Food, Family, and Memory

ImageThere are apples from a tree in Laurel Canyon that sit in a bowl on my hall table. The bowl, with its pie-crust edge comes from Rhinebeck, NY and reminds me of my son who's at school near there.  The apples were pilfered by Miss Monica who defied the laws of gravity, heaving herself over the iron fence to find the tree in the grounds of the Houdini mansion, hidden by old rock walls that line this part of the canyon, white lilies and cactus. 

They are apples from another era, knobbled and imperfect and of an unsurpassed sweet:sour ratio, the kind Mrs. Beeton would have you pick for a Victorian apple crumble, the kind that grew in abundance in espaliered rows in the garden of the house I grew up in. Bordered with roses and Michaelmas daisies, in front of the rhubarb and the horseradish, the trees had been there for as long as I could remember, as as long as my father could remember before. Planted presumably by the Reverend John Wood who lived in the house with the crucifix windows with his two sisters.

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me-b.v.-playground-in-courreges-boots My parents were always worried that I hadn’t eaten.  “Have you had lunch, Fredde?”  My answer was “YES, of course, I made myself a mayonnaise sandwich!!!” And James Beard is famous for his as well, okay, maybe his is called an onion sandwich, but it’s pretty much the sandwich I made as a kid. essentialjamesbeardbuy now button
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lattdad.jpgI associate mail order food with my father.  When I was growing up, he and I had very few connections.  He took me to only one professional football game.  He never came to Back-to-School Night and had no interest in any of my hobbies.  I remember him as dour, not very talkative and disapproving.  I was part of his second family and he was, I’m certain, just a bit too old to have a young kid running around. 

Added to that, my father was burdened by tragedy.  He was the eldest son of a prosperous Jewish family in Odessa on the Black Sea.  Unfortunately when the Russian Revolution swept across the country, Bolsheviks rampaged through his neighborhood, lining up and shooting many people, including my father’s family.  Being Jewish and well-to-do were two strikes too many at a time when “line them up against the wall” was taken literally.

Luckily for my father, when all this happened, he was studying at the University of Kiev.  He learned later that his mother had survived because she had very thick hair.  When she was shot at point blank range, the gunpowder was apparently so weak that the bullet merely lodged in her hair, knocking her unconscious and otherwise leaving her unharmed. My father never returned home to Odessa, having been told that he needed to flee the country, which he promptly did.

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cinnamon-clove-cherry-pieCherries are especially prolific in the Pacific Northwest. Just about every variety you can think of are currently available at the markets and farm stands. They are hard to pass up since they are so juicy and sweet. 

I have such great childhood memories of the cherry picking adventures I experienced with my family in Beaumont, California. My brother and I would climb up in the trees on these really high-rickety ladders. We would pick and eat cherries until the juice was dripping down our chins, hands and necks. It was always really hot, which means we were very sticky, sweaty and extremely dirty by the end of the day. You can picture it right? And for some reason we were always wearing white, something I still don't understand.

Anyway, I had a load of fresh, sweet cherries last week and I couldn't let summer go by without making a fresh cherry pie. However, I wanted to spice it up. If you have never experienced a "spiced cherry" anything...it's time.

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artichokewhole.jpgGrowing up, my brother Paul was good at baseball, my brother Chris was good at math, and I was good at eating.

I don't mean I ate a lot (which I did). I mean I was a skilled eater. I could eat a big bowl of spaghetti without splashing my top with gravy. Every time. I could rearrange the components of a New England boiled dinner on my plate so that you would swear I had eaten virtually all of it, when in fact, I hadn't even touched it.

Some families would show off their kids at a violin or dance recital, my parents would invite people over to watch me eat an artichoke.

By age six, I was a virtuoso artichoke eater. It was a performance I had mastered like no other.

Whenever we had artichokes, I would be wiping the last drop of lemony juice from my lips, while all of the adults at the table were still hacking and picking at the outer leaves. Even my athletically gifted older brother was clueless when it came to the heart. Dumb jock.

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