And So, We Begin....

Where to start. Where to stop. Both are so important in so many aspects of a life. Dating. Sex. Marriage. Child-rearing. Cooking a meal. Eating a meal. Telling a shaggy dog story.

“The beginning,” you might say, when queried about where to start anything.  I would respond, “The beginning of what? And can you be sure where the beginning is?”

The beginning of a story, or a relationship, or even a meal, can be purely subjective. I have a pair of friends – a couple, who love each other deeply.  The biggest dispute they have in their lives together is at exactly what point their long-standing platonic friendship wandered into romantic territory.

He says it was the overnight trip to Vegas, where they shared a first, slightly drunken kiss at the roulette table. She swears it was several weeks later, in Yosemite, when they made love stone-cold sober.  Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Neither. Both.

For him, when he finally stole a kiss from the girl of his dreams, that was the start of his love story. No matter that they were in a noisy casino, adrift in tequila and cigarette smoke. He’d kissed her, and that was what mattered.

For her, though, until they were alone in a musty rental cabin in the forest, absent roulette wheels and alcohol, a kiss was just a kiss.  Though she treasured their little lip-lock, what happened in Vegas definitely stayed in Vegas. Their love, for her, began in solitude, surrounded by majestic nature and the wind humming through the trees.

Beginnings are tricky.

Endings can be even more fraught with dispute. No doubt there are millions of people in the world at this very writing, whose relationships have ended without them even knowing it. A partner has checked out or cheated, closed the door to their heart, and is preparing to move on.

At some point in the future, the unsuspecting jilted party will look back and try and pinpoint the exact moment their love ended. All of them will venture a guess. Some will be right. The vast majority will probably be way off the mark.

Endings are tricky, too, and harder to pull off gracefully and with loving compassion.

Today, we’re dealing with beginnings.  This story – my story – will begin at the beginning. Not in Vegas or a cabin in Yosemite.  My story is the story of food, of kitchens, of meals and large tables full of people. This is the story of food and begins at the beginning of everything.

Cavemen.

Anthropologists date the beginning of human social structure – the germination of the proverbial “village”, as it were – from the advent of the campfire. Our cultural and social traditions, our language, or concept of family and belonging, turned from pack-like to communal, not when our predecessors banded together to kill the wooly mammoth, but rather when they gathered around an open flame to cook it.

These same anthropologists hypothesize that the minute we stopped merely huddling in the cold, dark caves, sharing our raw kills, but came together in a circle to cook and eat it around the warmth of the fire, we began to become who we are – in the sociological seeds for our humanness were planted in the ashes of those blazing open flames, and took root in ways that shaped our attitudes and experiences since.  Those roaring flames licking up at the chunks of red meat over those fires forged our ideas of community, family, parenthood and, perhaps especially, of food.

In Honor of The Wearin' o' da Green...

... and by way of my friend Eric Rapp (who swears he's making this this weekend), I give you the recipe for...


Beeramisu...

Seriously.

I insist we all make it for the upcoming St. Pattie's Day weekend, or someone's gonna get pinched, whether they're wearing green or not.

Erin-go-Flippin'-Bragh, peeps.


~C~

Zen and the Art of Denial

Nero

Have I mentioned that part of my reasoning for starting this blog was in order to stop writing in the other one? The other one, though it didn't start that way, evolved into a political blog, especially in 2008, when I was posting 3 to 4 times a day there.

I posted so much because I was reading three to five newspapers a day, watching countless hours of coverage of the election (all channels -- except Fox News, which I don't count as news so much), and really paying attention to the world. I think I believed -- like a football fan who can't just Tivo the game, but must watch it live, in case his team needs him -- that if I paid attention, I could make a difference.  To the country. And maybe to the world a little bit, too.  Maybe if we all concentrated hard enough with our good intentions and our best thoughts and wishes, we could alter the trajectory of hate and violence we've been on for ten years.

