Food, Family and Memory

In the thirty years I lived in Los Angeles, I experienced a wide array of social gatherings including a séance, a cocktail party in a cancer ward and an evening of Pictionary at the home of the late Don Knotts. But, I never went to a pot-luck dinner.     

That all changed when my wife and I moved to Vermont.  As another transplanted Californian put it, pot-lucks are, “the coin of the realm,” here in the Green Mountain State.  Drive through any village around dusk and you’re bound to see people crossing lawns with casseroles in hand as they head for gatherings of book groups, political clubs and contra dancing societies.     

If you’ve never read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “The Last American Man”, I suggest you pick it up this Fourth for a bit of quirky, patriotic fun.  It chronicles the true story of a modern day hero who lives in a teepee in the Appalachian Mountains, eating only what he himself picks, raises or kills.  The guy is an egomaniac and a genius, and the writing, especially when detailing how he forages in the woods, is funny and sensitive and page-turningly good.     

The only problem with that book is the title.  He’s not the last American man. My mother is.

She spends every summer, and most of every fall, wading through rivers with a fly-fishing rod, and hiking giant, shale-covered mountains to sleep under the stars.  She’s had staring contests with bears and cougars, weathered lightning storms under scraggly trees, and once hiked three miles back to her truck with a broken tailbone.   

A 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.

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.