Food, Family, and Memory

Mimi’s Chicken Chow Mein – Ashiya, Japan to the A and P

mimichowmein After graduating from Alabama Polytechnic Institute (a.k.a. Auburn) and marrying my grandmother, my grandfather joined the Air Force. Starting their married lives in Ashiya, Japan, on the southern island of Kyushu, Mimi and Granddaddy were much akin to many newlyweds.

They were setting up house, planning a family, learning to cook, so on and so forth, yet, being in post World War II Japan influenced these Southern newlyweds more than they would ever realize. One of those influences was in the kitchen, where Mimi began her culinary prowess in the land of bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and soy sauce. This was the 1950’s and upon return to the South, those Japanese and other Asian sways may still be found in her cooking today.

“Where we were in Japan, Southern Japan, we were on the same latitude lines as home, so the seasons, produce, and flora were much of the same as home… azaleas, camellias, etc. all grew and bloomed there.” Mimi said. Besides that, many Southerners eat many things over rice i.e. Creole, red beans, gumbo, and stews, so that part of the cuisine was a tête-à-tête between the two cultures for sure.

Restaurant Androuet

androuetcheese How did it happen that the Androuet Restaurant in Paris could quietly disappear without fanfare or protest? How could it become a dilapidated sign over a store front; soulless, diluted and gone? Why have I waited so long to write about it? Secretly, I hoped that somehow it would come back to life.

The original cheese shop, ripening caves and restaurant was located on Rue Amsterdam. Rue Amsterdam was quirky and not so nice an area. The street was long and one-way. We would circle around for half an hour to be able to park close enough to be safe after dark. It was Mecca for a cheese lover - I am a zealot.

The tiny, refrigerated shop on the first floor was filled with every cheese made in every corner of France. Each one was ‘a’ point’-- perfectly aged and ready to eat. The three tiny, older women tended the inventory of cheeses constantly. When you walked in there was no grand greeting, only a quick look up and aloof ‘Bon jour’. I always wondered if they knew how difficult a place it was to find. If they did know how much effort it took maybe they would have been kinder. It doesn’t matter now because the best cheese shop in the world is gone. Maybe their intense concentration is what it took to maintain such high quality.

Cheese is like wine; it opens in your glass-the first long sniff of its’ aroma to the last sip of perfectness. Cheese is like that as well - birth, aging and perfection and it then it gone, too. These three women struggled to keep so many cheeses perfect. Most, barely lasting a day or two. I understood why they never looked up from their arduous work.

The Walnut Oil Man

frenchroad Okay, I admit that I have read Patricia Wells' Food Lover’s Guide to France so many times that the pages are no longer glued to its spine. My copy smells old because it is old. It isn’t all that accurate anymore but there is still some relevant information, just less. This book is the reason I have had so many treasured memories of France.

The most memorable one in the whole book for me was finding the walnut oil man - Patricia Wells wrote that he had a water wheel that aided in the extraction, used no electricity, the farm was difficult to find and beware of the dogs. All true, but so much more...

I was the navigator, not the driver that day. I was responsible for finding all the tiny little roads on our paper map to the mill. Half the roads weren’t on the map and any signage was obscured by overgrown trees. It was very rural and our afternoon was turning into either a treasure hunt or wild goose chase. I could feel we were near. When my boyfriend asked if I found the road on the map, I nodded. Not true, we were lost.

You can guess what the driver said as we drove threw the same intersection for the fourth time. “How can we be lost if you are reading the map? You know how to read a map?” “Yayyyy”, I replied - you could cut the tension with a butter knife. One more try, then I would agree to give up the goose chase. Suddenly, I saw it - the faded yellow sign covered with ivy and grown up trees like Patricia had described, only more overgrown.

Fredde Duke's Mayonnaise Sandwich

	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.

The Diamond Jim Brady of Maine

greenspot2 It was a cool, rainy fall day at our store in Maine many years ago. My sister was running errands and I was alone at our store. A well-waxed black truck pulled into the driveway and parked way too close to our building. I admit I was a bit nervous as I watched for the person or persons to get out from behind the blacked-out windows. The door opened slowly and a huge single foot appeared from under the door and slowly another emerged. The single occupant was the tallest and biggest person I had every seen in my life and he was headed for our front door. Tom was 6 feet, 8 inches and weighed around 600 pounds, seriously huge.

I no longer feared being robbed. Now I was worried that our floor couldn't hold that much weight. My brain went into overdrive trying quickly to calculate how much 3/4 inch plywood could hold for weight per square foot. Instant answer was - he was over gross. Three steps in and he was drooling over our lobster tank filled to the brim with a fine selection of jumbo lobsters. Then it happened, the crackling sound of a dozen laminate layers of plywood giving way as his foot slowly disappeared and all I could think was how I was going to explain this gapping hole in the middle of floor to my sister when she returned.

I helped him get his foot unstuck from the layers of plywood as he pointed at 3 jumbo lobsters that he wanted to buy. He never missed a beat. If it is possible for someone that large to spin in ecstasy, he spun around our store taking in everything and shaking with true glee. I cashed him out, carried his bags of lobsters out and apologized repeatedly for my floor. He slowly lifted himself back into the truck as the vehicle listed under his weight on the driver’s side. He promised to return the following day. Yikes, I had a floor to repair and story to tell....

Food, Family and Memory