But the truth is - and I know this now -- we can't.

We're kind of doomed.

Not in a "blood moon, rivers of fire" kind of way. But in a "collapse of the Roman Empire" kind of way.

I think in the last couple of days, I've come to understand Nero a little better. He didn't fiddle while Rome burned because he couldn't see the fire.  He fiddled while Rome burned because he knew, tacitly, that there was nothing he could do to put the fire out.  And maybe, somewhere inside, he knew that it was time for Rome to burn. It was Rome's turn to fall apart and then start anew.  Rome still exists.  So do the Greeks. So do the English and the Egyptians.  Not they way they did once, perhaps.  But they're still here, alive and well, and dedicated to all things Roman/Greek/English/Egyptian.

There's a little less hubris there, and a little more humility. But each fallen empire has retained its autonomy and its cultural... well... arrogance, frankly -- and good for them.  They created and built and wrote and painted and sculpted their way into history, and they deserve a little pat on their backs and a toot of their horns for it.  We'll survive, too.  We'll be different, and right now, we don't know what that looks like, and it's making us mighty, mighty uncomfortable.  But every major religious, spiritual and historical work hints that our time as a the Last Emperor is coming to a close.  An era is ending, and a new one beginning, and, like most new eras, it's full of promise and misadventure.

I started this blog because I can't focus on that anymore.  I can't control it. I can't change it. I can't embrace it. I don't like it.  I don't like those people. I'm not wild about them anymore, those people whose articles and blogs I read, who's shows I watched. I don't like their outlooks on what's happening. Most of all, I don't agree with it.

In light of the horrible events in Tuscon over the weekend, I'd forgotten the most important part of my new zen approach.  You people are not my children, and I'm not responsible for you.  I'm not responsible for your ignorance or your attitude, your bigotry or your hate.  If you want to be a bigot, this is America, and you get to be that.  If you want to be a homophobe or a crazy, radical extremist, again, as long as you operate inside the boundaries of the law, you get to be those things.  I'm here to talk about food -- how to make it, what it means to me (and to all of us, in many way). I'm here to talk about fresh basil and portabello mushrooms. When it comes to the rest of you, you can either join me for the ride, or not.  But I'm not in the business of directed intention when it comes to politics.

Y'all are on your own.

We're on the precipice of something big, something huge. As it happens, my spirituality teaches that we're on the brink of an epic age of love and compassion the likes of which has never been seen on this earth. Yeah. That's good. Let's go with that. I have decided to accept what is happening in the world as part of what needs to happen. I can't control it or stop it anymore than I can stop the tides or control the rain.  So I've decided to use cooking as my form of meditation.

So, I started this blog because I want to learn to cook. I want to make myself a better cook and make other people want to be better cooks.  I started this blog because it's a distraction away from thinking about the dark seriousness of this past Sunday's events.

I'm Nero. This blog is my fiddle.  So while I pick out "Turkey in the Straw" as best I can, we'll all think about ways to cook up that turkey and make it yummy.  And we won't need to concern ourselves with the ugliness of the world.

The Joy of a Good Veggie Sandwich

I had a sandwich for lunch today that was... how can I describe it?  I mean, I'd show you a photo of it, but I bought it for lunch and had no idea it would be so delicious, I'd want to blog about it.  Next time I order one -- probably next week sometime -- I'll photograph it, and show you what you're missing. Instead, here's a photo of the 1880 Cafe by James, on the first floor of 1880 Century Park East, in Century City.  This is where the sandwich was made, anyway.

It was yummy.

I don't know why don't know why I'm going ga-ga over a sandwich. It is just a bunch of stuff roasted and packed between two slices of bread.   Okay, so it was a panini, which means that the bread was toasted to a nice light brown crisp. Yeah, alright, and the "stuff" that was slapped in the middle were roasted portobello mushrooms, roasted peppers, provolone, ripe tomato and pesto sauce.  And, if you're going to get completely picky and detail-oriented, the sandwich was served with yummy mixed greens and the house vinaigrette, which is nothing original, but is tasty nonetheless.

