. Plans to color himself Bourdain. Result? Fails to find most anything on list. Revert to #4. Order Painkillers and conch fritters (what little conch was present, they may as well have been Johnnycakes) at beach bar. Wallows in beach chair half in the water, half out, commandeering Vitamin D like an undernourished solar panel.

 

Later cannot find the “locals” restaurant of which the sun-fried bartender spoke. Settles for obvious tourist trap. Orders the caesar salad, fish option is grouper imported from Brazil, goes with the chicken and another painkiller, can be heard exclaiming, “Great Edward Teach’s Cognomen this is good!” (not the salad)

 

Jan 12th: Repeat Jan 11th minus conch fritters. Exchanges one perfect beach for the next, adds a few Painkillers. Notes his adventurous vigor has gone the way of a captain-less ship. Wayward and intoxicated stumbles upon pineapple, soursop, and nutmeg at a small family stand on the outskirts of Tutu. Discovers pineapple soursop is local. Rejoices. Buys 3 whole nutmegs to grind into celebratory Painkillers.

 

Jan 13th: Notes he must take a day off from Painkillers. Travels via aptly named “Tuglife” car ferry out of Red Hook to St.John. Gets told his camera needs to be confiscated due to homeland security regulations at port. Politely informs the “security” officer that there is not a snowball’s chance in the fiery hell that he will relinquish his camera. SO says he is “playing a joke’ and that he “had him going.” Hawksbill notes that he is not amused and is glad he refused to “play” along with officers “prank.”

 

Jan 13th pm:  Directly after lunch of local beer and leftover chicken salad it begins to rain. Takes the early ferry back to St. Thomas. Revels in the pictographic beauty of the islands and laments in his failure to find much in the way local food.  Quickly stops lamenting in favor of oh so appropriately named Painkillers.

 

Jan 14th:  Flies back to the great US of A having completed very few of his original tasks. Notes that he is feeling superior and pain free for not having done so.

 

Jan 15th:  Hawksbill retires young and on top of his game from his brief career as a travel writer.

Categories: Uncategorized

Four Narrow Escapes

Posted on March 18th, 2013

A bottle of wine (so I’m told) can be an escape from the bite of late winter, from the grind of a nine-to-five job, from any of life’s little woes. The lush sun itself can burst forth when the cork pops out of the bottle.

 

I am not here to tell you about those wines.

 

A weekday evening found me in the discount wine section of a local grocery store with twelve dollars to spend on morbid curiosity. My simple mission: find and purchase several bottles of wine so unforgivably foul that the sheer thrill of tasting each would outweigh any contingent suffering. At $3.99 apiece I walked away with specimens from Chile, Italy, Spain, and what I can only assume is a putrid and cat-infested back alley in Madera County, California.

 

(The following is a true account of what happened later that night. Brands and names of vineyards have been withheld to protect the innocent, if there are any.)

 

First, a Merlot from Chile’s Valle Central, 2012; the bottle sports a promising vineyard scene on its deceptively attractive label. Smelling this wine numbs the nostrils slightly, like a misplaced smear of mentholated lip balm. Its breath is dry, unripe, and convincingly alcoholic, with undertones of burning pasture and pillagers on horseback. These odors are cut short by an overpowering physical sensation akin to having a gust of winter air blow unexpectedly into one’s sinuses. In the mouth the wine is light at first, unobtrusive, almost as though it isn’t there at all. A second or two later the burning starts. The actual flavor can best be described as a small jar of spices kept in the back of the pantry since 1980 and then set on fire. Notes of decaying cork and damp cardboard balance the fumes, along with a dead, earthy flavor like a bag of sterilized potting soil and a salty attack that causes the salivary glands to curl up defensively. The finish is almost gummy, as though the roof of the mouth is clutching at the stuff to prevent it from reaching the stomach. Afterwards comes a painfully arid sensation, treatable only with another reluctant sip. A wine that drinks itself and drags you along for the ride. Not recommend for pairing with anything.

