A Literary Feast

Portland, Oregon: Creation Myth of a Culinary Darling

Posted on July 19th, 2013

 

(Adapted from the upcoming Portland: A Food Biography [Fall 2014])

 

The infant city called The Clearing was a bald patch amid a stuttering wood. The Clearing was no booming metropolis, no destination for gastrotourists, no career-changer for ardent chefs — just awkward, palsied steps toward Victorian gentility. In the decades before the remaining trees were scraped from the landscape, however, Portland’s wood was still a verdant breadbasket, overflowing with huckleberries and chanterelles, venison leaping on cloven hoof.

 

“The surroundings of the city were … still wild, and the shattered forests seemed excessively rude, having no more the grace and stateliness of nature, and having not yet given away altogether to the reign of art,” recalled newspaperman and historian Harvey Whitefield Scott in his 1890 History of Portland, Oregon, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Harvey Scott (for whom the dormant Portland volcano Mt. Scott was named) did not realize his understatement; Portland has altogether given herself away to the reign of culinary art. In the areas surrounding the city, the breadbasket yet remains.

 

***

 

In the beginning, there was no Clearing. Palustrine meadows typified the pre-European Willamette Valley, and the Greater Portland Metro area was once a vast expanse of ash swales and cattail sloughs that snaked through the thick, black soils of wetland prairies exploding with ultraviolet camas lily, arrowhead-leaved wapato, and tiny, white popcorn flower. White oak savannah and its associated thickets of filbert and serviceberry were maintained by fires meticulously controlled by the Atfalati people, and as a result, so were valley quail, elk and white-tailed deer. Everywhere else was misty rainforest populated by lofty Douglas-fir with three-foot boles and long scarves of old man’s beard lichen, subtended by dense, multiseral canopies of red elderberry, vine maple, salal, and sword fern.

 

Before the misty, green beginning, there was fire and brimstone. With Mt. Hood to the southeast of town and several extinct cinder cones within the greater metro area, Portland is not just a river city, it is a city of volcanoes. Overlooking Hawthorne Boulevard and a retired sanitarium for the clinically insane is Mt. Tabor, a volcano located within Portland’s city limits. Rocky Butte, Kelly Butte, Powell Butte and Mt. Scott are all vents of the Boring Lava Field, an extinct Plio-Pleistocene volcanic field zone with at least 32 cinder cones and small shield volcanoes lying within a radius of 13 miles of Kelly Butte Natural Area. Within 30 miles of the suburb Troutdale there are no fewer than 90 volcanic centers. Though Kelly Butte was the site of a Cold War-era civil defense emergency operations center, and there is presently a basketball court in the crater of Mt. Tabor, 300,000 years ago these hills raged and sputtered, covering the landscape with lava and ash. The pyroclastic debris weathered into soils ideally suited to growing rhododendrons and huckleberries.

 

Flowing toward the Sandy River on the western foothills of Mt. Hood, the Bull Run River rushes clear and cold atop igneous basalt bedrock, formed when the Missoula Floods scoured away rich soils overlying the lavas that flowed 17 million years ago. This Bull Run water is pure and bright; in 1890, the City of Portland selected Bull Run to supply the city’s water and five years later a giant conduit piped the rushing flows, using gravity to move it directly to Portland faucets.

 

Before Portland was even a wee bairn strapped in its cradle-board, Chinook Indians were basking in an unsurpassed luxuriance of fruit; an embarrassment of riches. Between the aptly named Sandy River and Sauvie’s wapato-laden Island along the Columbia River, and south along the Willamette to the glissading mouths of the Clackamas and Tualatin Rivers, thousands of people dwelled amicably in the velvet forests and glittering, dewdrop marsh-meadows. For more than five thousand years, the culinary delights of the City of Roses were a closely guarded secret.

 

(ed. note:  Heather’s first book is now out and available!  We couldn’t be prouder.  Or, hungrier, after reading it.  It’s about breakfast.)

 

Categories: Uncategorized

In The Beginning

Posted on July 19th, 2013

*

Dog goes down to the water in the blank  heat of the middle part of the day and sits. The air is open-palmed and slow across the back of her neck, and the grass chews itself down into the sand at the top of the bank. Dog is not her real name, but it is the one that she has been given at camp. Camp waits on the other side of the meadow, and it is all tanned, tall, smooth-limbed counselors. It is clipboards that trail long comets of embroidery floss, woven into bracelets for people that are not her. When the sun reached its whitest eye, Dog had taken her plastic bag of warming carrots and the smooth sweat of her one hardboiled egg and walked here. No one stopped her. The thin, sulfuric breath of her lunch joins the deep green wash of river and clay. A bird watches, round and still, from a midstream rock. Hello, Dog whispers. Hello hello. Expecting it to leave. It stays.

