I turned fifty-two last week. While I’m told that fifty-two is the new thirty-eight, no one told my metabolism. It seems to have slowed even more than I have. Knowing this, and knowing that the only way to really celebrate a birthday is to eat and then eat some more, my wife, Peggy, and I had been dieting from the end of the holidays to the big day – ten whole days. And when the big day came, we wasted no time in returning to our post-holiday fighting weight. Here is how we did it.
Thursday, my actual birthday, was the big kick off. We went to Patina for its annual truffle dinner. Patina has been having these extravagant dinners in honor of the truffle – yes, it is celebrating a fungus, but what a fungus - for the past several years, and we always talked about going, and this year, the dinner fell on my birthday. Given that Peggy and I have been together for almost 30 years, and she has simply run out of things to buy me as a birthday gift, especially just two weeks after Christmas, we decided that this would be it. She couldn’t have done better.
Food, Family and Memory
Food, Family, and Memory
Sunday Dinner
"Hey, come over here, kid, learn something. You never know, you might have to cook for twenty guys someday. You see, you start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic. Then you throw in some tomatoes, tomato paste, you fry it; ya make sure it doesn't stick. You get it to a boil; you shove in all your sausage and your meatballs; heh?... And a little bit o' wine. An' a little bit o' sugar, and that's my trick." - Clemenza teaching Michael to cook. The Godfather, Part I.
When Jeff and I were dating, we would on occasion deliver papers for his family’s Sunday morning paper route. I distinctly remember his mother’s detailed descriptions of whose paper went where: Mr. Lisi, the front door, Ms. Vitale, the side door, the Di Fusco’s, the front door if the screen was open but the back if it was locked. I also distinctly remember the smell that hit you when you walked up each of the little driveways early in the morning and opened the screen doors. Not coffee, not maple syrup, not bacon and eggs, but gravy.
Beach Memories
I keep connecting with an early childhood memory about summer days at the beach.
To get to the beach we'd drive a long time in our hot car and coming home, I was always sunburned, with gritty sand in my swimsuit. The travel part wasn't what I liked, but the picnic lunch my mom packed sure was. Fried chicken, potato salad, biscuits with butter and honey, watermelon slices, and egg salad.
My dad rarely came with us so usually my mom had a friend along for company while my sister and I splashed in the water, determined to annoy one another as much as possible. After awhile we'd get tired.
Then it was time to eat. We'd load up paper plates and settle down on the sand watching the older kids body surf. We didn't talk much but we'd share the moment enjoying our mom's food.
Gadaymee
It took me half my life to realize that when Guadalupe Contreras
says “Gadaymee”, she means to say, “Goddamn it”. I thought for years
that she had been referring to my sister, whose name is Amy, with a
level of stifled frustration that I found hard to account for. I told a
Spanish-speaking friend about this misunderstanding a while back, and
he in turn informed me that my Spanish pronunciation of “I’m scared”
(tengo miedo) sounds a lot like “I have shit” (tengo mierda). I relayed
this conversation to Lupe. She claimed to disagree.
There are some things whose very greatness lies in the fact that they can’t be translated, or imitated at all, without some diminishment of their essence. This is often the case with poetry in translation, but I believe the phenomenon extends to other things, like bed-head, or fans of the Boston Red Sox. We read translations anyway, of course, secure that what we find in them will still be more than enough, that the meaning of a word, a palabra, can transcend language. Recipes can be like this for those who collect them, more than a list of ingredients, or a formula for the cook. Cooking from a recipe, or merely writing it down, is itself an act of translation, and so the closer that recipe comes to the source, the better. I feel this way about Albondigas soup, which is why my sister and I decided to take a lesson in preparing it from the true master, a woman who takes her own sources seriously, kneading raw beef like bread dough, and starting her meat stock with a pile of scary, dull white bones: Guadalupe Contreras.