 

Second, a Tempranillo from the Cariñena region of Spain, 2011; a flying balloon pig decorates the label, signifying Spanish cuisine and the impossibility of getting to the bottom of the bottle. This liquid smells less like wine in the traditional sense, and more like what you’d expect overripe grapes to smell like if they were left outdoors in a metal bucket for several weeks. One can almost smell the bucket itself, as though acid had leached away copious mouthfuls of tin. In lieu of flavor it tingles upon first hitting the mouth, treating the sides of the tongue to a jarring pulse of electricity. The experience is reminiscent of stuffing one’s cheeks with nine-volt batteries. When sensation returns, the flavor is succulently purple and not unlike an unobjectionable fruit juice into which someone has stirred a generous teaspoon of baking soda. This impression is mercifully brief. The wine hardly leaves any aftertaste at all except for a vague, unpleasant stabbing sensation along the roof of the mouth, persisting for a long time as a sad memory coating the teeth. I am left feeling that it’s somehow all my fault.

 

Third, a Sangiovese from Puglia, 2011. Considering that this variety takes its name from the blood of a god, I am relieved to find that it smells rather like wine. Everything about the bottle signifies high class, from its gently slanting typeface to its gilded sunburst logo. Sadly this generous salesmanship doesn’t translate from the bottle to the mouth. The wine tingles noticeably upon first touching the lips, as though assaulting them with arrogant and microscopic bubbles. Curiously, this effervescence is only palpable outside the mouth. Around the tongue it plays more subtly, whispering hints of grandmother’s closet, floral and slightly stale. This subtlety is fleeting, replaced in turn by a loud burst of artificial cream and ambiguous fruitiness like an ill-conceived compote topped with Cool Whip. All the sweetness of corn syrup mingles with the irresistible suggestion of red dye and something that used to be milk, like a liquid reimagining of the short-lived strawberry Cream Saver. Throughout all this drama, a dry sucking sensation pries at the roof of the mouth as though trying to mark it permanently with new ridges. A meaty aftertaste inexplicably follows.

 

I have deliberately saved California’s “white table wine” for last. The grapes from which this was violently wrested are described only as “organic.” Leaning in to sniff the open bottle—morbid curiosity again—I am met halfway by a smell that at first reminds me of a green apple Jolly Rancher, until it takes on a certain savory depth and forces me to revise my opinion to something like a green apple Jolly Rancher dissolved in chicken stock. In the glass the wine has a chlorinated odor which soon gives way to a vague headache somewhere behind the eyeballs. I’m not sure I want to. When it hits the tip of the tongue it somehow incites small spasms in both cheeks. I swallow nervously and quickly. The memory it leaves me with is not of flavor but of pure terrifying sensation: a burning in the vulnerable region of the soft palate, as though I had imbibed an untested and impure medicine under duress. There is also some suggestion of extremely unripe plums, hard buds gnawed directly from the tree after a heavy application of pesticides. In spite of all its insipid acridity, the wine still has an unpleasant syrupy texture as it oozes from one end of the mouth to the other and back again, creeping like a half-cognizant slime or the nectar of some evil fruit from the furthest recesses of history. There is a slim possibility that it could be used to bring out the shine in old wooden furniture. Uniquely, the aftertaste seems to emanate not from the wine itself, but rather from the depths of my own gorge as I feel stomach acid rising to mingle with the viscous aftermath of the regrettable substance. A full five minutes after the final taste, the roof of the mouth suddenly feels as though it has been washed in spoiled, bacteria-ridden chicken consommé. Not recommended for casual consumption.

Categories: Uncategorized

The Night Market

Posted on March 18th, 2013

With dusk comes the feeling that this place is magic. A silent hum builds in the concrete walkways and swaths of lawn, vibrating up the legs of unsuspecting tourists. A man shows up with a folding table, then another with a large wheeled cooler; it’s beginning. Spotting the park intermittently at first, then in regular city blocks (which the narrow and winding streets of Old Stone Town are not), food vendors set up for the Night Market. People of every shade gather at the edges, gravitating towards the square as the sun sinks lower over the ocean, the small dhows anchored in the bay made sharply dark against the shimmering heat of the Indian Ocean. The light pulls back from the heavy stone walls of the Old Fort and the many balconies of the former Sultan’s palace, retiring the island’s long and fraught history for the spill of Taarab music and clatter of dishes from restaurants and bars lining the coastal gardens. Vendors shake out their blue and white striped tablecloths, light their charcoal fires, and don white jackets and tall white hats like so many French chefs. Swirls of Kiswahili, Arabic, Hindi, French, and English waft through the smoky glow of the propane torches. Families stake out their favorite benches, tourists wander with undisguised delight, and true to local habit, everything is “pole-pole” – slow, easy. Everything is romance and mystery.