 

The egg, when she bites it, squeaks against her teeth and it seems loud. A small crumble of dry yolk falls onto her pale crossed legs. You were the beginning of something, she thinks, and now you are lunch, and now there is nothing that I can do about it.

 

*

 

Tell me a secret, he says, pushing back from the table slightly, the chair scraping a line into the wood. Tell me something that no one else knows.

 

I used to be a Dog, she says, cutting careful slivers of garlic in the heat. Their growing pile as pale as nail parings.

 

Oh yeah?, he replies, going to the record player in the next room. She can hear the shiver of vinyl leaving a sleeve. A slight static hitch, and then, the low, tuneless hum.

 

Yeah, at camp. A long time ago. It was the name they gave me.

 

The sound from the other room grows, and there’s no reply. She looks up in time to see the long line of him, cutting its way through the tall grass swiftly. A small shadow in front. Dog? Cat? The air swallows up details. She never heard the swing of the screen door. Or his leaving. He’s caught up to the shadow, and has started back. Sweat visible on his shirt. Cat. The long tail curling down to his waist from the crook of an arm.

 

Hello, she whispers. Hello hello.

 

The porch boards creak.

 

Sorry, he says, coming in to the kitchen. You were saying–

 

It doesn’t matter, she says, interrupting. Here. I made you an egg.

 

He sits and begins to peel it, and the smell joins the growing tang of raw garlic there in the stillness.

 

So, tell me another story then. If that one doesn’t matter.

 

He bites the egg in half, and a small scatter of yellow lands on the wooden table.

 

I will, she says. This is the beginning.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

Roll of Mustard, Hear My Cry

Posted on July 19th, 2013

I am in a major first romance. I am 36 years old: a stock-taking point in life. A point at which you begin to understand the broad contours of the things you will and will not have: the career as it has taken shape, the dreams as they have fallen away, the places you have visited but will probably never see again. I have time, I know this. But I don’t have all of the time. I don’t have the forever time of childhood, or the joking—when will she grow up?—time of teenage years. I don’t even have the experimental stretch that is so much the residue and the requirement of being in your twenties, or even the early thirties.

 

No—36 is something else entirely. This midpoint is about reckoning and decision-making. So many friends are already married. Some have babies. A few have known terrible illness. A few have not survived. We’re no longer finding out who we are, we pretty much know. We’re finding out what we’re going to do about it. And, for the most part, we’re trying to do it.

 

So naturally I’m a bit shy to admit the ferocity of this romance or its untrammeled, total way of taking hold of me. But surely this love—like all loves—must be welcomed and celebrated. Who is to say which love will be your last? Why be so stingy? Take what comes and be glad in the face of a humbling force.

 

Humbling indeed, I thought the other day. I was angling a knife deep into the hard-bodied places of my love’s interior. I’m not guilty of homicide. This is not some crazed organ extraction for extra cash (though I have contemplated the possible if ebbing value of my own second kidney). This is, instead, a major, sustained affair with a mustard that has, safely, easily, crossed the threshold from loose fling to holy union and the product itself, forgive me, resides now in the temple of the heart that will and forever keep safe the true passions of this life. Let us open our respective hatches. I find mine stashed full of V. Sattui Napa Valley Smoky Mustard.

 

I’ve never wanted to be buried but cremated, my ashes spread somewhere. I have thought about a deep water with a view to the sky. But the fact of this mustard is such that I wonder, quietly, about a possible burial with just a few judicious jars stashed to the left and right of my midsection, with or without that sold kidney. I don’t see the harm. I know nothing of what goes on within these many rectangular boxes we keep plunging into the ground, of what my needs might be over there. But I feel an amount of Smoky Mustard—no other mustard, just Smoky Mustard—would put me in good stead for the long haul.

 

Barring that utility, it is my understanding that there are some real creepers down there. Let them have at it—and at me—in a way that is equally if slavishly devoted to and aided by Smokey Mustard. Let them dive in with their legs, their claws and antennae, only to find how quickly—without even meaning to—they will be scraping that glass bottom, resorting to rations, holding off. This is a mustard of consequence.

 

Recently I ran out of Smoky Mustard. I scraped the jar until it would truly yield nothing more than the empty ring of knife on glass. I rinsed the jar and kept it for a while. I put it up on the windowsill in my kitchen. I have other mustards (that is all that the rest of the mustard market will ever be to me now: “other mustards.”) I use them. Sure. We are on good terms, their label-moulting bottles and jars tucked haphazardly between a courage-inducing set of anchovies from Chinatown and the bars of chocolate I break off and eat standing in my underwear at the refrigerator door.

 

But this mustard—its many-angled jar acquired at the source and consumed nearly in its entirety on the spot, this mustard that required, then, an immediate return from the parking lot straight back into the store, this mustard that begs reserves: this mustard has been gone for some time. It has not been an easy time.

 

So I had an idea. Hey! The internet! And holy yes, Smoky Mustard is online. Bless this world. Bless its many screens and the buttons that make it go. Bless these chances to acquire something immediately, that was once so far away.