I think the panini took me by surprise because I truly never anticipated ordering it.  I've been on a self-destructive food path for a while now.  There's been an undercurrent of choosing food that is the most destructive and unhealthy that somehow has driven my food choices -- not all the time, but regularly enough that it has effected every aspect of my life.  I have wished to eat better, but I've been unable to apply that wish to my actual choices.

I started to listen to an audiobook two days ago called A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever, written and read by Marianne Williamson. This book has shaken my spiritual foundation to its core, but I'm not going to go into details at the moment. I've vowed that I am going to read this book and no other until I have full "grokked" it and absorbed it. Suffice it to say that, although I have miles and miles to go before I sleep, Williamson's message of healing the spiritual wounds that keep one fat is so deeply profound and applicable that with every lesson, I'm finding I'm making healthier and healthier options.

Hence the vegetarian panini and salad for lunch.  And the banana for dessert.

What? I didn't mention the banana? Sorry... I was blinded by grilled portobella mushrooms.

Food is for sustenance, enjoyment and nourishment. It is not to be used for sublimating feelings.

This is my lesson to be learned, so I can love food in a healthy way.

~C~

Passing It On: Cooking Through Generations

Helen, age 13

I never met my maternal grandmother, Helen. She died of lung cancer at the age of forty-two, when my mother was seventeen.  I did briefly meet my grandmother's mother, Freda, when I was seven, and she lay in a hospital bed, dying.  She had practically raised my mother, having left her own husband to "help" with the new baby (my mother), and "helping" until Helen's death.  Freda did most of the cooking in the house, so most of my mother's tremendous cooking skills were passed straight through from her. Freda's cooking skills and family recipes came from her own mother, Cristina, on the other hand, had immigrated from Bremen in Northern Germany, near the North Sea, in the mid-1870s.  I have no idea where Cristina was originally from, but I have a strong feeling it wasn't from Bremen, since many of her recipes were decidedly Tuscan -- especially the spaghetti sauce she passed on to Freda, that Freda passed on to my mother, that my mother passed on to me. Also, she spelled her name with a "C", rather than the customarily Teutonic "K". This leads me to believe that she might have been Italian, if not by birth, then by heritage.

Freda, in her wedding dress

My mother didn't spend much time teaching me how to cook. She was a working mother, busy and tired, and most of the time, it was just easier for her to do things herself.  But the two dishes my mother did pass on -- particularly because they were dishes that came from Cristina through Freda -- were the famous spaghetti or red sauce (which I have used as the basis for every Italian red sauce from lasagna to baked shells to spaghetti), and the Dish That Hath No Name (but which spent some time being referred to as the "sausage-pepper-potato thing", before it found it's more permanent name of "Kielbasa, Pepper, Onion and Potato stir-fry").

Cristina, in Germany

These are the only two dishes that survived the test of time because a) they were relatively easy and inexpensive to make, and they yielded a lot of helpings, and b) we liked them enough to keep wanting to cook them.  They've evolved somewhat, based mostly on the availability of produce in each generation. Peppers were the most ethereal ingredient. They do not grow well in cold, cloudy climes and once picked, require refrigeration to stay fresh for any length of time.  Peppers were rumored to have been part of my great-great-grandmother's version, but once she arrived in eastern Pennsylvania, where I reckon peppers were a rare commodity, she replaced them with root vegetables. My great-grandmother split the difference, using parsnips and peppers at one point. My mother took the dish to a whole new level by eliminating root vegetables altogether and getting back to peppers -- this time, in the lovely red, orange and yellow hues we have come to know and love today.

I hope that my addition to the dish continues to make it new and better. I figure people have messed with the vegetables long enough. I decided that the kielbasa needed a little help, so I chop up a slice of bacon into bits and use the fat to help brown the sausage, then deglaze the pan to cook the veggies in.  I am pretty sure this is an improvement, if for not other reason than... hey... it's bacon....

