Oddities and Obsessions

I was sitting with my husband in our sorry little kitchen. It’s small. Totally old school with a swinging hinged door that closes you in. No modern open floor plan where the kitchen blends into the family room. I love our little 1700-square foot Spanish Bungalow, but I’m never sure it’s where he feels most at home -- but that’s a whole other story that I may, or may not, get back to.

This night, I had thrown together a meal. I hate cooking. It’s not something I’m that great at. It’s always a struggle. And lately, I have gotten even lazier than the naturally lazy person I was when we had kids at home. So, I might make a “salad” of pre-washed lettuce that I throw in a bowl, and my husband will make fun of the little effort that went into it. I’ll serve it with a large potato that we share -- and he will inform me that for now we can still afford two potatoes – though with retirement looming, we may soon have to cut back to one.

He was deep in thought. We have five kids. We often worry about one or another or sometimes all, so I thought he must be brooding about a child. I love to communicate. I’m a woman. A communicator. So I asked.

“What are you thinking about?”

“My new coffeemaker.”

“Seriously? You’re that deep in thought about your COFFEEMAKER?”

“Yes.”

Have you eaten at the Tuckers recently?”

“You mean the olives and the almonds?”

“Every fucking time. That’s all you get until dinner.”

Well, it’s true. I don’t like to stuff people before I feed them. I want that feeding-the-pirhanas feeling when I bring the pasta out. Forks flashing. That kind of thing.

I have no interest in serving food to full people.

So, we put out a bowl of olives – usually the “festive mix” or whatever it’s called, from Fairway, or those big, fat Sicilian olives, a bit lighter green in color, meaty and briny.

Bear with me for a little (for me) life changing story...

I've gotten pretty used to the poor and homeless outside even the fanciest grocery stores in L.A. asking for money. As someone who never carries cash, it's easy to tell them no.

But tonight, as I left the market, there was this old woman, maybe she was 60, maybe she was 80, and as I walked to my car, I heard her say to the sidewalk, "I'm just so hungry."

I had to stop. "What would you like to eat? A sandwich?"

"Chicken Noodle Soup. I'd love some of that Chicken Noodle Soup!"

"Which kind?" I asked, wondering if she wanted a can of Campbell's.

Her face brightened, "Oh, that wonderful soup from the soup bar!"

Not sure where the soup bar was, I asked, "Can you come with me and show me?"

She said, "Oh, no...they don't let me in there."

There’s no denying it – I am a pork-man through and through. Though I am not one of these 20 or 30 something dudes with a pig’s head tattooed on his forearm who from time to time is adoringly featured on Food Network, pigs and me go way, way back. Though I am a Jew, blade-cut pork chops, pickled pigs feet, Canadian bacon, rolled pork butt, breakfast sausage and the piece du resistance of my childhood – spare ribs (usually slathered in Duk Sauce – a sugary, vaguely fruity tasting, thin jelly with chunks of plums and something I later learned was ginger, that came in a tall jar with a label featuring a racist caricature of a smiling buck-toothed Chinese man wearing a coolie hat and sporting a queue [the Chinese government abolished the queue in 1911 but it seemingly persisted on labels of Duk Sauce at least through the early 1970’s]) were a staple of my New York childhood.

I carried on my affair with pigs when I went to the pork bastion, North Carolina, for law school. One Saturday in the fall of 1974, I was invited to a ‘pig pickin’ in Chatham County, outside of Chapel Hill. I arrived early in the day, fascinated by the prospect of actually witnessing the roasting of a whole hog – a feat that had fascinated me since my mother told me the story about how the Chinese created roast pork.