Food, Family and Memory

On December 24th, 1963, Philadelphia was hit with a rip-roaring blizzard.  I’ll never forget it.  By evening, the drifts were well past knee-high.  Snowflakes swirled in the halos of streetlights.  Driving anywhere was out of the question.  Wrapped up in coats, boots, gloves, hats and scarves, and loaded down with bags of presents, my girlfriend Bonnie, my mother and I set out on foot for Aunt Tilda’s house.  What would have been a 7-minute drive turned into an hour trek.   I remember laughing so hard we could hardly walk.  We knew we were crazy to be slogging through such a storm, but we were determined to reach our destination.  It was Christmas Eve, and Aunt Tilda had prepared the traditional Italian Feast of Seven Fishes.

Tilda’s house was decorated to the rafters.  Twinkling lights outlined every window.  Tiny red and green Christmas balls hung from each curtain ruffle.  Swags of tinsel garland draped the mirrors.  The huge tree was covered with hundreds of ornaments she had been collecting for decades.  At its top perched a gossamer angel.  And beneath its bedecked branches, nestled the white and gold 30-piece Nativity set that Tilda had stayed up into the wee hours painting on many a sweltering summer night.

“…I remember, as the chief result, a very pleasant little supper after the theatre, at Miss Tempest’s house near Regent’s Park, for the purpose of talking the matter over.”

-Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

I had always rather imagined myself living the sort of life in which after theatre dinners would figure quite prominently. There would also be suppers after the opera, the symphony and the series of Beethoven string quartets. I would nibble on some grapes, and maybe have some tea and biscuits to tide me over as I got dressed and did my hair and makeup, and after the performance I would come in from the cold (it’s always cold in this particular fantasy), my head still full of this character or that movement, to the smell of something delicious to eat.

While I readily acknowledge that this dream of mine is largely the result of reading far too many 19th and early 20th century novels involving the British aristocracy and their American descendants (Henry James! Edith Wharton!!). I have stubbornly clung to the hope that at least once before I died, someone would have dinner ready for me when I got home from a performance. I can now say that it happened, and that it was less elegant, but just as wonderful as I had hoped.

My introduction to oysters came when I lived in Boston in college, and had a roommate (let’s call her “Ellen”) who was one of the most unattractive specimens of humanity I have encountered in my years on earth. I am not referring to her physical appearance; I’m not that shallow.

Her significant deficits had mostly to do with manners, and with the fact that she kept a small refrigerator in our extremely small dorm room, from which she regularly withdrew and inhaled various edibles ranging from liverwurst and cream cheese sandwiches to ice cream. She often consumed these items in her bed, never offered to share, and frankly made such a display of dripping, chomping barbarousness that any appetite I might have had was crushed. 

It wasn’t often that my dad was in charge of making supper, but every once in a while my mom would hand preparation of the last meal of the day off to him. His motto in the kitchen was, "the simpler, the better." He’d open a can of Campbell’s bean with bacon soup, mix it in a pot with some water, then slice up a couple of hot dogs and toss them in. He had supper on the table in no time at all. And, I think we liked it. Ugh.

My standards for bean soup have a come a long way since then. No more Campbell’s for me. On a chilly Saturday afternoon, I love having a pot of homemade bean soup simmering on the stove.

I like to use dried beans when I can. They are very inexpensive and I find their taste and texture to be so much better than canned beans. I like to use a quick soak method, boiling the rinsed beans for 2 minutes, then removing the beans from the heat, allowing them to soak for an hour in the hot water.