The weather dropped today to below 65 degrees and that means it's time for two things -- close-toed shoes and the kielbasa stir-fry.  This weekend, I'll be making it for the first time in several months. I can only hope to do my ancestors proud.

~C~

Just so we're clear here....

"Thanksgiving" by Norman Rockwell
first published as cover of The Literary Digest
November 22, 1919

There is NO such thing as "healthy, low-fat Thanksgiving dinner."   Wait... I take that back... you can have a healthy Thanksgiving by taking all the necessary sanitation precautions of refrigeration, separate surfaces for meat and veggie food preparation and making sure all food is cooked to proper temperature.  You know, so that no one dies of ptomaine poisoning or salmonella.  Guests appreciate that kind of healthy cooking.  What they don't appreciate is your decision to cook everything vegan, because "we've been eating a lot of meat lately, and we thought we'd try something new."  Don't. Don't try something new.  Not for Thanksgiving.

If you're not up to making dinner, don't make dinner. Let's all go to the Smokehouse in Burbank -- they serve a killer-ass traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. While the rest of us are happily engaged in the consumption of buttery mashed potatoes and savory walnut stuffing,  you can indulge your desire to experiment with a meat-free holiday all you want by ordering a salad.  We'll try not to rub it in.

But if you're in charge of my holiday menu -- as you must be if you've agreed to host it -- you'd better get pretty damn traditional, pretty damn quick.

And another thing -- while we're on the topic... What's up with the nouvelle Thanksgiving cooking? If I find a Vietnamese water chestnut within 200 yards of my Thanksgiving dinner, I'm calling Paula Deen, and SOMEBODY'S gonna get a stern talking to. My daughter still relates the story of how she attended Thanksgiving at her cousin's house. It was the first year the cousin and her husband hosted a holiday dinner for the whole family. They decided they were going to introduce the family to all kinds of new ethnically and culturally diverse recipes, few of which resembled anything traditionally associated with Thanksgiving. I guess they wanted to broaden the family's culinary horizons. It was the last holiday dinner my daughter (or, I believe, her father) attended at their house.  So the first holiday dinner quietly became the last. Sad, too, since, had she just been hosting a dinner party, her dishes might have been wildly popular. They sounded tasty when my daughter described them. Just not very in keeping with the season. When it comes to holidays, particularly Thanksgiving, people don't want new and exciting.  They want old and familiar.

Don't misunderstand -- I think serving new side dishes for Thanksgiving is a wonderful thing.  I myself have toyed with the idea of bringing some maple-soaked roasted butternut squash to the festivities, just because we've never had it, and it might be a tasty treat.  But maple and butternut squash are not exactly exotic flavors where Thanksgiving is concerned. And my holiday hostess is supplying our traditional family favorites -- including a green bean casserole concoction we got tired of referring to as "the green bean thingy" and finally dubbed "Cyril" -- in addition to new and different things.  Why? Because she's been at this for a lot of years. She knows what makes it feel like Thanksgiving.  It's the company, yes. But it's also the food. The familiar smells and tastes of food you only eat once a year.  Do you know how many roast turkeys I've had in my life? I'd tell you, but then you'd be able to guess my exact age, because I've had approximately one a year since I was two.  Now, ask me how many times this week I've eaten sushi.  Get my point?  Good.

So, the next time you're tempted to "help" your guests by foregoing traditional stuffing because "carbs are just so fattening," call us all up and tell us not to come over. Tell us you've lost your mind this year, and we'll all be eating at the Smokehouse for Thanksgiving.  That way, we won't have to hate you, and say "no, thank you" to your holiday invitations for the next twenty years.

Feed me new and interesting foods any other time of the year. On the fourth thursday of November, we'll brook none of your shenanigans.