 

I ordered what I needed. And I needed a lot. Bring me your jars, your boxes of jars. Bring me your need for credit card verification codes and bring me your staff members who will do what they will and must with that information. Then bring me, again, your jars. Your many jars.

 

Click, send, thanks. And just like that another transaction transpires.

 

No, it was not enough. I hadn’t paid sufficient homage. I felt and feel—it is a muddle of past and present tenses as all the big commitments are—the need to give back. Anytime anyone talks about giving back, they do not really mean ‘give back’. They mean ‘Smoky Mustard’. Finally, the two sentiments can meet.

 

Let me pause here to tell you more about the flavors of Smoky Mustard. Let me share with you the fact that Smoky Mustard tastes powerfully of hickory tannins and that it is mournful. Smoky Mustard has memories and is not afraid of those memories. Somewhere in the bottle and the night it looks back at those memories with real tears and an honest affection. This mustard takes stock. This mustard may well also be 36 and thinking back to the jovial, oil-oaked porch of the house my grandparents never had, where they hosted large American cookouts beneath Old Glory in the home they never owned.

 

There are friends and family members there I’ve never known. Good people of ample appetite and strong constitution, people who stand up for what is right but who are, equally, unafraid of being challenged: people who both know something of changing their minds and of doing so with grace. People who you love and who love you eagerly, if a bit wistfully. People who remember your first steps. People who are proud of who you have become and who are hopeful, openly, of who you might yet be.

 

These people, like all people, are hungry. They talk and laugh. They pour wine and water for each other and, too, equally, they reach for Smoky Mustard. They spread it over shanks, over lardo. They spread it over Saltine crackers if need be. They spread it over their bare fingers and lick. They are having a good time. You are having a good time with them. What matters in this scene is not your childhood or your grandparents or even anyone, specifically, anyone at all. What matters is Smoky Mustard.

 

I am not alone. Smoky Mustard has a comments section on the V. Sattui website, every single one a five star. I can’t recall ever seeing that before. I don’t know of another product that has so successfully evaded the snark of the tight, difficult attitudes we see everyday online. Let me clarify here that I am in no way connected to or otherwise in the pay of the V. Sattui family or its employees. But I would love to be. Especially if that payment could come in regular installments of Smoky Mustard. Here we go:

 

the saddest day of my life is when i flew back to nyc and discovered i had left a bottle of this in my hotel room fridge in san fran. ugh- what a tearjerker. seriously- my fiancé and i bought some of this mustard at the winery and then bought some french bread and some cheese and meat- and devoured it all on site. i went back and bought two more bottles of this mustard immediately. i’m out now, so had to refill my fridge. secret tip- sauté some mushrooms and garlic- add two teaspoons of this along with a tablespoon of whisky- it will bring your fiancé to her knees. –eric

 

YUM!! Loved it, would by it by the case if we could. Bought a jar while on holidays and didn’t open it until we got home to Canada. Loved it, got friends to by us more when they went to Napa Valley. Now were out and they don’t deliver to Canada. –Michele

 

We were at V. Sattui on Friday (holiday weekend) – it was a zoo – that part I didn’t like. I kind of got chewed out by the cheese lady who was doing the demo on cheese, but thankfully, I was able to sneak in more than a few dips of the sample pretzels into this absolutely amazing mustard and it was an OMG experience. I am not a huge mustard fan, but I have to say that I could eat this stuff solo as a dip (I’ve been doing that ever since we got home) – it’s incredible! I don’t know what they do to the stuff, but it’s the most amazing mustard I’ve ever eaten! i will definitely be bookmarking this page and ordering copious amounts, first for myself but also for friends and family!—Margo

 

My own message:

We can’t get enough of this stuff. It’s really an unbeatable mustard—never thought I’d type that phrase in my life but there it is. We have kept an empty jar in homage.

 

And then, like so many things we do both online and off, I went on to other things. I wrote about genocide and finished a new piece on mental illness. There have been some newer, darker storms and glories, both, in the galaxy of 36. I did not forget about Smoky Mustard—this is not the mustard of forgetting. But I laid it to a sidetrack that still runs, well oiled and regular if not via the main station, through of my mind.

 

Then the other day I got an email titled: “Product Review Email.”

 

God I love Smoky Mustard. I love that direct, forceful title. I love that the people behind Smoky Mustard make no hash of the matter, no cutesy mincing. They go about the business of keeping me in the loop. They’re not busting PR chops; they’re busy and they’ve got Smoky Mustard to make. Another customer had provided a review, a new voice had joined the mix, and devotees far and wide were alerted to the matter. Boom. Hence: “Product Review Email”.

