Stories

fighting-couple-300x264Saturday morning, I was headed downtown for a walk with my dogs.   On the corner of West End and 116th street, we passed a couple in the midst of a tiff.  She was crying and he was saying “I want to say something that will make you feel better!”  She replied “Then say different stuff!!!”  I chuckled and slowed the dogs down to catch more of their fight- eager for a little distraction from my walk.  The fight wasn’t explosive though, it was just a steam blowing off-er.  I slipped my earbuds back in and trudged onward.

Two blocks later, another couple was fighting.  Actually, it was more of a mutual whine than a fight really.  This time, there was something that needed to be picked up at the store for their baby (that was anxiously cooing from the sling around dad’s neck) and neither wanted to do it because there was other stuff that needed to be done.  Again, there was sighing, head shaking and clenched fists from both contenders, but nothing that entertaining.

We crossed into the park and stopped suddenly when we hit yet another couple deep in conflict.  He was bellowing about dirty laundry and she was yarping about laundromat quarters.  I honestly thought I was on some hidden camera show or something.  Three couples in less than 10 blocks?  Was this sunny day in May a secret relationship Armageddon?  I wiped the pond of sweat from my upper lip and thought, “Huh… maybe”.

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pasta.jpgWe all know there are four tastes - salty, sweet, sour and bitter. But researchers have identified a fifth taste and that is umami - the rich, savory taste of some foods. This taste is found naturally in certain foods - very ripe tomatoes, anchovies, parmesan cheese and mushrooms to name a few. It's why fish sauce and soy sauce make fried rice so savory.  

Cooks have known for ages that these foods enhance the taste of savory dishes. It's because these foods naturally contain glutamate. It is why MSG (monosodium glutamate) makes foods taste better. If you like the way adding a chicken or beef bouillion cube (which has MSG in it) enhances the flavor of a sauce or a stew, why not try adding a food that naturally contains glutamate?

It's why Italian cooks often add an anchovy in the beginning when cooking a sauce. Even if you don't like the taste of anchovies, you will never know it is there. It completely dissolves but it adds a depth of flavor you would not have otherwise.  Don't say, "Ew!  I don't like anchovies!"  Take advantage of the glutamate in this food and enhance your cooking - your umami!

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jd_salinger1.jpgYesterday, my favorite author died. He was not exactly plucked in the flower of youth, being 91 and all. He also hadn’t published anything since shortly after my third birthday. Well, he didn’t ever publish a whole lot of anything, at least not anything I could easily get my hands on. He wrote three books, a collection of short stories, and a novella which appeared in “The New Yorker,” but which I have never found in buyable form. I have been trying really hard not to read anything being written about him right now, not blog posts, not opinion pieces, not even obituaries, because this is a private thing for me. I need a little time to think my own thoughts before I open myself up to a flood of writing about how Catcher in the Rye wasn’t really that great, how Salinger was not really very nice to his wives or his children, or how he was (pick one) overrated, underrated, wrong to become a recluse, right to become a recluse, etc. ad nauseum.

His is the voice I hear in my head when I write, and always has been. Mostly, that’s between him and me.

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pastaitaly.jpg“With all that great food in Italy, how do you guys stay so thin?”

This kind question came during a book talk we gave last Monday night in Holbrook, New York – at the Sachem Public Library. It was very generous of the questioner to include me in the “thin” category along with Jill, but indeed I still wear the same suit size I did back in our L.A. Law days twenty-some years ago. I’m not thin, but at least I’m not any fatter than I was then.

We answered her by pointing that Italians don’t eat much processed food and that makes it much easier to keep our weight down over there. But of course it’s not just what they eat that allows them to maintain una bella figura, it’s also how much they eat – or how little, I should say. Italians don’t pile it on like we tend to do over here. A bowl of pasta is not intended to fill you; it’s to prepare your mouth and stomach for your second course.

This truth was driven home dramatically a little later in the evening.

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loveloss2.jpgWhat I Wore: A silk beige diagonally checkered shirt that my mother bought when she was 16 from the Beverly Hills General Store [if my mother and I were both 16 at the same time we would have been best friends] and a brown Armani tweed skirt that I have never worn because it is high-waisted and way too big for the only part of my body that is truly tiny, but luckily I was in New York where there are three tailors on every block, one of which was able to pin it for me so that it added two creases that looked as if they were meant to be, and brown Ralph Lauren heels that make me feel confident because the struggle to find the second shoe amongst the insane amount of boxes at the Union Square DSW to this day still makes me feel triumphant.

The Occasion: Opening Night of the second of a rotating cast of “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” an off-Broadway play my two aunts, Nora and Delia Ephron, wrote together. Since the play is all about clothes, I knew I had to dress the part, despite getting off an airplane two hours before the curtain. I packed my best Mad Men inspired outfit freshly pressed so the suitcase could do minimal harm.

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