Food, Glorious Food......red for tomatoes

For those who do not know me, "Jessie" is my mother, who liked to be called Jessie!

Aha, I have found a wonderful kindred spirit once more in the NYTimes (a paper which cannot deliver a REAL copy of their paper to me, no matter how many times I have written to them, or spoken to them on the phone, about HOW TO GET INTO MY BUILDING...AND NOT LEAVE IT ‘AT THE DOOR.’ Jeeze, we have around five or six ‘doors’...which one guys? where? when? why? what? who? Well, be that as it may (and I have finally just said CANCEL! and I shall read it on my computer... which is not nearly as much fun as ‘in hand.’) back to the reason for this silly blogging for today.

I found a wonderful article in the ‘op-ed’ columnist’s listing by Michael Pollan (July 29, 2009), entitled “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.” (I adore all the op-ed people, next to the magazine, the best of NYTimes.) If you love food, admire Julia Child, or just want a really good read take a look at this long article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?em

So many things he said struck me. I guess I am old enough to be in the ‘first wave’ of feminists, and I guess I missed where one was going to get out of the kitchen, as I have always loved to cook, and wasn’t going to let any feminist movement stop me. Or maybe it is just that my first ‘nurse,’ Jessie’s oft quoted, super-maid/housekeeper/nurse, Mary Phykos (I do not know the ‘real’ spelling, as I have just heard it pronounced that way. She was Checkoslovakian {damn, I cannot even spell that} so I probably have it completely wrong....the only Chezk?? in our building is really Polish, so she’s no help). Ye gods, what happened to that sentence?? Shall I now return to ‘be that as it may.....?’

Mary Phykos adored me. She met my parents at the car door as they came home from hospital with me, snatched me up, crying, “Little Poppa, little Poppa (I looked exactly like my father) and was loathe to give me up except during the times Jessie nursed me. Besides being smitten with her adorable charge, she was also a wonderful cook. Poor Daddy gained weight he never again managed to drop... going from being a very skinny young man to a plump one during Mary’s time with us. He spoke often in later years of her cooking, as did Jessie, always in glowing terms. She knew what a great chef she was, as one of her favourite expressions was (and I heard this from both my parents forever): “Mine Gott, how I can cooook!” I cannot tell you if she was as good as they say, but I’m convinced she imparted to me her love of food and cooking.

Well, they all did. Jessie never hired anyone who couldn’t take over the cooking chores from her Not that Jess couldn’t cook... hell no, she was a wonderful cook, inventive and knowledgeable about all aspects of that chore. She just didn’t want to do it. Jessie had better things to do with her life than being a slave to “a man, a house, a stove.” She was the ultimate feminist before anyone ever heard of Betty Friedan. Granted, she didn’t like to see ‘things’ around, but she always said, “I don’t mind a bit of dust, but will you PLEASE pick up your things and PUT THEM AWAY!” (She had a basket on the stairs always, called “the as-you basket,” meaning “As you go upstairs, take this with you and put the things AWAY.”)

So, to get back to what I was attempting to write about... we always had good cooks working for us. From the time I was a little kid, I stood on a chair beside the stove and I learned. I learned that a good cook NEVER measures, he/she simply picks up the pinch or the handful of what the particular dish needs, stirs several times, tastes, then either goes on with the rest of the dish, or throws in the amount needed and repeats. I learned ALL the different herbs and spices one could use and what dishes they went best with. I should say, I tasted and learned, for I got to taste, also, to see that the right amount was put in. I further learned to taste everything, (Jess insisted on this) whether I thought I’d like it or not. I’m still not fond of a lot of Southern food -- ‘sweetea,’ yuk; slimy anything, yuk; undercooked fried chicken, yuk; filet gumbo, yuk -- and a newer thing, seemingly worshiped by new Hispanic and Chinese chefs, cilantro, I cannot abide, it tastes like my grandmother’s attic smelled, and turns me off.