 

Half of the tables are piled high with whatever came off the dhows that morning. Kabobs of every imaginable sort are stacked neatly along the front, huge prawns and chunks of various types of fish skewered and organized in colorful stripes, rubbed with each vendor’s special spice mixtures in a fragrant wall of fiery pepper, bronze cumin, and turmeric so yellow it could be ground gold. Behind them are piles of filleted fish, crabs and lobsters stacked neatly on top of each other, small whole squids, and heaps of octopus tentacles that curl back on themselves in saucer sized spirals, suction cups out like the crimping on a pie. To the side are heaps of breadfruit, a tumble of samosas, and a neat pyramid of twist-shaped rolls. The vendors compete with charm, not price, calling out to passersby with phrases that pull from the many languages of the island; “Hujambo, Mama! Karibu, karibu. It’s very good.” They load plates following a pointed finger, heat everything on one of the myriad charcoal grills that cluster in the center of the table blocks, and deliver the steaming pile in exchange for a five thousand shilling note and a round of “asanti sanas”.

 

The other half of the tables are draped in large banners announcing, “Zanzibar Pizza, sweet banana and chocolate, Welcome to Enjoy, PIZZA,” in several fonts and colors. These tables are flanked by charcoal fires in steel drums on which sit large, smooth, slightly concave circles of metal. Here, tireless chefs roll out thin circles of dough, paint on Nutella out of gallon plastic jars, layer on thin slices of banana, top with another circle of dough, and slip the sweet pizza onto the improvised griddle to fry a deep golden brown. The lines are long; no meal is complete without a Zanzibar Pizza – be it appetizer, dessert, or both.

 

Around the edges of the Night Market you can find drink vendors selling bottled water and soda, but most people opt for freshly squeezed sugar cane juice. Loaded with canes several feet in length, these bright blue carts are operated only by the most athletic vendors. They peel the stalks with small machetes and feed them through tin can rollers operated by a large hand crank, folding and re-pressing as the sugar cane breaks down. Juice runs down the machinery into a tub that begins the night holding a large block of ice which shrinks down to fist sized chunks over the course of hours, small streams of cane juice digging rivulets across its surface as the liquid is chilled. Lime halves and chunks of fresh ginger, tucked into the fibrous stalk folds, brighten and balance the sweetness of the juice. A handled, glass mug – incongruous away from dark bars and cold beer – sits under the tub drain. The drinker is delivered a glass, opaque and pale green, topped with a thin layer of agitated foam, and saved from elegance only by the ever-present plastic straw. Since mugs are drunk from standing or sitting nearby, then returned to be rinsed and reused countless times in a night, putting lips to glass is frowned upon.

 

In a way this juxtaposition of glass and plastic, chef hats and paper plates, the stones of the Old Fort and the luxury yachts in the bay, white and black and brown and tan and the dancing blue of the ocean before it is rusted red and gold by the sunset: this contrast defines Zanzibar. Among its old and its new; its many religions, cultures, and peoples; its slave and spice trade turned tourism; its buying and selling, eating and drinking, talking and singing, living and loving; Zanzibar just is.

 

The Night Market will be starting in a few hours, halfway across the world. If you’re there, get a Zanzibar Pizza for me, will you? Welcome to enjoy.

Categories: Uncategorized

The Long Hill

Posted on March 18th, 2013

It is March and here, miles inland, gulls are circling around the barn-buckled roof of my house. I imagine my recently acquired mid-century modern swan lamp feeling some sympathetic tug towards the window, to be out. To be away. The light is slowly dialing itself down between the houses. Everything going pale gold, the clouds sporting some darker breath at the horizon. Weather in the offing. Spring has yet to fully arrive, necessitating this heavy wool cardigan, the hiking socks I have on my feet, propped on an empty wine crate beneath the desk. But—we feel it running now, in the vein. The sap’s high. Leaving a store downtown on an errand, I feel something like breath on my cheek, and turn, startled to the empty air. It’s the sun.

