Food, Family and Memory

I had just come back from marketing around 10:30 in the morning having gone to the Farmer’s Market for the arugula and Heirlooms, then just across the parking lot to the cheese store for some nicely gritty Gruyere. I had answered my emails and phone calls earlier. Dinner for eight wasn’t until seven. The house was clean.  I had a whole day for food—alone.

It was a Friday in Southern California and all the windows and doors were open, even in March. The dog lay on the deck in the sun. I turned on NPR.  I put away the glistening shrimp, the sausage, the peppers, the mussels. I was looking for the two paella recipes I often combined to make the best of both when I found my mother’s saved recipes in a blue plastic loose leaf binder.  The little notebook was buried on a crowded shelf in my kitchen eclipsed by my own slick hard cover and paperback cookbooks; Bobby Flay, Marcella Hazan, Julia Child, Chez Panisse and a host of others, plus my cobbled together collection of favorites in my own food stained notebook.

The other day I was thumbing through a copy of OK magazine….alright, I was reading it. They have a section that shows celebrities doing normal things! Captions that read, “They pick up their own dry cleaning!” “They put money in the parking meter!” “They go to the carwash!!!”

Growing up in Los Angeles, specifically Beverly Hills, I would see countless celebrities in their normal, every day life. Cary Grant shopping at Carroll & Company. Fred Astaire strolling up Rodeo Drive. Or  Sonny & Cher about to walk into Nate ‘N’ Al’s.

I went to school with the children of many famous people. In some cases, there was a particular tragedy about them. The legacy of their parent’s fame was a tyranny to their self-esteem. The comparisons that were made, especially if, God forbid, the kid wanted to go into the same business imposed an obligation that more often than not was unattainable. Some came to terms with it and went on to live happy and healthy lives. Others perished under it.

I keep connecting with an early childhood memory about summer days at the beach.

To get to the beach we'd drive a long time in our hot car and coming home, I was always sunburned, with gritty sand in my swimsuit.  The travel part wasn't what I liked, but the picnic lunch my mom packed sure was. Fried chicken, potato salad, biscuits with butter and honey, watermelon slices, and egg salad.

My dad rarely came with us so usually my mom had a friend along for company while my sister and I splashed in the water, determined to annoy one another as much as possible.  After awhile we'd get tired.

Then it was time to eat. We'd load up paper plates and settle down on the sand watching the older kids body surf.  We didn't talk much but we'd share the moment enjoying our mom's food.

I was walking past Zabar’s the other day and I noticed an ad in the window trumpeting the return of the Toas-Tite grilled sandwich maker. Just seeing the word – Toas-Tite – tossed me back six decades to my earliest childhood cooking experiences in suburban Baltimore. It seemed every family had one of these gizmos hanging on their kitchen wall or crammed into a drawer.

I entered Zabar’s and climbed the steps to the second floor, where they sell pots, pans and every cooking gadget known to mankind, and they had a whole stack of them, boxed neatly in cardboard by a company that calls itself Replica Products, which says it all. The Toas-Tite of my toddlerhood was cast iron and weighed four or five pounds. I had to wait until I got big enough to lift it. This replica – perfect to the eye – comes in at about a pound-and-a-half, tops. Okay, fine. That’s life.

I had to have it.