"She was a Nazi." That's what Edythe said about the wife of one of her two brothers. Until that moment, I never knew my mom had brothers. I must have been 8 or 9, and she pulled out a creased, black-and-white snapshot with a sawtooth edge of the abhorrent spouse leaning, Bonnie without Clyde, on some bloated '30s sedan. Never met the Nazi or her mate, never saw him or heard his first name or last. He was a musician, she said, who "went on to Hollywood" to lead an orchestra. That was repeated a few times, over many years. Was … [Read more...]
Artichokes, Hearts
[contextly_auto_sidebar] A while back I read that some folks were plucking artichokes from farm borders off the roads in California, apparently to sell. One doesn't immediately think that these green aardvarks are sustenance, although, indirectly, they may certainly serve. Are they delicate or rugged? All my life I've eaten them, but have no idea. False duality, anyway. Delicacy and ruggedness are not opposites at all. The artichoke embodies mystery, and that's because it's not an obvious temptation. The cooking-eating part of … [Read more...]
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Boeuf
[contextly_auto_sidebar] We have so many ways nowadays to discover how boeuf en daube is pronounced without having to tap a French shoulder, human or beef. Raise your hands, readers, if you know what novel lists this dish as an ingredient. I read that book, probably unwillingly, more than 50,000 meals ago -- I counted -- and fastened on the scene at the end of the first part that gathers characters to look at and smell their spotlit dinner without any obvious hunger or lust of appetite. That was in the early '70s, when … [Read more...]
Bug, Trapped
[contextly_auto_sidebar] A hapless grasshopper found itself in the news not too long ago because it was trapped, a permanent visitor to a one-painting museum called Olive Trees. You may have wondered, as I did, why notice of this common, elegant insect surfaced. But Vincent van Gogh, a painter many people know, drags any report concerning him, no matter how paltry, into the light. "What could this be"? Paintings conservator Mary Schafer may have said this aloud to herself -- it's a lonely job -- when she saw that a crust of French … [Read more...]
A Shroom With a View
"Sex" in a headline could once skew a reader's attention, but I risk vanilla using it here. Grade-schoolers of all nations do porn homework online. That coy teen you meet at your niece's bat mitzvah has fastened on techniques you once only imagined. "Once only imagined" is a familiar phrase, no? What happens to imagination when we walk past the bloody slash on the ground and the other eyes walking with me call to stop. A short time before, my companion and lover said quietly but in amazement, "Look at that big fella!" as an elegant plum … [Read more...]
Fireflies Are Out …
They bring me back to my stoop days, decades ago, when I smudged their bellies on my forehead as makeup, also called war paint. Will they make the same impression decades from now, on those I love beyond measure, in flooded or scorched backyards I'll never see? You can tell the temperature by the firefly rate of thorax blinking, which can be hypnotic, like the gleam of this cucumber seed in fluorescent kitchen light. Those seeds, covered in slime, scoot like baby roaches onto counter or floor when you run a spoon down the center of your … [Read more...]
Kapusta!
[Or Polish cabbage soup from a Ukrainian Jew] I haven't posted for a while, I know, but changes in my life urge me to find that thread that leads to writing. I've had trouble cooking, too, but for that I've found a trick: pretend that I'm cooking for company, for neighbors and friends. Then, when I'm done, I can invite them to share -- or not. Here's a recent example. My late husband, John, was taught by his mother, Mary Urzendowski Perreault, to cook kapusta, cabbage soup. Hers is a Polish version, natch, yet not too far in taste from … [Read more...]
Why I Love BJ’s, Part 2 — Basket Case
Here I am again at BJ's, the cut-rate Costco. Why come back after the other day's purse skirmish? Need kale -- yes, I'm admitting it, sue me. So I grab a snowbanked cart from the lot to use, even for one item, thinking that the checker would be less likely to ask me to open my small black bag and divulge. My, there's a lot of paper garbage in the cart: the usual store coupon-books -- so primitive, they actually make you clip them -- as well as one of my favorite racist coffee-table reads: "Long Island Fugitive Finder." Issues of Fugitive … [Read more...]
It’s My Bag
Ever since I came out, when I was a grad student in '70 or '71, I have carried some kind of small bag. My friends at the University of California, San Diego, may recall that I was never without my red, mirrored Indian satchel -- until it fell apart, dropping random mica chips under the campus's fragrant eucalyptus trees. At the time, I occasionally wore bell-bottoms with lace I sewed on the cuffs and soft beige blouses, hoping not to get mascara on the silk: very hard to wash out. That was when the … [Read more...]
Finding My Chowder — Part 2
Corn season on the East Coast is ending, sweetness flying off cobs to hole up for the winter and be retrieved -- if we are lucky -- for our next warm time. Still, there's an autumn corn-ucopia to be had. The few farm stands that remain open are stocking swollen cauliflowers and glossy leeks, hard parsnips, more and still more carrots. But the late corn in their coolers, tassels limp, allow us a final chowder. Brooklyn kids from the '50s rarely saw corn on a cob. Canned corn, even dairy-free "creamed style," was considered lazy roughage, so … [Read more...]