Food, Family and Memory

My mother made perfect lox, onions, and eggs.  Except it isn’t really lox, onion, and eggs, it's nova scotia, onions, and eggs. 

And nova scotia’s best when it comes from a deli department, loose or fresh-sliced, instead of a package at the grocery store.

Read recipe...

As with so many foods in our lives, dishes served when we are young put strong imprints on our adult palates. Most nights when my father came home from work, he would settle into his leather recliner and watch wrestling on TV. While my sister and I set the table, my mother would serve him an appetizer plate and his cocktail of choice, a 7&7 (Seagrams & 7-Up).

His favorite appetizers reflected his Russian Jewish background. There would be plates of pickled herring with sour cream, chopped chicken liver, pickled beets and onions, anchovy fillets and pumpernickel bread that he ordered from a mail-order outlet in New York.

Wanting a father-son moment with my father, who was decidedly old school and not much into father-son moments, I would sit next to him and share the appetizers (and steal a sip of his 7&7 when he wasn't looking). I definitely developed a taste for the anchovies and chicken livers but not for the pickled herring with sour cream!

One day, with very little in the refrigerator, I wanted a lunch with a lot of flavor that wouldn't take much effort to create. With a box of pasta, a couple of chicken livers, a tin of anchovies, an assortment of aromatics and a few other ingredients, I put two and two together and made a dish that was light and delicious. I wonder if my dad would have liked it? 

Ever since joining the club, my diet has changed. Health club? Good God no! Book club, country club, beach club? Wrong again! I am now a card carrying member of the worldwide group of “empty nesters.” The club one is automatically granted membership to once their last or only child leaves the house for college or life elsewhere. No dues, no rules, and absolutely no where to go!

When my husband and I dropped the youngest of our two daughters off at college this past September in London no less, (our eldest went east to upstate NY, but not far enough for our baby, she needed another continent!) there were, of course, tears. I did cry myself to sleep the night after we said goodbye. Exhaustion and jet lag could’ve played into it a bit. We should have planned the trip better. A week to shop for a college room in a foreign city, plus a winter wardrobe (her Southern Cal cutoffs and T-shirts wouldn’t do in London come October) and her own kitchen setup as her dorm had no cafeteria just a communal kitchen on every floor that the 8 residents to a hallway shared, was a race I barely won.

Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom, as I learned with the first college drop, sets it up so well. The last few weeks before they leave, the kids are so nervous aka obnoxious, you really can’t wait to kiss them goodbye, put the pedal to the metal and head home. The old gal was on the job this time as well, but London is so far away from Los Angeles and this was my baby! Even though she had me running in and out of every frigging vintage shop in London for the winter coat that didn’t exist, and up and down the escalator at the largest Tesco ever created until I begged for an oxygen tank, (“Excuse me Sir, would you happen to have an inhaler I could borrow?”) I fell to pieces after we left her. So much for the year of living dangerously. Senior year when I didn’t know who to kill, her or me...or my husband, for if I hadn’t married him to begin with...

Some days are just harder than others.

Today I’m listening to my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs. I had the Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town album’s in the 70’s and I would play them over and over in my dad’s apartment. I would watch his foot, the one that was attached to his brace start to move to the beat of the music. One day, he said “Who is this guy, he’s very talented”. “Bruce Springsteen Dad, isn’t he great?”

I miss sharing the love of music. I miss sharing the love of food. I miss sharing the love of people. I miss my dad!

My dad played the harmonica. So did the Boss.

The last night I went out with my dad was when we met at the House of Blues. His friends, the Gittlesohns invited him. They told him there would be this harmonica player performing. Everyone was saying this guy was great. The guy hadn’t gone on stage and it was going on midnight. I bailed. My father, at age 85 stayed out until he saw the guy perform. Ever the hard core music supporter and enthusiast, he wasn’t home until nearly 2 AM. That night at the House of Blues, I wore this tight gold dress. My father said he loved my dress.