 

When I realized what this email was, I welcomed it as I have the news of a friend’s baby and photo: fresh out the womb, still gummed with birthing juices. I feted this message as I have the shots of newlyweds and other familiar, shared joys of this fleeting life:

 

We are close to running out as I write this and now I’ve discovered the beauty of ordering more on-line to save us the hassle of just making a trip with two small kids just for replenishing our mustard reserves (although it is always wonderful to visit Napa). I am so glad the winery delivers in the USA. I feel terrible for Michele above who mentioned they do not deliver to Canada. We would most definitely recommend you try this mustard and then open a tab with V. Sattui as you will want to keep your refrigerator stocked with in until the end of time.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

The Unfinished History of You and How You Ate

Posted on July 17th, 2013

In the beginning, you drank milk. It came from your mother or maybe from a powder. You drank it and you burped and you spit it up. You learned to breathe and eat at the same time, and your parents were overwhelmed with love. There was love, and you drank it.

In time, you learned to eat soft, bland things, and you developed tastes. You liked sweet potatoes and bananas. You reached for things your parents ate, and you tried to put food into your mouth with your own hands, which sometimes worked.

For the next long while, things progressed in a rather straight-forward way. You started eating like a full-grown human, small bites and then large ones,and the vast majority of the time the food made it successfully into your mouth. You went through phases, of white foods and fish sticks and things called chicken nuggets, food on paper microwaveable trays, and pints of blueberries in the summer. Your parents were patient. You loved potato chips dipped in ketchup. But you grew nonetheless, and soon you ate most things.

Somewhere in your late adolescence, you decided you didn’t want to eat animals anymore. There were many reasons you stated, and most seemed reasonable to you at different times. Your parents said that maybe it was time you started learning to cook for yourself. That was when you learned to make macaroni and cheese out of a box, and to microwave things called chick’n burgers. There were not many vegetables, in their full forms in any case, but that was okay.

In college, you ate. You ate salads and tofu in the dining hall, and greasy Thai food in the middle of the night, and endless cups of vanilla soft serve. You ate nachos and brownies and milkshakes. You never cooked. Sometimes, a forbidden bite of pepperoni pizza or a hunk of someone else’s burrito, full of beans most definitely made with lard, would pass between your lips. You didn’t really think about it, until you did, and then there were sausages and chicken soup and a feast of everything else you’d avoided for almost a decade.

After college, you were responsible for feeding yourself, along with many, many other things. You paid bills, you got a job, you cooked with things from plastic pouches. One year you got a cookbook for Christmas, and you baked a loaf of bread. It was dense, and flat, and entirely too chewy, but you made it, and it was yours.

There were more loaves of bread, and endless dinner parties of dusk and wine and pasta and chocolate. There were groggy weekends of bourbon and eggs, and sun-filled afternoons of gin and chicken salad. There were friends and you were happy, mostly. At least that’s how it seems now, looking back. There was less from plastic, and more from baskets.

You grew older, and there was responsibility and ambition and confusion. Things were made, things fell apart, and things were rescued. There was hunger, and you provided for yourself. There was sadness, and you filled empty spaces. There was celebration, and you poured your happiness into bowls and glasses. There was love, and you shared it on plates.

This is a history, until now at least, of you and how you ate. It creeps along, like a growing vine, and there will be more to tell.

Categories: Uncategorized

Eating Like a Narcissist: An Introduction

Posted on July 17th, 2013

Stetson’s
17 Branson Ave.
Boise, Idaho 83705
(555) 555-7869
Price Range: $$$

REVIEWS:
Jenna M.
Chicago, IL
* * – – –
“Should have known it would be a bad sign when we walked in at eight on a Tuesday and they told us it would be a 45 minute wait (I could see empty tables). Never mind that it was their opening night. Hubby gets grouchy when his blood sugar is low, so night got started off on a bad foot. We FINALLY got seated and had to wait ANOTHER five minutes for our waiter to finally show up. He was some kind of foreign and it was very hard to understand him (which he did NOTHING to alleviate). They only had a bunch of beer and wine that neither of us had ever heard of (Hubby gets grouchy when he can’t have his Michelob Ultra), so we both just got Diet Pepsi. Appetizers finally came (they didn’t even give us bread!!), the mussels were pretty good and fresh, but the cheeses on the cheese plate had all gone soft and had this gross white stuff growing on the outside. Somebody should call the health inspector about that. Entrees were fine. Didn’t get dessert because they didn’t have cheesecake (Hubby likes to get cheesecake when we go out and gets grouchy when he doesn’t get it). Didn’t tip the waiter because of his accent. Would not go back.”

