I remember the heavy air and the smell of gin

The kitchen on Queen Street was out of proportion, with a large linoleumed space that could hold a table for six but contained only an old refrigerator and a telephone jack. The stove, sink, cabinets and counter space were jammed into an adjacent galley. Everything we owned -- pots, pans, dishes, and silverware -- was a parental hand-me-down. In the mornings we would linger over percolated coffee diluted to a muddy brown with half and half, the perfect solution to a mild hangover. Some days I would come home for lunch to make BLTs on poppy seed buns, the bacon still hot from the pan, tomato juice and mayonnaise dripping down my fingers.
This was the place where we learned to cook, tried recipes from Gourmet Magazine and the Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook. In our year there, we made pizzas from scratch, cleaned and fried squid, and grilled chicken marinated with olive oil, lemon juice, and rosemary. Peter showed us how to make pesto and a cook at the Ironstone brought us a bushel of crawfish that we steamed in a cauldron of boiling water.
I have a file of recipes from that period, most of them copied by hand from D's mother's cookbooks, some of which I still make, like Lebanese Cucumber Soup, and Rice with Garlic and Walnuts. I even have the pizza recipes from Gourmet, which seemed so exotic at the time (Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza with Peppers, Onion, and Garlic Confit, Broccoli and Ricotta Pizza). Going through them reminds me that I never clip recipes anymore, just search around on the internet or Epicurious to see what looks good. Recipes on paper are another thing I miss from the pre-internet days, another reason to toss our modem out the window. I want a paper trail blotched with oil and tomato sauce. I want tangible memories. I want to have my mind and time returned to me (brief interruption while I look at Facebook: see what I mean?).
Still, the memories remain. When my family returned from vacation last Friday, there was a half batch of gazpacho, vinegary and bright, waiting for us, courtesy of our housesitter. Gazpacho was one of D’s favorite foods and I thought of that long-ago summer, which was also the first time M and I made the soup. The recipe called for peeled, deseeded tomatoes and we were mystified. How did one peel tomatoes? Like, with a vegetable peeler? Or by hand somehow? And, umm, the seeds? What was the problem with seeds? Finally, M called her mother. She gave us instructions: put a big pot of water on to boil, remove the tomato stems and cut Xs in the blossom ends before immersing them in the boiling water for under a minute. Then remove the tomatoes with a strainer and plunge them into an ice bath.The peels would slip off in our hands.
Gazpacho recipe, copied in the summer of
1988.
It worked. M and I pureed
the still-seedy tomatoes with bread crumbs,
garlic, vinegar, olive oil and tomato juice,
adding onion and cucumber at the end. The
soup chilled while we chopped the garnishes.
It was late July on the Eastern Shore. The
air was resistant, fluid, like water. Heat
flattened the landscape, made the houses
across the shimmering street one-dimensional.
While I poured the soup, M filled two cups
with ice and gin and topped them with tonic
and thin wedges of lime. We sat in the living
room with our drinks, the bowls of gazpacho
balanced on our laps. The soup was bracing,
the acidity of the tomato and vinegar
complemented by the bite of onion and
coolness of cucumber.
Sometimes all that remains
is sense memory -- the taste, the scent, the
aching loss, the joy of conquest -- or a
suspicion that something
else must have happened. So
maybe M and I went our for a walk that night
after the sun went down, barefoot on
sidewalks that radiated a memory of sun. Or
maybe we refilled our cups again and again
and cried about our crazy mothers, our absent
fathers. Or we danced to Prince or sung along
to Paradise
by the Dashboard
Light. D may have spent the
night, the two of us still and quiet on
checkerboard sheets, feeling the pull of
the window fan in my attic bedroom, while
downstairs M let the smoke from her
cigarette drift out of an open window.
That night is lost. But I remember the heavy
air and the smell of gin, our kitchen counter
splattered with tomato juice, the closeness
of friendship at a time when the world was
new.
Images:
Top: Me, a blurry goofball in the yard on
Queen Street.
Middle: The original gazpacho recipe.
Bottom: The checkerboard sheets, the
I
Love You This Much
statue, the orange crate. The
artfully-placed bottle of Corona.
The bitter scent of coming winter
I remember preparing a meal for him in the decay of autumn, after the leaves had dropped from the trees and lay rotting in the gutter and the breeze was turning cold and harsh. I was just 21 years old and could focus on the kitchen, had the time to think about cooking, and it was all still new, too, love and cookery. There was a recipe in Gourmet for roasted fall vegetables. I skinned and hacked a heavy butternut squash, added knobby shallots, garlic, and chunks of red potato, then tossed the vegetables with olive oil and roasted them in the oven. Near the end of cooking, I added slivered sage leaves, the bitter scent of coming winter.

Sage takes well to butter and olive oil, get
crisp and intense, medicinal over gnocchi,
tucked among thick slices of potato. My
husband and I grow sage in our front yard.
The plant sits between the flat-leafed
parsley and the lemon verbena, its silver
green leaves upright, purple flowers still
drawing honeybees. I’ll have to trim it soon,
deadhead the flowers and clean off the spider
webs in preparation for the feasts and
sadness of fall.
Here is the original recipe, from
Epicurious. Add 2 tablespoons
slivered sage in the last ten minutes of
cooking to recreate my more winter-scented
dish.
Roasted
Autumn Vegetables
1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes
1 pound shallots (about 24), peeled and
trimmed
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 pounds butternut squash, peeled and cut
into 3/4-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
fresh thyme sprigs for garnish, if desired
In a bowl, toss together the potatoes,
quartered, the shallots, 4 tablespoons of
the oil, the bay leaf, the
dried thyme, the garlic, and salt and pepper
to taste. Spread the vegetables in an oiled
large roasting pan and roast them in the
middle of a preheated 375°F. oven, shaking
the pan every 5 to 10 minutes, for 25
minutes. In a bowl toss the squash with the
remaining 1 tablespoon oil and salt and
pepper to taste and add it to the pan. Roast
the vegetables, shaking the pan occasionally,
for 10 to 20 minutes more, or until they are
tender. Discard the bay leaf and garnish the
vegetables with the thyme sprigs.