~C~

GATHERING AROUND THE FIRE PIT

“All good parties end up in the kitchen.”

Lin White 

(1934 – 1999)

Opera director, party connoisseur, my fairy godmother

My godmother, Lin White, used to say that all good parties end up in the kitchen. A notorious party-giver, she was an opera director who threw at least two scheduled parties for every production – the opening night party and the closing night party – and then several impromptu gatherings in between, as she invited cast and crew, audience members, and family back to her house after rehearsals for a bite to eat and some wine.

Whether the gathering was formal or improvised, Linny’s parties always ended up in her kitchen. Even when it was a tiny, ranch-style kitchen, by the beginning of the second hour, at least five people would be huddled tightly in the cramped kitchen, around Linny’s warm oven, drinking wine, picking at whatever had failed to make it as far as the bar or the buffet set up on the dining room table. A sad, brief experiment in trying to thwart this was attempted when her husband installed swinging saloon doors to separate the kitchen from the rest of the living area. They lasted around two years, before they finally got so sufficiently abused by the constant influx of foot traffic that they were removed for good.

Linny’s kitchen was where we wanted to be. We preferred it if Linny were there, too, but her presence was too much to hope for when she gave a party, as she was careful to circulate and mingle, and sitting down seemed to violate her most basic spiritual tenets. But we were content with the company of each other, around a warm stove, waiting for the next hors d’oeuvres, or the next bit of salad, or even picking the scraps at the foil where the chicken wings had just been baked.

Why are we always drawn into the kitchens of our successful hosts and hostesses? What is it about the casual easiness of leaning against a kitchen cabinet, drinking a too-warm glass of wine because the bar is a little too far away to bother with the walk.

Some anthropologists believe that it is a vestigial part of our evolution. In the Lower Paleolithic era, naked, spindly hominids stood little chance of survival on an open, unguarded savanna and only managed to conquer it with the advent of one essential, life-preserving substance – fire. We sought out the shelter of caves and crevices where we could take cover and only have to maintain a watch over one hundred eighty degrees of our landscape, rather than the whole three-sixty. The addition of fire brought even more comfort by providing warmth, and spooking big animals that might be consider stealing our dinner – or, worse, making us their dinner. Man’s mastery over fire began to shape how humans developed, culturally, linguistically, socially and evolutionarily.

We stopped being a pack and became more of a tribe. We gathered at night around a fire, cooked and ate the days kill, developed language and storytelling, learned to create art on the walls of caves, cared for the sick and elderly, allowed others to care for our young (something a chimp mother would never allow), and developed smaller teeth and shorter digestive tracks. We groomed and huddled and conversed and shared in a way that no other animal does with its kin. We stayed together and helped each other raise our incredibly helpless infants. We cared not only for our children, but for the children of our tribe-mates, as if they were our own. Adoption is not unheard of in other large primate groups, yet it is far rarer and more deadly for a chimp or gorilla infant to be placed in the arms of a female not its mother. Chimp mothers usually carry their infants in arms for nearly twice as long as humans, though chimp babies learn to walk in half the time as their human counterparts. Soon, our teeth, our builds and our digestive tracts adapted to eating cooked meat, and our fate as fire gatherers was sealed.

Our propensity for seeking out and gathering with our kin around the warm, protective comfort of the fire to eat and talk and care for each other persists. That is why all good parties end up in the kitchen. Because the food we make there, the warmth and the casual atmosphere of working and preparing, brings us together. The backyard barbeque was perfected specifically so that humans could return themselves to a time when we cooked our kill over an open flame, while gathering together and sharing our gathered sustenance, good talk about weighty matters (where did we last see that heard of mastodons, anyway?), and care for each other and the young ones.  Is it a conscious gathering? Who knows? But it seems fairly universal, for even the non-cooks in a group will gravitate to where the food is.  Most non-drinkers can stay away from the bar, but rarely can a dieting non-cook stay out of a warm kitchen during a cozy party.

~C~