Victor W.
Boise, ID
* – – – –
“Terrible. Took my bbygrl here for our four month anniversary. Waiter asks to see my ID when I order a beer and I’m like, what am I, sixteen or something? Im with my bbygrl for chrissake dude, dont be askin for my ID. And, turns out, they don’t give free refills. Paid like 13 bucks for my bbygrls chicken ceaser salad, like what, ceasar raise the damn chickens himself or something? Whole things messed up dude.”
Ambrose N.
Boise, ID
* * – – –
“For an Epicurean enthusiast such as myself, the opportunity to sample the fare of a new establishment of fine dining is one of the one of the most harrowing and emancipatory encounters with sublime deviation from routine. Alas, Stetson’s did little to charm my palate. The décor was an abhorrent mess of art-deco and art-nouveau pieces that clashed frightfully. My encounter with the maître d’ was terse and utterly without refinement. I felt that my dining arrangements were perfectly self-evident, yet she insisted on asking if I was dining alone or waiting on someone else. The waiter, on the other hand, was a wonderfully diverse individual with the most charming accent, and it gives me pride to see Boise finally catching up with the fine cities of Europe in terms of multicultural acceptance. The wine selection was atrocious (not a single bottle more than three years old), and the bartender made me the absolute worst Lemon Gingerini I have ever had the displeasure of being served. I ordered my Steak au Poivre medium-medium-rare and received it medium-medium (though I must say, the asparagus was steamed to perfection). I did not try the desserts because all of them contained refined sugars (they really ought to have more options available to people with diverse palates). All in all, this was not the worst dining experiences I have ever had, but I certainly won’t be going back any time soon.”
Wanda C.
Boise, ID
* – – – –
“DON’T BE FOOLD, DESPITE THE NAME THIS ISNT A HAT STORE”

Categories: Uncategorized

An Account of the First Annual Estero, Florida Billybon Festival, and What Occurred There

Posted on July 17th, 2013

FRIDAY
7am: Representatives from the Estero Chamber of Commerce and The Estero Billybon Society (formed two years prior by a group of older-aged Estero ladies enthusiastic about preserving the recipe for Billybons, an orb-shaped dessert item, roughly the size of a golf ball, comprised mainly of brown sugar and orange juice- a traditional (i.e. invented sometime in the late 1960’s by a woman named Eva St. Clair) Estero dish, though largely forgotten within the town and virtually unheard of outside) arrive at the Lee County Fairgrounds to begin setup. The aim of the event is to promote the idea that Estero is the site of a rich and historic culture, meriting tourism and emblemized by, of course, the Billybon. The main tent stretches from the disused Community Center building northward to the edge of Route 41. Forty 12-foot collapsible picnic tables, forming two parallel lines, will serve as the primary Billybon distribution and consumption center. Two distinct portable catering kitchen setups have been assembled on either side of the main tent (the scope of the event’s anticipated attendance places the demand on production well outside the capabilities of any one of Estero’s catering companies, so two have been hired to meet demand; judging by the diversity of equipment brought by each, it seems the two companies have reached little consensus on how one ought to prepare a Billybon). Two auxiliary tents, these with small portable stages facing around a hundred metal folding chairs each, run parallel to the main tent on either side past the kitchens. The weather forecast for the weekend is sunny, warm, and extremely humid.
10am: Doors open. Attendance for today peaks around noon, when approx. 500 surfing enthusiasts arrive as if by bus. It turns out that a regional FM radio DJ had been advertising the event, either by mistake or as a prank, as the “First Annual Estero Florida Billabong Festival”, and conjecturing wildly (and, one must credit him, quite creatively) about what such an event might entail. A crowd likely expecting a wide array of branded clothing and stickers, and possibly a marginally well-known musical act, are instead presented with semi-solid spherical desserts. Massive confusion and littering ensues, followed by a sudden exodus. Attendance drops to ́~50 people, some of whom appear to still be looking for surfing-related merchandise. Milling continues until close.

SATURDAY

10am: Radio advertising hastily corrected, today’s attendees have a better, though still imperfect, idea of what to expect. A formidable crowd, almost exclusively male, begins to form outside the North Auxiliary Tent. At 11am, an event titled “Eva St. Clair’s Billybon”, in which founding member of the Estero Billybon Society Angela St. Clair will discuss her mother’s inspiration for, and development of, the Billybon, is set to commence. The size of the crowd, as well as their apparent enthusiasm, comes as a pleasant surprise to the organizers, and hurried preparations are made to transport fifty chairs from the South Auxiliary Tent (where the already-underway “History of Wildfowl in Lee County, as presented by the Estero Audubon Society” is receiving markedly less attention).
11am: “Eva St. Clair’s Billybon” begins, and even with the additional seating brought in from the South Auxiliary Tent, there is a large standing crowd at the back. Angela takes the stage and begins by thanking the crowd for coming out today, and proceeds into the story of her mother’s invention of the Billybon. The crowd quickly passes from excitement through confusion and then into agitation. The North Auxiliary Tent empties rapidly, with some of the former attendees making loud and rather vulgar remarks about Angela and “her Billybon”. Post-event research revealed that there is an adult film actress, apparently well-known and respected in certain circles, who also goes by the name “Eva St. Clair” and whom the disappointed patrons had likely expected to see. This reporter failed to inquire what, if anything, they had expected was signified by the word “Billybon”.

