Does Jiminy Cricket sit on your shoulder? He sits on mine – always has. The first time I saw Pinocchio; he jumped right off the screen and onto my shoulder and has been there ever since. If he were simply my conscience, I would consider that a good thing, but he is not my conscience; he is my worst critic!
“You think that photograph is good? Are you an idiot with absolutely no taste? Print that and the world will laugh at you.”
“You prefer A Place in the Sun to Citizen Kane? Are you friggin’ out of your gourd? Tell anyone that and the world will laugh at you.”
“You are wearing what? That? Put that on and the world with laugh at you!”
It never stops. It is most embarrassing, however, when I fix dinner for company. I will get a compliment and before I can smile and say, “Thank you” I blurt out, “I put too much salt in the sauce, I over-browned the meat before I stewed it …” TMI provided by Jiminy.
Few spices can excite your taste buds as powerfully as cardamom. Have
you ever noticed how someone will take a bite of a cardamom-laced
dessert, declare instant love, yet not be able to identify the spice?
My mother had a lot of them. If a knife drops, it means trouble’s coming. If a spoon drops, it means company’s coming... Lila’s mother, by contrast, believed if a knife dropped it meant a man was coming. If a spoon dropped, it meant a woman was coming... Double egg yolks were good luck. And never pass a salt shaker to anyone without setting it down on the table in front of them and having them pick it up from the table – don’t ask me why.
The only one I ever heard was that if someone gave you knives as a gift you had to pay them a dollar. Apparently that was supposed to protect you from cutting yourself. I never did find out why, but "the charm" worked for at least five years. My husband's co-workers were horrified he gave me the knives, but I am pretty sure it wasn't my safety they were concerned about…
Bear with me for a little (for me) life changing story...
There’s no denying it – I am a pork-man through and through. Though I am not one of these 20 or 30 something dudes with a pig’s head tattooed on his forearm who from time to time is adoringly featured on Food Network, pigs and me go way, way back. Though I am a Jew, blade-cut pork chops, pickled pigs feet, Canadian bacon, rolled pork butt, breakfast sausage and the piece du resistance of my childhood – spare ribs (usually slathered in Duk Sauce – a sugary, vaguely fruity tasting, thin jelly with chunks of plums and something I later learned was ginger, that came in a tall jar with a label featuring a racist caricature of a smiling buck-toothed Chinese man wearing a coolie hat and sporting a queue [the Chinese government abolished the queue in 1911 but it seemingly persisted on labels of Duk Sauce at least through the early 1970’s]) were a staple of my New York childhood.