 

With the sap’s rise comes the old urge to be away, to, as John Muir once said, throw “a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence.” I see the ice breaking up on the river in the morning, the stray panes of it moving down in the ink-black current. I feel something in me clattering free too, tugging in its urge to go forward, to empty somewhere. When I was growing up, and I’d misbehaved, my dad would send me up to my room to copy poems out of a Robert Frost anthology. Again and again until my hand cramped shut. I’d start out hating the words, and then, at the end, I’d hear the echoes in the back parts of my brain. My left-handed smudges creeping along the paper, while the stanzas stained themselves into my hidden places. In the early days of this uncertain month, one in particular comes back to me, daily, when I pass over this stretch of water–‘oh, I have been often too anxious for rivers/to leave it to them to get out of their valleys’.

 

I’ll say that I inherited my unfixed quality from my grandfather, but, my grandmother has it too. Hell, maybe that entire side of the family is infected with this dark blood stirring to always be somewhere else. The twin currents of two seafaring people, Portugal and Great Britain, funneling down between our DNA in some ceaseless imperative to stay in motion. I wrote in an old journal that everything is the beginning of something else. I do not think that we ever arrive, there is motion hidden everywhere, like sand, like oxygen. I sit with the loneliness, I walk away from trouble and its invitations, I do not drink. I wait for the motion to reveal itself, and then I throw myself down that long hill, with everything that I have.

 

That long hill has appeared in various guises, at various times. Once, it was moving across the country after deciding not to go to graduate school. Years later, it was that journey in reverse, my heart some dead ham-like thing shoved into a suitcase along with my shoes. For my grandmother, I think that the long hill has been food.

 

We’ve always been close, she and I—the only granddaughter in a passel of boys. My early birthdays a progression of special party dresses, cakes whose construction remained a mystery to me until I found myself in pastry school as an adult—a solitary doll whose cascading dress was rendered in elaborate frosting, vanilla-scented and dense with sugar. I had my first Easter candy at that apartment in Bridgewater, the bright foil of chocolate eggs winking at me from Uncle Roger’s grape arbor. I made myself sick on it, my previous carob-only years blurring away into the distance with each bite.

 

Sweetness, and sickness. One tipping so easily over into the other. My grandmother has severe diabetes, and has lost herself, in widening ellipses. The unfixed, written ever larger—her eyes unfocused in recent photographs. The thing that happens when food turns from the restless outlet into the relentless weight, and carries the person that I love off to some dim, unreachable country where voices don’t carry.

 

My Nana’s people were from the Azores—a small constellation of rocks off of the coast of Portugal, tiny brilliants punched into the fabric of the sea. We’d look at maps of them sometimes at the kitchen table, and daydream about going there, together. My grandmother had never been on an airplane. “Don’t get stuck like me,” she would say, “don’t forget to do what you want, while you can. You should have adventures.” I wanted to have them with her, some part of me knowing, even then, that she’d never go.

 

So, when I did go to far-off places, I would bring her back things—stories, calculated to make her laugh. Tales about strange foods I’d tried. And once, in high school, a lace tablecloth, handmade by a room of clucking nonnas in Venice. ‘Oh, it’s so beautiful!’ she’d said, when she unwrapped it from its thin tissue. “Oh I could never even use it, it’s too nice.” But I want you to, I said. We should use it for family dinners—Easter. Christmas. My grandpa, offering up new twists on traditional Portuguese pork loins, redolent with plums and garlic—his omnipresent immaculate clam chowder. “We’ll see.” She said, folding it away.

 

That tablecloth is coming back to me now, in its same wrapper. Unused. The house where I gave it to her is slowly emptying—my grandmother living elsewhere. My uncle, whom she cared for for most of her life, getting settled in his own group home. I think about it waiting for me at my parents’ house in Connecticut, and how I wish, more than anything, that it were stained by stray bits of grilled trout from one of our backyard picnics. The seeping grease of linguica. The carelessly-held rind of a piece of watermelon, summer-soft and dripping down into its threaded pattern. But it isn’t. Yellowed a bit by time, but, inviolate in its intricacy as it ever was.