SUNDAY
12pm: Today is the day on which the Billybon Eating Contest is scheduled to take place in the main tent, an event which has apparently some legitimate enthusiasm in the community (Estero High School students have a long history of success in, and fervor for, local and regional eating contests of all shapes and sizes). Contestants begin taking their places along the rented collapsible picnic tables at their assigned, numbered position. A short commencement address is read by Alan Thomas, Chairman of the Estero Chamber of Commerce, which says something to the effect that the Billybon is part of Estero’s long, rich history and the Estero Billybon Society is an integral part of the community, though much more verbosely and with much more sweating and stammering. Meanwhile, both catering prep kitchens are in full production. A fleet of volunteers are lined up, relay- or fire-drill-style, to pass plates of Billybons along to participants. Each plate contains three Billybons. The participant who consumes the largest number of Billybons in 20 minutes will receive an envelope full of gift cards to local businesses.
12:05pm: A drastic shift in tone: massive waves of nausea and vomiting have wracked the row of tables on the North side of the main tent. The smell is nearly unbearable in the crowded, humid, vinyl-draped space. Apparently, the chefs’ lack of familiarity with the Billybon has resulted in two drastically different recipes, one (the one being prepared by the catering kitchen set up on the tent’s North side) containing far more sugar than the other and, for reasons this reporter has been unable to fully discover, a substantial amount of apple cider vinegar. The resulting Billybon, when consumed en masse at high speed, has an apparently ipecac-like ability to induce vomiting. Contestants and supporters on the South side either stop eating, in revulsion, or seize their newfound lead over half the competition as a sign to double down. Chefs and servers on the South side are unsure whether or not to continue serving. Mr. Thomas and Ms. St. Clair, both clearly terrified, rush the stage and attempt to take control of the situation. They are able to gain the attention of some portion of the crowd assembled in the tent, but quickly realize that they have no idea where to go from there. Anarchy ensues; cries of sabotage resound from all sides.
3pm: The Mayor of Estero has arrived to give the closing address. Having been briefed on the incident at the Billybon Eating Contest only moments before, his remarks are terse and his demeanor is, shall we say, reserved. Several North Side victims still languish in the South Auxiliary Tent, which has been converted into a makeshift First-Aid station where the suffering are offered water and a place to lie down. The gift cards intended for the winner of the contest are to be distributed amongst the afflicted in a bizarre attempt to ward off possible litigation. As far as this reporter was able to discern, he was the only media presence besides the local and high-school papers to attend the event. The future of the Billybon industry in Estero remains to be seen.

Categories: Uncategorized

Out of the Arm of One Loaf…

Posted on July 17th, 2013

out of the arm of one loaf

and into the arms of another

I have been saved from eating and being cross

by a bread that beats pot

beats songs and stories

and is much softer than the last,

much much softer

and the crumb is just as good or better.

It isn’t pleasant to be hotly crossed and left there,

it is much more pleasant to forget a bun which didn’t

rise

as all yeast

finally

doesn’t rise…

it is much more pleasant to eat

along the crust in Des Moines

in the back room, and afterwards

sitting up in bed

drinking cold milk, your tongue touching

crumbling

softness like a wave…

 

I have tried too many times

kneading and waiting, waiting

for a bloom

staring at a dead starter

waiting for the bubble, the burp, a hiss, a sound…

going hungry inside

while bakers thumped with doughs in kitchens…

out of the arms of one loaf

and into the arms of another

it’s not pleasant to try on corn syrup’s gloss,

it is much more pleasant to hear your heirloom wheat whispered in

the dark.

Categories: Uncategorized

A Culinary Childhood in Three Verses

Posted on July 16th, 2013

I am small. The record player is large, and so are the records. On the cover of this one: a fat man at a table, his red beard as big as the teacup he holds, sipping his tea while an orange sun sets on the road behind him. The song is short and begins, “Bring tea for the tiller man, steak for the sun, wine for the woman who makes the rain come…” The tea, I know for certain, must be the orange pekoe that my dad drinks. The steak is medium-rare, the only way to eat steak, though I wonder how the sun avoids burning it well done. It’s the wine I’m unsure of, because wine is for parents and aunts and uncles and tastes like the vinegar you dye Easter eggs in. I play this song over and over, moving the needle back to the same groove. My mouth waters, and my heart leaps. I learn all the words and play it again. The song ends with voices raised, singing about children who are playing – and I am those children, I am that happy. But, something even more fervent beats at my heart: I want to be the fat man, I want to be the sun, and I want to be sitting at that table. I want to be eating that steak and that tea and that joy.

