Food, Family, and Memory

pegasus.jpg“Named for the mythical winged horse that carried thunderbolts for the Greek God Zeus, Pegasus Café has a classic pristine feeling.

Well, not the Pegasus Café I knew and loved. It’s probably closed now… too bad.  You had to be there to understand it’s unique charm.

My first visit to the uber fabulous Pegasus was for lunch one day with my Canon Eos rep, but I soon found breakfast was the meal of choice! As one of the photographers selected to do "A Day in the Life of California", I gleefully chose Pegasus as my first stop in the 24-hour cycle of reportage. 

To get to the docks in Long Beach from Malibu meant I awoke around 3 a.m. to leave by 4 a.m. somewhat alert in order to arrive in time for the café’s morning rush hour when the truckers started their day and the off shore oil rig guys got off their night shift.

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ImageBack in the days when evening television was interactive family entertainment, when Ed Sullivan and "College Bowl" were on, my family used to gather in the TV room. In our house, that was the bar. It had a Fleetwood television built into the wall, with the controls built in next to the silk-covered sofa on which my mother would always lie, on her back, her head propped up by four pillows.

Next to her, on the coffee table, was a Dewars-and-soda on ice and a pack of Kent filters. My sisters and I would lie on the floor, my father would sit in his teak rocking chair, and we would watch television and eat TV snacks—clam dip baked on toasted Pepperidge Farm white bread; Beluga caviar, whenever anyone sent it over; a really disgusting (but great) dip made out of cottage cheese, mayonnaise, chives, and Worcestershire sauce, with ruffled potato chips; and Mommy's favorite, blanched and toasted almonds.

"Oh, goody," she would say, " 'College Bowl' is on tonight. Let's make blanched almonds."

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melomakarona.jpgAs my daughters will attest, I am not a cook. 

Indeed, the only thing I have ever cooked is brown rice and boiled eggs (you notice I said boiled and not scrambled or poached or anything remotely requiring any cooking skills) so it was a testament to my attempts to be fearless, that the first time I cooked anything more complicated than brown rice or a boiled egg, was on national television on Martha Stewart’s show...

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basillemon.jpgThe first time my sister cooked for me, we were both in our 20s and living together in my 500 square foot studio apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was the day I had quit my job working in book publicity and had decided to go back to freelance film production work. My sister, Alexandra, having just finished up her first transfer semester at the Fashion Institute of Technology, wanted to make us a home-cooked meal to celebrate our big life changes. She was already cooking by the time I arrived at our apartment that evening. I smelled pasta boiling and lots of lemon and basil. I started over towards the blender to take a sniff, but she shooed me away. “It’s almost done. Go and sit down.”

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My mother made guacamole. Its key ingredients were avocadoes, diced onion, sour cream, and worcestshire sauce, (at least it didn't have mayonnaise like her famous cottage cheese dip, which also had worcestshire sauce) but it wasn't really like the guacamole that we make or serve today.avacado.jpg

It was fabulous, though, because it was elegant - at least, we thought it was fabulous then. It was smooth. Absolutely mashed to a pulp with a fork and blended with sour cream, almost pistachio green.

 

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