 

The uncle that my grandmother cared for is at the center of the narrative of why she felt she’d been cheated out of adventures—why her tablecloth stayed folded and forever waiting for the right party in a chest of drawers. He was born with a hole in his heart. The result of having been exposed to German measles while my grandmother was pregnant with him, my uncle’s host of birth defects became a complicated web of familial guilt—a visible depiction of ‘what if’–and my grandmother began a lifetime of crafting a story that was equal parts regret, selflessness, frustration, and martyrdom. His care was the reason why she couldn’t travel, couldn’t leave, not for a day—even long after he became an adult who, while more limited than someone without his complications, had crafted a life for himself. My uncle, despite true handicaps, loves to travel. He has been further, seen more, than the woman who has raised him, and who declared that doing so made travel impossible for her. The stories that we tell ourselves are powerful—our self-narratives carry so much weight. But they are of our own making. My uncle chose to believe that there was no good reason why he couldn’t take a bus to Canada with his sister, or to sail on a cruise ship north by Maine. My Nana’s internal narrative loop left her, instead, slipping one more sliver of cheesecake out of the fridge, saying ‘I deserve it, I never get what I want anyway, this is a small something that I can have.’

 

Only now, the food that once provided momentary escape from the imagined litany of thwarted dreams has become, in itself, a second sort of prison. My Nana is deeply unwell. Her diabetes has progressed to a point where there is no fixing it—only waiting. Following a recent hospitalization, she tells my mother ‘This is no way to go.’

 

Go? My mom says, playing dumb, go where, mom?

 

To the glory land, my Nana replies.

 

Do you want to go to the glory land?, my mother asks, knowing the answer.

 

Yes, replies my Nana, but, in a big Lincoln.

 

I laugh when my mom tells me this, even while I feel like crying, because I know that whether I want her to or not, she is leaving. Phrases like ‘only a matter of time’ are now being uttered, with great solemnity, by men in white coats. I feel the hot heaviness of grief hollowing out a space behind my ribs while I go through the days, and it catalogs all of our un-acted plans for blueberry picking, people watching at Onset, my Nana threatening to show me how quahogging is really done. And, it makes me think about our complicated familial relationship with food, and the ways in which we travel to those places we think are beyond our reach by eating, and how the plate both opens and closes those doors with different degrees of finality. How I’ve seen some of my grandmother’s own self-negating behavior in myself—that tendency towards despair, disguised as another piece of pie. I think about her wish for a grander exit, and sign up for a sprint triathlon this coming August, with my mother and my cousin. ‘This is no way to go’ echoes in my head on my slow runs around my neighborhood. I feel them settling up in the trees below the high ridge line that waits at the end of my street, watching.

 

The thing that I can’t tell my grandmother is that she was always going somewhere, when she was choosing to stay home, to have another secret cookie. That her illness isn’t something that has happened to her, ex nihilo, against her will. That the stories that we tell ourselves create truth—but that we can un-name those truths. And write them over, new.

 

What I will tell her is that I love her. That if I am forever restless, and going somewhere, she will be with me. Hidden and sure. Like water. Like oxygen.

 

We go down that long hill together. With all that we have.

Categories: Uncategorized

A Final Resting Place For The Loved And Lost

Posted on February 14th, 2013

Somewhere, deep in the more nostalgic regions of my psyche, there is a mausoleum for some of my dear departed friends. It has rooms and hallways and niches lined with shelves to memorialize the loved and lost. But it’s not a particularly mournful or melancholy place–instead it’s kind of wistful, full of sentimental memories and the stuff to launch a million mouth-watering daydreams. Every now and again I spend some time there, reliving good times and soaking in the inspiration of the deceased.

It is where I place the food and drink lost from my life.

There are a variety of reasons these friends of mine were taken from the world. Some arrived in these culinary catacombs long ago, some quite recently. Some were in my life for years before they were placed here, and some just a matter of minutes. But they all have something in common – I ate or drank them, I loved them, and they are gone.