*

Fried bananas, sardines, and rice. Open-faced hamburger sandwiches on toast, sprinkled with Worcestershire sauce. Thin, flat chocolate chip cookies that are crispy, not chewy, just the way Dad likes them. Cheese soufflé. Maida Heatter’s Palm Beach Brownies, so full of powdered espresso that, decades later, I cannot believe how many I was allowed to eat. Pasta with chopped canned oysters, garlic, and olive oil. Broccoli leek soup. Homemade pesto. Strawberries with milk and sugar. Breaded chicken that my brother names “Chicken-O-Bo-Bo” for a reason no one can remember and sings, joyously, to his plate every time it’s served.

These are the things that my mom makes, standing at the island stove in the kitchen that looks over the field where a hot air balloon once landed during dinner and we all ran out together to see, me still clutching my fork in my hand. These are the things we eat at the round table in the alcove surrounded by windows, where the small, red, black-and-white TV plays the evening news every night and we all watch, solemnly, as Tom Brokaw tells us how to feel about the world. On the refrigerator, we make a list: these are the dinners I like to eat, these are the dinners my brother will eat, these are the things we want to try. I am the picky one. Once, when I am old enough to know better, I tell my mother I hate her cooking, that there’s nothing good to eat in this house. She cries, and I feel my stomach clench tight in a pain I wish I didn’t have to feel. And I know then that I am very, very wrong; there is everything good to eat in this house.

*
The cupboard smells like wood and paper and something indefinable that maybe you could eat if you could just lay your hands on it. The oven has a drawer that pulls out that you can sit in, but only when you are the right size. The sink is where my mother washes my hair, the chairs have wooden rungs that pop out of place if I tug too hard, and the counters smell like flour, soap, and old sponges. We watch birds from the kitchen windows: goldfinches, cardinals, pheasants that scare up out of the cattails by the pond, red-winged blackbirds that fly against the glass to meet their reflection. Later, when I’m older, I play Joni Mitchell on the boom box next to the sink when I wash the dishes, singing loudly, badly, but I don’t care. Before that, for a few months when I am not yet in my teens but no longer a child, I sample everything in the refrigerator and the pantry every time my parents leave the house: tiny bits of gruyere, dill pickles, a finger dipped in the cinnamon sugar, even a piece of bitter baking chocolate that I spit out into the garbage can.

In this kitchen, my mother teaches me to steam asparagus, to make hollandaise, to pop a cheesecake from a spring-form pan. In this kitchen, my father teaches me how to make a perfect omelet and eat a ripe Camembert. The room is too small for guests, but when they come, everyone crowds in anyway, leaning over pans and against counters, talking to whomever is stirring the pot, drinking wine. At the kitchen table, our family opens birthday presents in pajamas, watches green-skied thunderstorms unfold during the summer, talks about the neighbors across the field, and plans out our next meals together. A teakettle steams on the stove, my mother eats popcorn out of the bag, and the oven rings like a bell when the cookies are done. In this kitchen, I am very small, but I am not very hungry.

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Sandwiches

Posted on June 24th, 2013

There’s a midnight sidewalk and someone is saying that making food is asking someone to like you, even a small amount. We are cooks and we do this sometimes. This sentence is like being seen. Walking to the car is like pulling all of your clothes on again, in a hurry.

 

The street lamp is a yolk. And this falls apart when you see the insects lifting towards it, in the light. The night isn’t bread. It is full of smoke, drifting in from some further house. Some unseen cooking fire. But the point is that there aren’t two neat halves wrapping the lamp so that it will fit down the cat-mouth of the evening—the lamp just hangs there. And the moths rise to it, one after another. They’ll burn themselves stupid on that bare bulb. There are crickets, close to the window, making a racket. Behind it, you begin to think that you can hear the tiny hiss of each wing hitting the hot light. Signal-drunk. Season-blind.

 

Certain sandwiches, and the making of them, are an absolute. The kind of sandwiches that I’m talking about, you don’t complicate. They don’t ask you to be liked by people.

 

When we were over we were both glad and I thought that it was good that I wasn’t going to spend so much time in the closet, thinking about the things I couldn’t fix while sitting on the pile of our discarded laundry. We went to lunch. We both got a sandwich, and I think it was something that I didn’t usually get because that seemed wrong. We sat there with relief and lettuce. The train went by in the afternoon. The cars will make a long shape, and there’s the same-shaped space behind it, when they go.

 

There have been sandwiches since then, and their careful construction. Sometimes, you’ll have to leave the apartment. To go to the grocery store. It will be dark in the parking lot. It’s like a call in the middle of the night that asks you to go in and buy things. For an answer, you’ll make a big show out of placing pickles in your basket.

 

You’ll put water in your glass. More ice and a sliver of lemon. You’ll put mayonnaise on the bread. More meat, and a hot pepper. The neighbor’s dog will bark, and the light will be dim in the kitchen, this space of secrets and assembling. You’ll raise the chips to your mouth again, something agreed to, something forbidden.