Gourmet
October 1990
Image: Attractive sage
bush, much nicer than ours, from
eHow.
The intersection of food, love, and memory
If it wasn't frozen,
processed, or heavily laced with sugar, my
grandmother didn't cook it. I have her old
recipe box, which includes many selections
from the "Kitchen of Duncan Hines," as well
as things like Pow-Wow Sandwiches, English
Liver Bake, and salad molds, recipes that are
products of the sixties and seventies. My
grandfather made the box, designed it to hang
between the refrigerator and the stove in the
kitchen at Hollywood Beach. We use it to hold
keys now. One of the first things I do when I
move to a new place is to hang it by the
front door, a reminder of a past so long gone
that it feels like fiction. I may look
through the recipes, but I never feel an urge
to actually make any of them.
When the corn
and tomatoes are at their peak, however, and
I steam a dozen ears to eat for dinner
alongside a salad of freshly-picked tomatoes,
I feel a tug on the line that connects me to
those long-ago meals. Corn on the cob with
butter sits at the intersection of food,
love, and memory for me. It has the power to
bring me back to a time before I was born, to
Hollywood Beach in the late fifties and early
sixties when my mother and aunt were still
children, before my grandfather was
injured in
an industrial fire. On late July and early
August evenings when my grandfather was
working late at the plant, Mom-mom could
be persuaded to abandon the freezer and
let the canned food gather dust in the
cupboard. She would prepare farmstand corn
and sliced tomatoes for dinner, maybe add
some sliced bread on the side. Perhaps she
was feeling as lazy as Ludlam's
dog, unwilling to turn on
the oven or chop loads of vegetables,
happy with simplicity.
It's the only meal she made that my mother
and I still talk about. When I was a kid, my
cousin and I were given weekend corn shucking
duty, sent outside with paper bags to do the
messy work of removing the husks and
cornsilk. We would sit on the white-washed
metal lawn chairs out front under a canopy of
maple leaves, kick our heels against the
grass. After passing the naked corn to my
aunt through the side door, we would wait for
the moment at the table when we could smear
the cooked kernels with squeezable Parkay. I
was fascinated by the prongs, shaped like
tiny ears of corn, that Mom-mom stuck into
either end of the cob, and studied them
between bites, felt the neat rows of
miniature kernels like braille against my
fingertips. We ate until we are too full for
anything else but a thin slice of tomato.
You probably have summer food memories of
your own, can bring back an evening lit by
fireflies, your lips stained purple by
blueberry cake. Your parents didn't care how
late you stayed up and you got to light a
sparkler even though the fourth of July had
been over for days. Or maybe you remember
your mother, already unsteady on her feet,
placing a platter of swaying Jello on the
picnic table. You swirled the first bite
against your gums, pushed it between your
teeth before swallowing and then refused to
eat any more. After dinner you and your
brother played tag in the dark while the
grown-ups drank bourbon on ice and talked in
voices too low for you to understand. When
you slipped in a pile of dog shit, they
laughed until you started to cry.
Image: Recipe from my
grandmother's collection.
Diversionary tactics
Don't be disturbed by the
photograph. It is only a diversion. In fact,
I actually posted it a couple of weeks ago
and then removed the post. I had nothing to
say and the photograph wasn't adding to the
conversation. Today it appears as filler, a
little piece of San Francisco scenery. Or
maybe it works as metaphor, too, though as a
metaphor for what you'll have to be the
judge.
Last night I was walking home from my food
writing class, feeling energized and full of
something (beans? ideas? hope for the
future?) when I realized that I have a
commitment problem. I've been circling
working life for almost five years now,
keeping decisions on hold, tossing words into
the air. I fumbled into my first career,
became a librarian almost by default, then
stumbled when making what felt like a
deliberate move into the world of cooking.
And I've been floating with the current ever
since.
I have to commit or I'll keep on writing 450
- 800 word posts here forever and ever. It's
not a bad gig, though the pay is lousy. I
love interacting with my blogging friends.
But I need something more substantial. A
career.
Do you know what I mean?
For your trouble, your time, maybe as a
reward for leaving a comment, here's a
recipe. Consider it another diversionary
tactic or maybe just some picnic food for
your next visit to Fort
Funston, the hang gliding
mecca.
Herbed
feta and tapenade sandwiches
Briny tapenade and thyme-spiked feta punch up
the flavor of this Mediterranean sandwich. A
couple of simple tricks -- adding a
sprinkling of herbs and olive oil to a
supermarket cheese, roughly chopping a
handful of olives with a touch of garlic –
give it an effortless homemade touch. Bring
extra bread along to sop up red pepper juices
and the occasional escapee feta tidbit.
Makes 2 sandwiches
1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted and roughly
chopped
1 small clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, minced (can
substitute 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
pinch freshly ground black pepper
4 slices country bread
1 small cucumber, peeled and thickly sliced
1 large red pepper, roasted, seeded, and
quartered
Stir together kalamata olives, garlic, and
mayonnaise in a small bowl. Lightly toss
feta, thyme, olive oil, and black pepper in
another small bowl. Slather each slice of
bread with a generous amount of tapenade and
layer the feta, cucumber, and red pepper on
two of the slices. Top each sandwich with the
remaining bread, slice in half, and serve.
Image: Hang
gliders at Fort Funston, Memorial Day 2009.
Photo by "Mr. Trinkle."