One of my favorite ‘teachers,’ however, did not work for us. A friend in Chicago named Mary Ann Boscarino had a mother who was raised in Italy, obviously somewhere below Rome, as her ‘gravy’ (as all the Italians I know call what we call ‘spaghetti sauce’) took hours to make. My friend Gus, who hailed from Tuscany insisted that this was terrible, as it should only take around an hour to make good gravy. I adore Italian food and wanted to learn, so Mrs.Boscarino said she would teach me. When I asked her for her recipe, her answer was, “What recipe? You just make it.” So I spent a week or two with my notebook at ready while she ‘just made it.’ I am now one of the best South of Rome Italian cooks I know. Actually, I watched and listened to Gus and I am also one of the best Tuscan cooks I know. I am particularly good at pasta primavera, although I do it my way, with a lot less calories. I go to the Farmer’s Market in the Civic Center, buy every kind of ‘peak of ripeness’ veggies I can find... tomatoes, soft and RED, little zucchini, both green and yellow, perfect green onions, the larger the better, etc., etc., everything at the look, feel and smell of perfection, and usually cheap, as who wants to take all that RIPE food back to the farm -- take them home, chop them up, mix a ‘gravy’ of my own concoction... couple of cups of yogurt, little honey to sweeten it up a bit, olive oil and some balsamic vinegar, put the veggies on top of well drained spaghetti or other pasta, pour on that gravy and feed it to guests... as I have, as usual, made too much for me and Sylvia, the cat to eat, and it does NOT last until tomorrow... it is for NOW.

Better than anything, from a dear little gal we had working for us in Pittsburgh, Lessie, I learned to make something out of almost nothing. My absent minded mother would sometimes forget to shop (she usually remembered, and even made out menus -- most of the time) and Lessie would turn out a magnificent dinner with leftovers and anything she could find in the cupboard. One of my father’s (and mine) favorites was a dish she made from leftover salad, something Jessie always told her to throw out as, “who would want all that wilted, dressing soaked stuff.” (Lessie NEVER threw out anything. She had grown up in a large, very poor family, where you used every scrap, particularly of food.) So, Lessie cooked up a bunch of potatoes from the larder, then added left-over salad from the night before that she had hidden in the back of the fridge from Jess. My father was so fond of Lessie’s invention that he told her always to make extra salad so that he could have it the next night. This, and the potatoes and carrots mashed together and liberally buttered, that Mary in Memphis used to make for me when I was a little kid, are my two “comfort foods” that I cook for myself when I am feeling blue and downhearted. I can eat them and hear both of those wonderful ladies saying, “Now eat your food, Paaaaiguy, or “Miss Peggy” in the case of Lessie, and cheer up... for as my sister Betty Rae once told me she became aware of when you became a “Miss” in the South, when she heard the term being used toward her oldest girl, Rebecca when she was thirteen, and I was past thirteen when Lessie came to work for us.

Goodness, this has been a long and roundabout way of mentioning that I really enjoyed reading that article about Julia Child, but while I was doing it, I also went out to the ktichen and whipped up a nice little snacky of my own devising. Lessie taught me NEVER to waste food, so I had to figure out a way to use up a LOT of celery I had been given (now WHO needs five bunchs of celery?) I have five bunchs of celery, so I cut up a LOT of little celery sticks... and I mean a lot... and stuck them in a tall jar full of water and ice cubes and put them into the fridge. I put several heaping tablespoons of peanut butter into a Chinese rice bowl (the kind real Chinese people get in front of them at a banquet, not a BIG bowl), added some Kosher terriyaki sauce (it’s what I had in the fridge) and some Dijon mustard (kept adding until taste was right -- it needed a ‘bite’ to it, and I am allergic to any kind of pepper, so mustard is my ‘bite’), threw in some mayo so I could stir it well (peanut butter is IMPOSSIBLE... watch a cat or dog with it!) and have been dipping and chewing all through this tale, going out to get more COLD celery sticks every now and then.) Well, I had to have something to eat or I’d have died of hunger with all the food- reading/writing.

Only problem: man, I miss Jessie... and Mary (my darling ‘Mammy’ from Memphis), and Ruby, and Lessie, and Essie and all my surrogate mothers from all those what are beginning to seem like hundreds of years these days. Thank heavens I live in San Francisco with a bad foot, bad leg and useless arm that cannot hold up anything over five pounds (Good God...do I HAVE to have ONE MORE replacement? My doctor, Liz Kantor refers to me as ‘the poster girl for the replacement crowd’) as they take care of their elders (and betters?) and I have Elvira (El-veer-a, please) and Ana to help me out, particularly with the ‘as-you’s) and Anastasia, the one who thinks she is a ‘companion,’ but does LOVE to do the shopping). YIKES... I have become Jessie -- except, I STILL am the best chef in the building. The others do their own cleaning, but either get food delivered (yuk!) or let ‘them’ do it. Not me, I shall cook until I cannot stand at the stove any longer, then rush to sit and rest my aching back and eat my own delicious cooking (diet, what diet? Well, Liz, I DO try. Good thing I am a good cook, and have the good sense NOT to buy whipping cream, cookies, etc., etc.)

Ah, well............. read the article!