 

And if this sandwich ends, if it’s over, you’ll wait awhile, and then there will be another. Soon enough. What you like about sandwiches, aside from their edibility, are their facts. They’ll be done but they come back pretty easily. Parts you can assemble. No mystery craft tripping you up with a strange language. You don’t have a hard time building them. You’re older. You’re wiser. You can take a joke. Even when it’s hard to keep things in focus.

 

And when it’s gone, you’ll hear the plate being clean. You’ll hear every plate on the goddamn block. The empty sound they are all making, not a knife moving. Not even when the light goes out, leaving the whole street dark.

 

 

 

 

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Paella For One

Posted on June 24th, 2013

Mary Searle is in motion, for the time being. Just another Sunday taken for granted, as the peach-colored rays of mid-afternoon cut sharply through half shut blinds into tepid indoor haze. This one got away from her. She heaves a light sigh, private and genuine, standing barefoot on the cool kitchen tile as she blinks away the clouds from her contact lenses. She opens the refrigerator door, looking for nothing in particular, taking in the scene as if it were a metric by which to judge the remainder of her day. Half full bottles of a dozen different condiments, part of a loaf of bread, four eggs left in the carton. A swallow’s worth of expired milk at the bottom of the gallon. Three bottles of cheap beer, and some of that fruity crap Jamie brought when she and Greg came over the other night. I should just throw that stuff away, she thinks, she’s not gonna want it back and I’m never gonna drink it.

She takes two slices of bread and two eggs from the fridge and puts them on the counter. She places the slices of bread on a paper towel (using a cutting board seems like more trouble than it would be worth) and, using an inverted drinking glass that seems clean enough, she cuts a hole from the center of each slice of bread. A frying pan is placed on the stove. Click, click, click, fwooshhh. A pad of butter dances across the still black surface, dissolving into a bubbling brown film with a shrinking white nucleus. She can’t cook, is what she tells people, and for the most part that’s true, except for the half-dozen or so simple dishes she learned from him when they were living on Mason Street. It would never have occurred to her to call them “recipes”, though, if pressed, she would not be able to explain precisely what made them different. Perhaps it was because they were never written down anywhere, they didn’t have names or ingredients (as such), they were just ways of using up what was in the fridge with a little bit of novelty. Little kitchen dances she had learned by heart from watching him do them, back when Sunday was a day to get up early.

The bread hits the pan. The butter welcomes it with a hiss. She retrieves the eggs from the counter. Tap tap, crack, pshhhhh. Tap tap, crack, pshhhhhhh. They bloom from clear to white, become like two jaundiced eyes staring up at her from the stovetop. She makes this egg-in-bread thing fairly often, and every time she does he drifts in and out of her head, not clearly but half-formed, like a song she only knows some of the words to. More clearly, she can picture where she would have been (since he was always the one that made them, not her), sitting at the island just behind the stove, listening to him whistle tunelessly as he blinked sleep from his eyes and the old hardwood floors creaked in harmony. She can recall how she felt then, her feet dangling a foot or so off the ground as she sat on the high kitchen stool and smelled the cheap coffee they brewed in their beat-up percolator, but she can’t really “feel it” as such anymore; if anything, all cooking these eggs does is make visible the distance between that kitchen and this one. But she makes them anyway, a prayer recited in vain because she learned it when she still believed.

The smell of smoke. Ahhh, shit. Burned em. She picks up the frying pan by the handle, flings the burned eggs-and-toast into the trash and tosses the pan in the sink in frustration. A deep breath. Bloodshot eyes stare at the steady blue gas flame with which she had invoked accidental blackness on her breakfast/dinner. She takes a moment to regain her composure, and reaching for the refrigerator door handle to retrieve the components for a second attempt, something catches her eye. A dusty red book jacket nestled between the fridge and the pantry. A cookbook; her mother gave it to her after she moved out of the Mason Street place since, she said, she’d need it now. The Pleasure of Cooking for One. She’d promptly tucked it away as soon as she’d unpacked it and never looked at it again. She flips through the pages apprehensively, afraid that she is treading on forbidden ground. Her eyes linger on a page titled “Paella for One”. Paella. Something she remembers having the semester in college she’d studied abroad in Spain. At the time, it had seemed so intricate that she’d assumed it might as well have been harvested whole and complete from the ground, but looking through the ingredients it doesn’t seem so impossible. Mostly just rice and chopped vegetables. A couple tbsps or tsps of this or that. She stares into the middle distance for the span of a few heartbeats, then up at the refrigerator door. Held in place by a magnet is a photo of the two of them in Ixtapa, that night they had gone out to that crazy bar where the waiters were all dressed like cowboys and they made you eat the worm from the tequila bottle. She locks eyes with herself, staring back out at her from a decade ago. With a breath, she quietly removes the photo from under the magnet and places it in the drawer where she keeps old receipts and Christmas cards. Then, she changes her clothes, puts on her shoes, carefully copies the ingredients from the cookbook, and walks down to the grocery store.

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