Some of the interred items arrived under rather abrupt circumstances as the casualties of complete and straightforward loss. Discontinued brands, hastily-shuttered restaurants, and the loss of the person who made the item (whether a physical or emotional loss) are among the causes of fatality. Urns are filled with bare remnants, ashes and bones and scraps of box tops, all breaking down as time kills memory. Here you would find, among many other items, my great-grandmother’s tuna noodle salad, Jell-O pudding pops, numerous Ben and Jerry’s flavors, and open-faced turkey sandwiches on egg bread from the Lincoln Del, closed when I was in high school. This overall category of loss is often particularly difficult to bear, since items here are generally unable to be recreated, due to unwritten recipes and secret formulas and specialized ingredients and technical processes. Here, these items find a place of honor.

A second area is occupied by victims of my own personal geography. It is abundant with things ingested while traveling and favorite foods in neighborhoods from which I’ve moved away, all lost to me by inaccessibility. Their remains are accompanied by colors and smells and sounds, and by heat and humidity and snow and crisp fall air and the way the city looked that day. This is a category of food and drink that fuels my wanderlust and dawns many daydreams, and I spend a good amount of time here looking for inspiration. The shelves are packed floor to ceiling with greasy packets of Colombian street food and glorious loaves of Austrian bread, nameless Latin American stews and bottles of Cuban rum, French wine and fresh Prince Edward Island oysters, and thousands of items from cafés with names and locations long forgotten. They share shelf space with my absolutely perfect custom sandwich order from the on-campus diner at my alma mater, the raspberry cheesecake from the coffee shop down the street in Corvallis, chocolate-banana milkshakes from my favorite diner in Minneapolis, and every burrito from everywhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles.

There is another area here for experiences killed by a changing palate. This is a particularly haunting place, the shelves lined with mere holograms of items still readily available. All of these items were once able to elicit a sort of pleasure they no longer do, many of them having been discarded in lieu of more flavorful, sophisticated versions, and for that they’ve earned a space. The shelves here are lined with countless beloved childhood favorites, including Velveeta “cheese,” buttered toast spread with garlic salt, bubble gum ice cream, and mashed potatoes dyed pink with a healthy dose of ketchup. There is also a special shelf here for alcoholic beverages I once somehow managed to drink, mainly in college, that will never again find their way to my mouth but that, at one time, were extremely enjoyable (butterscotch schnapps, anyone?).

There is one last area that is different from the rest, established as a small niche many years ago with a good dose of frustration, and each year receiving a tentative, ramshackle expansion. The urns here are dusty, fully abandoned, hiding away the items no longer available to me because of my own body. It is a body that joyously partakes in everything but that must also face the truths of time and biology, and here sit the fatalities of that process. On these shelves we can find items exterminated by allergies that pop out of nowhere, by the discovery of new and exciting types of indigestion, by the development of strangely heinous hangovers, by a gradually slowing metabolism, and by a variety of the other ailments that will come to pass as I grow older. Under duress, I continue building it, mourning all the while the crab cakes and sugary cocktails and everything else that lies within it.

There are many memorials stashed deep in the halls of these crypts. There are personal bereavements and happy memories and perplexing puzzles, places where I go for creative stimulus and reveries that take me halfway around the world. It is full of friends lost, but more importantly of friends had, and for that I will continue to let it be.

Categories: Uncategorized

Sugar.

Posted on February 14th, 2013

Sugar. Sweet sweet sugar. I just can’t seem to quit you. Everyone is telling me you aren’t right for me, that you don’t treat me well. My friends say that you don’t love me the way that I love you. But they don’t know how it is when we’re alone together. They don’t know how you comfort me when I’m feeling forlorn in the middle of the day, or how you give me something to look forward to when I am driving home after a long, draining shift at work. They don’t know hard it is to give you up when you are woven into almost every aspect of my life.
But, the doctors say you’re the root of my problem, and they’re professionals, they should know. They tell me I will be better off without you. That if I could free myself from your tantalizing grip everything will change. I will move and breathe easier. The pain in my joints and mind will lift. I will have a happier, more open face to put forward into the world which will lead to me meeting happier, more open people. I will find other ways to introduce sweetness into my life. I will heal. I will run marathons. I will move on.

