From the L.A. Times
In Italy's Piedmont region, where polenta may be better loved than
anywhere else on Earth, the cornmeal mush is a food of the fall. When
the air turns crisp with the first frost and people await the arrival
of snow, housewives labor over their cooking pots, stirring, stirring
as coarse meal slurried in water gradually thickens and becomes sticky
and delicious. To serve, it's poured out onto a wooden board in a rich
golden puddle like a harvest moon.
Cesare Pavese wrote about
it in "The Moon and the Bonfires," a nostalgic novel about a
Piedmontese expatriate's return home: "These are the best days of the
year. Picking grapes, stripping vines, squeezing the fruit, are no kind
of work; the heat has gone and it's not cold yet; under a few light
clouds you eat rabbit with your polenta and go after mushrooms."
We
do things differently in Southern California. In the first place, fall
can be even hotter than summer. Here polenta belongs to these damp
chilly days of winter.
It's hard to say no to cheese. Since I never tasted Parrano cheese I was more than happy to accept a sample to try. Apparently it has been around since the 1970's but I can't recall ever seeing it at the market. It's a semi-firm cheese created by a Dutch cheese maker who went to Italy and was inspired to create a Gouda that would be reminiscent of Northern Italian style cheese. It's aged for at least 5 months and often described as tasting like a cross between Gouda and Parmesan. I'm not sure I agree with that assessment, but I can tell you it's buttery and has a caramel like flavor that complements tomatoes beautifully.
Levi woke up a few mornings ago and the first thing he said to me was, “I really want you to make chocolate chip cookies”. I asked him what kind, what did he want in them, did he want them cakey or chewy? He looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. And then he looked at me and said, “just a plain and simple chocolate chip cookie – and mom, fill up the cookie jar with them!”.
When we first moved to Southern California, we thought we were in pretty good shape; turns out that “pretty good shape” is a relative phrase. Even the guy bagging our groceries knows his body fat percentage. In fact, the popular gym chain, 24 Hour Fitness (yes, they are open 24 hours a day), originated here. That pretty much says it all.
With the weather being so indecisive here on the East coast—one minute it's hot and humid, the next it's cold and rainy—it's been difficult to fully fall into the pleasures of autumn. But with October just a day away, I've been starting to crave comfort foods, like soups, stews, and hot sandwiches. Lunches for me have been a mixed bag of sorts, I'm never sure what to eat, and I'm not always satisfied with what I get. But the sandwich shop near my workplace always seems to have the right sandwich for me. It's my standby.