Food, Family, and Memory

From the Los Angeles Times 

creamcheese.jpg The happy childhood goes like this: My mother unwraps the silver boxes of cream cheese as if they are presents. She beats the soft cheese – the crack of eggs, a dust-storm of sugar – into pale snowbanks in the bowl while she lets me crush the graham crackers with a hammer. I sneak a few butter-laced crumbs and, later, watch the cooling cheesecake with that wistful ache children can have about certain foods. Such moments, repeated through the years, transform simple favorites into profound emblems.

Cheesecake has that kind of power; it also has range. Stamped with an ancient provenance (Alan Davidson reports a description of a Roman cheesecake in Cato's 2nd century "De Re Rustica") and European pedigree, it's made with ricotta in Italy, quark (a fresh curd cheese) or farmer cheese in Eastern Europe. And the distinctive texture and clean flavor of classic American cheesecakes comes from silky smooth, creamy but tart cream cheese.

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applesinbasketsI miss apple-picking in New England. Overall the produce found in Southern California is superior to anywhere we have lived, but just like football, when it comes to apples, you simply can't beat New England.

New England has scores of picturesque orchards with rolling hills and countless trees. There are few pleasures in life as satisfying as biting into a just picked Macoun apple while standing in the warm sun on a chilly fall New England day.

The first autumn that Jeff and I lived in North Carolina, we planned our annual apple-picking day. When we arrived ready to pick, we were aghast that our treasured McIntosh, Macouns, and Cortlands were nowhere to be found. Instead we had to make due with Red Romes, Galas, and Arkansas Blacks (a hard, tart apple which became my new favorite).

Just as we got used to our apples in the Southeast, we then moved to California and had to learn an entirely new set of apples. Though crunchy, sweet Fujis are probably the most popular apple here, my local favorite is the Pink Lady.

Unlike her name, she's quite sassy, just right for an eating apple. Then there's the Winesap, which according to Riley's Farm of Oak Glen, CA, is the "Celebrity Rock Star of Apples." No wonder. It's deep crimson red, super firm and crispy, and assertively tart. Definitely not an apple for the timid.

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potluckposter.jpg In the thirty years I lived in Los Angeles, I experienced a wide array of social gatherings including a séance, a cocktail party in a cancer ward and an evening of Pictionary at the home of the late Don Knotts. But, I never went to a pot-luck dinner.     

That all changed when my wife and I moved to Vermont.  As another transplanted Californian put it, pot-lucks are, “the coin of the realm,” here in the Green Mountain State.  Drive through any village around dusk and you’re bound to see people crossing lawns with casseroles in hand as they head for gatherings of book groups, political clubs and contra dancing societies.     

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foodifight sm
Christopher Low

When I was younger my brother and I were constantly fighting. One day, my mother decided to ban swearing. We were at a loss. We stared at each other across the dining room table with enough venom to take out a tiger, but we had no words. I have no idea how it started, but we began to call each other the names of the foods around the kitchen.

"You're such a Quaker, Oatmeal." "You're a can of tuna fish that isn't even dolphin safe." "You're a carton of milk." "You're a half empty bottle of soy sauce. We threw these terms at each other every morning over breakfast and every night over dinner, somehow making the terms more and more apropos to our specific fight.

"You're Tropicana orange juice, some pulp." "You're sour cream." "You're such an apple." "You're a nectarine." "Yea, well, you're a banana." It went on for days.

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oliverbothbearsI had one hell of a shower for my first born.  Numerous gifts were given.  I had been to my fair share of showers, both for weddings and babies, and now I wanted a big, fancy one of my own.  Kimme had the best house, so she threw it for me with my other BFF, Kimberly.  Robin made the unforgettable-to-this-day desserts.

Two of the gifts were what seemed at the time like simple, not-too-much-thought-put-into-it gestures.  A white stuffed bear.  And a brown stuffed bear.

By the time Oliver was only a few months old, he clung to those two bears — they had become his best friends, his security bears.   Before the age of one, he would never leave the house without white and brown bear.

I was hired for a small part in a small movie, on location in Texas.  I would be gone a week.  Oliver, white bear, brown bear and I boarded a plane.  I hired some random local girl to watch my baby while I worked on set.  Things went well and I hired her for the following day too.  But when I came back to the hotel, brown bear was missing.  We went into panic mode, though the teenaged girl seemed way relaxed.  I grilled her.  “Where were you when you last saw brown bear?”  She did seem to recall something about the pool area.  It was now evening, dark already and we all went down to comb the pool area.  No brown bear.  As we were about to give up, I looked into the trash and there he was looking very forlorn, ready to take a trip to the local dump.  He would never have been seen again had I not peeked into the trash can.  What a relief.  Separation anxiety averted.

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