And, for a time, that seems possible. I don’t see you for a day, which stretches into a week, and into a month. Your absence starts to feel normal, less precise. I stop reaching for you in the morning. I stop missing you at every meal; eating only peanut butter for dinner because I don’t have the energy to navigate cooking without you. I start to smile more easily. The pain does lift. I run a few more miles every day. I start to feel free.

But then I go to a party, and there you are. I didn’t expect to see you there. It didn’t even cross my mind that I might, that’s how well I had been doing without you. I didn’t even notice you at first, over in the corner, surrounded by our mutual friends. You caught me off guard. And you look great. I try to avoid you, to turn my thoughts elsewhere. I shy away to the other side of the room. I talk to Lauren and Michael, who aren’t as involved with you these days either, so it seems safe, like there could be no crossover. But inevitably there is. The party gets packed, people get shuffled around, and there we are, face to face. You’re too close. I can’t resist you; I never could. And it’s like you never left. I can’t imagine how I have been living without you.

So it starts anew. At first I try to only see you occasionally, to keep things casual, to maintain some distance. Who am I kidding? We both know that never lasts. Soon we are spending every night together. I run less. My joints ache. My head loses that crisp clarity that our separation had provided. I feel panic surge when I reach for you and you aren’t there. But it feels so right. Maybe I can learn to live without you tomorrow. Or next week. Maybe next month when there is less going on. But not tonight. I can’t be tonight. After all, it’s Valentines Day. It just wouldn’t feel right without you.

Categories: Uncategorized

La Petite Auberge

Posted on February 14th, 2013

Circumstance recently brought me to the drab, cluttered 3rd Avenue stretch just east of Manhattan’s Flatiron / Murray Hill neighborhoods, and my mind immediately conjured the late La Petite Auberge. It was my favorite French restaurant for its last couple of years of existence, though my sporadic patronage – the meals were neither healthy nor cheap – obviously failed to save it from demise about a year and a half ago.

The restaurant occupied an unlikely location on a street corner surrounded by a mix of Indian eateries, Middle Eastern dives, and various mediocre holes-in-the-wall catering to college students. It was easy to miss from the street, but once inside, you knew this was a magnificent dinosaur.

La Petite Auberge (French for “The Little Inn”) would almost be difficult to imagine in any part of New York City today. Serious white-shirted waiters fussed (without imposing) around mostly elderly regulars and their middle-aged children clad in classic prep. The dining room looked formal and decidedly unhip, the floor uneven in places, and there was an absence of background music that transformed the murmur from nearby tables into an improvised soundtrack. Unlike the majority of NYC’s French restaurants, which tend to cluster their tables so close that your elbow has as much claim to the next table’s duck liver pâté as its occupants, a party’s space was respected here. The chief colors, besides the white of the tablecloths, were the dark brown of the old wood bar and walls, and the burgundy of everything else.

In this setting, La Petite Auberge served some of the finest authentic French fare that NYC had to offer. Never have I tasted duck a l’orange that was both so plentiful and flavorful, extra crispy on the outside and juicy within, the layer of fat under the skin thinner than usual yet still very much present. The pâtés were perfect, accompanied by the always-welcome crispy crusted fresh baguette slices. Desserts were solid if standard (cheesecake with chocolate sauce, etc.), and the same could be said of the wine selection, which featured enough Pinot Noir and Bordeaux to keep any Francophile happy. I brought two separate parties to dine here, and both left charmed and impressed with the food and experience, meaning to return. Alas.

I suppose in a city with a rapidly growing economic gap between the wealthy and the barely middle class, where some sort of gimmick is almost necessary to survive even for a hot minute, buzz is everything, and luxury frequently outsells charm or authenticity, a place like La Petite Auberge couldn’t hold its own forever. Its gimmick, if you choose to see it as such, was the refusal to bend to trends; its status quo was incredible food and meticulous service. To this day, I have not found a French restaurant in New York that scores as highly on both the culinary and the atmosphere fronts. But for about 25 years, La Petite Auberge made a lot of people happy, and I consider myself fortunate to have experienced its charms, even if for a short time.

