It was the last summer of innocence or maybe of discovery, though life was already shifting beneath us. M and I were 19 years old, best friends in the intense way of late adolescence before adulthood shatters things apart. We lived together in a two-bedroom apartment on Queen Street, spent our evenings after work cooking and drinking, sometimes wandering the brick sidewalks of our small college town, sipping gin and tonics disguised in huge plastic cups. Time stretched out before us and we filled it with anger and alcohol, provided shaky support for one another.

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.

Tags: gazpacho, cooking, recipes, summer cooking, summer memories, boyfriends, friendship, memoir, Eastern Shore, Paradise by the Dashboard Light

Back when I was dating my opposite, the racist homophobic conservative hunter J., I was a regular reader of Gourmet magazine. I would prepare special meals for J., smoked salmon ravioli, pissalidière crisscrossed with anchovies and dotted with bitter black olives, pears braced with crystalized ginger and honey and baked to a custardy finish. J. and I had chemistry, an easily bruised love, so we each tolerated the other's differences, limped along even though he lived in another town and had very real reasons to keep me at arm's length.

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.

Tags: boyfriends, recipes, sage, DC, College, Gourmet Magazine, Roasted Autumn Vegetables, fall, autumn, cooking

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.

Tags: grandmother, summer memories, recipes, lazy as Ludlam's dog, corn and tomatoes, family, salad molds, summer cooking, Jello, Cape Code Cranberry Salad Mold

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."

Tags: Fort Funston, career, recipes, sandwiches, hang gliding, feta cheese, tapenade, what color is your hang glider?