Food, Family, and Memory

ImageThere are apples from a tree in Laurel Canyon that sit in a bowl on my hall table. The bowl, with its pie-crust edge comes from Rhinebeck, NY and reminds me of my son who's at school near there.  The apples were pilfered by Miss Monica who defied the laws of gravity, heaving herself over the iron fence to find the tree in the grounds of the Houdini mansion, hidden by old rock walls that line this part of the canyon, white lilies and cactus. 

They are apples from another era, knobbled and imperfect and of an unsurpassed sweet:sour ratio, the kind Mrs. Beeton would have you pick for a Victorian apple crumble, the kind that grew in abundance in espaliered rows in the garden of the house I grew up in. Bordered with roses and Michaelmas daisies, in front of the rhubarb and the horseradish, the trees had been there for as long as I could remember, as as long as my father could remember before. Planted presumably by the Reverend John Wood who lived in the house with the crucifix windows with his two sisters.

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hair-30s-brushcurl.jpgMy grandfather Mervin was an inventor. He invented hairclips. To make money as a lad, he got a job sweeping up hair in a beauty parlor. Soon he noticed a need for clips. Clips that held the hair in place while the barber cut, clips that put waves in the hair, and doohickeys that crimped and flattened. He had patents on all these. Some were profitable, like the Jiffy, the Teeny, and others weren’t. But I guess the successful ones more than made up for the duds because he did pretty well for himself.

In the 1940s, his factory was at 173-177 Lafayette Street in Manhattan. Later he moved it to Orlando, Florida, though, when the workers tried to organize. In my family, we never liked unions much.

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Sometimes, learning to cook is the best thing a child can do

thanksgiving table ideas In our house, the first smell of Thanksgiving was not turkey roasting or pumpkin pie but the bleach-sweet steam of my mother ironing the good tablecloth. I remember it from a time when I was small enough to creep unnoticed beneath the ironing board while she painstakingly transformed an undistinguished hump of wrinkled linen into a curtain of shimmering white. With a curt flick of her wrist, my mother sprinkled each length with water from a yellow, plastic bottle designed for this purpose, and then the iron would sizzle a path just above my head. Soon I was surrounded by a linen tent. The smell sparkled like hot stars.

So my Thanksgiving apprenticeship began.

Discovered, I was set to work folding the napkins, the first task allotted to small children wanting to be holiday helpers. The next year, I was allowed to place them beside each plate. My eyes were not that much higher than the table's surface and it seemed the most glamorous thing I had ever seen, a snowy landscape forested by crystal trees, glittering with silver and dishes of every size.

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bundtcake.jpgFood and death are a marvelous combination, except for when one suddenly causes the other.  In my family, news of someone’s passing usually initiates a steady stream of food delivered to the ground zero of loss.  Sandwich platters, rice puddings, and pink cardboard pastry boxes tied up with string.  These are a few of my favorite things.  The food, not the death part.

The different foods that are bestowed upon the bereaved are a reminder of the living.  Who else but the living would care enough to drop by with a Bundt cake?  Keep the pan.  I have extras for times like these.  You can look at this delivered feast as a measure of the love for the deceased.  Home made fried chicken is a great compliment; day old grocery store pie, not so much.

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human_hand.jpgA fork by any other name would still be a fork. Unless you called it your hands. Then the fork is rendered moot. Hands are more versatile than forks. They posses a way cooler gadget. The opposable thumb (come-up of all evolutionary come-ups) possesses some remarkable moves.

Unfortunately we don’t often get to put those moves into practice with familiar western cuisine. But why rely on some intermediary device to enjoy that most intimate sensation of eating? Some form of artifice, really, when we consider that we already have what it takes.

My earliest inclinations were to forgo tools and bound the gulf between food and eating (associations begin firing at Lacan’s l’hommelette, a slippery slope). My favorite foods (burritos, sushi) can technically and efficiently be eaten with one’s hands. Still, my lifetime eating career has been dominated by silverware.

Until my wife introduced me to her native cuisine. Nepali food predates industrial metal forgery and globalization. Silverware was not a concern when the recipes took shape, nor is it a concern today when they’re served.

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