 

Categories: Uncategorized

The 3 Musketeers’ Lament: A Failed Love Triangle

Posted on February 14th, 2013

Lover One: 100 Grand?

 

Lover Two: No. Thanks, I have a Snickers. But, I miss Skittles, I want to Taste The Rainbow. Peeps give me Hershey’s Kisses and Tootsie Rolls and all the Good and Plenty I ask for. Sugar Daddys galore. We cruise ’round the Milky Way.

 

Lover Three:  You want to go for an Almond Joy ride?

 

Lover Two: Yes, thank you. Now, I want some Swedish Fish Mafia…my BBBBBaby Ruth back, my Bbbbbaby Ruth back? HAAHAHHA.

 

Lover One: WhatChaMaCallIt?

 

Lover Three: Bbbbbbbaby Ruth back, Bbbbbbbaby Ruth back, can I bbbbbbbuild you a Gingerbbbbbread House? ..You know, out of MMMMMM&MMMMMM’s?

 

Lover Two : I do, I do! But, how ‘bout a fffffffffriggin’ PAYDAY…. Mr. Bigglesworth!

 

Lover Three: Great, now I am a hairless cat. 100 Grand and Payday, is there even a difference?

 

Lover One: Yes, of course, you LemonHead. 100 Grand is delicious Hershey’s chocolate, caramel, and crisped rice and has ⅙ the protein and the slogan is “That’s Rich!”, “That’s Rich!” GET IT!..A PAYDAY! A Payday? Peanuts! With smidgen of salt and caramel, simple barely worth the…time to gggget the wrapper off.

 

Lover Two: But, it can all be simple, so simple! I want both, WU Forever!

 

Lovers One and Three: Huh?

 

Lover Two: Nerds.  YES?! NO?! I WANT BOTH. With a Red Vine ladder, to climb to Mars, and slide back down on Fruit Roll Up chutes. SPLASH! An ocean of Kool-Aid and milkshakes. I have a LifeSaver and a Mr.Goodbar. You know? And, the sun shines bright and when it rains? A Big Hunk with an umbrella and a Jolly Rancher, who says “No worries! Looks like a good day to build a fort. Replete with marshmallow pillows, SweetTart towers and Laffy Taffy terraces….

 

Lover One:  And WarHead cannons?”

 

Lover Three: (rolls his eyes) WarHead cannons?

 

Lover Three:  For the pirates…

 

Lover Three: Yes. Exactly!

 

Lover One: Ok. Hold on. I have something,  I must confess, if you don’t know already, I AM a pirate!

 

Lover Two: Haha..You? No. Too innocent.

 

Lover Three: Too honest. Alas, no pirate’s life for thee…

 

Lover One: Ha! Me first taste of stolen booty….Snickers…. age 8 or was it 18? Dunno, Who cares?! Then? Showered in Hershey’s Kisses, Tootsie Rolls and Good and Plenty. Now and Later? Fancied meself a real swashbuckler. Went all Salt Water Taffy and stole me lolli from me town plunder pit. Got cold heart Gobstoppered. Th’ outcome? Grand Theft Chupa Chups. 2 tides probation. No Pez, no plunderin’. Mandatory Candy Button scraping. Lesson learnt. Real sour barnacle patch on a Necco Wafer lesson too. Didn’t serve me, do it all over again though, just to bring you a Ring Pop, two.

 

Lover Two: Ring Pop? For Me?

 

Lover Three:  Haha. You are no Blackbeard, Hook, or probably not even Smee.

 

Lover Two: Yea, three is right. Too many Mary Janes there, Peter Pan?

 

Lover One: Straight on ‘til morning. Now what do you say? Jelly Belly!

 

Lover Three: Right on! Take my Atomic Fireball!

 

Lover One: Not if you taste my Pop Rocks first!

 

Lover Two:  Uggh. You Milk Duds.

 

Passerby: Can I offer you a Pixie Stick?

 

Lover Two: Umm. Sure. You are my LifeSaver. Time for a 5th Avenue?

 

Passerby: Candy Necklace? For a Blow Pop? Sure.

 

Lover Two: Chuckles. Don’t be rude. But, later on you could have my Peach Blossom and maybe even my Penaut Butter Cup 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized