A Blithe PALATE

At the corner of Virginia and N. Highland (Berry Crostadas)

I ate crostadas in the fall, in the cooling evenings when you and I were falling in love.  I ate them at La Tavola, where I first encountered free form crostadas, with their thick, flaky, buttery pastry dough crusts, laden with warm fruits simmering in their juices and sugar and spices.

The turn of this century is heavily laden with memories of La Tavola, at the corner of Virginia and N. Highland; dewy with the reminiscence of walking to the restaurant from Mike's and Lori's first and second houses in the neighborhood; filled with the laughter of dinners there with my friends; and the amused incredulity of a Sunday brunch when you informed me I was your girlfriend.

Some time before I met you, I sat in his car wondering what I had locked my life into, feeling that same helplessness that propelled me to wake up the morning after he bought a puppy a few years before, to sob uncontrollably, thinking that I had chained my life to his and it was inexorably linked to the puppy's lifetime -- that I would be trapped with him through the duration of the puppy's life; that we would be married and have children and be divorced by the time the puppy became an old dog and died.  But the puppy is going on 12 years old now and soon to expire; she has led a happy and sweet life:  but I broke away from that life after 6 years.  Sometimes I think I was in that life with her, with him, for 5 years and 8 months too long.  It should never have been more than a summer romance, but I felt guilty breaking up with him, and so I did not. It was easy at first to delay the eventual breakup.  But I tarried far too long.

Lori asked me once:  "Why did you stay?"

And she alone of all the ones who loved me, voiced out loud the same question I had wondered too, the query others had privately wondered at.

And here is the answer:  "Because I had been in love before him, wildly, deeply, hurtfully, and I did not want to feel so out of control again; you see, when you are 23 years old before you fall in love for the first time, the heights are deliriously lofty but the end is crushing."

"Oh," said Lori with a knowing glimmer of understanding.  "You looked for safe and found yourself bored and trapped."

Yes.

He had ceased to be a love years before; was slowly losing any status as a friend -- but there we were, stagnant and dying, yet too stupid and lazy to do anything real about it until the end was upon us and I made the fateful decision to walk out the door, knowing when I did that there was no return -- and oh my God -- how freeing did that feel?  Yet simultaneously sad, frightening, strange; the end did not come with a forceful detonation, it came with a nuclear blast and then the subsequent fallout that makes me now wince with sadness, with relief, with not a little shame, with chagrin at our behavior and our actions...oh Lord, why is the end of a relationship so jumbled, so fucked up in a way that few other things can be?

"What was the catalyst?" asked Lori.

Oh.  Well, it was a Sunday morning.  And at the intersection of Virginia and N. Highland, there is a restaurant called La Tavola where I had eaten with friends, but he had no interest in going.  And I thought, oh they have such a lovely brunch.  He was being his normal self (jerk) in the car, tersely informing me that we were not going to stop for brunch because he had errands to do and I should have stayed at home or gone out in my own car, rather come along with him:  I was bothering him!  He was white knuckling the steering wheel, cursing the red light and while I wondered where on earth he was going that required such urgency on a Sunday morning, I suddenly saw the antipodean reflection of my own life pass before me.  I saw The Couple.

The Couple crossed the street, young -- as young as I once been, as young as we had been when we had first started our ill fated relationship ("Oh my God, I have wasted and lost my twenties on this man.") -- but in love.  She entered the intersection first, long dark hair flowing behind her -- is it a real memory or a fanciful recreation in my mind that the wind lifted her hair behind her as she turned to say something to him, who was two steps behind her?  Did anyone else notice that they strode in unison, right leg stretched before left leg?  Tucked under her arm was the Sunday New York Times.  He carried two coffee cups.

There came with this vision a roiling wave of nausea and an unbearable bitterness; there before me was the life I longed for, and did not, and would never have, with the man beside me.

There's a scene in the movie version of The Bridges of Madison County where Francesca is confronted at a street light with the life she could have and the one she has; and she begins to cry realizing that though she is bound to the life she chose long ago, she yearns for something more...but as she is about to open the door to run to the life she wants, the light changes and she loses her chance.

And I began to cry quietly because I was watching the life I wanted cross the street while I sat in a car with a man who was fuming at a streetlight.

"Coffee and the Sunday paper?" Lori said with a hint of incredulity.

Yes.

What it represented.  What coffee and the Sunday paper represented:  A matched purpose.  The intersection of two lives.  A relationship.

"You opened the door and left?"

No.  Read above about stupid and lazy.  Read above about tarrying.  It was a little while longer, but eventually, I realized I could open the door and walk to the life I wanted.

There is a lovely recipe for peach and raspberry crostadas in Sara Foster's Casual Cooking.   I revamped it a little to make blackberry and raspberry crostadas. I found the recipe when you and I were in Atlanta last week...

...As we were passing by La Tavola, where you told me on our second date that you were going to marry me; at the corner of Virginia and N. Highland.

Special Brownies.

Hubby and I were in the car last week and listening to the radio; there was a news item about a Dearborn, Michigan police officer who confiscated marijuana and failed to turn it in; he took it home and he and his wife baked pot brownies. While stoned, they called 911 in paranoic fear that they were dying. The transcript as follows:

Edward Sanchez:  I think I’m having an overdose and so is my wife.
911: Overdose of what?
Sanchez: Marijuana… We made brownies and I think we’re dead. I really do… Time is going by really, really, really slow…

Then:

Sanchez: What’s the score in the Red Wings game?
911: I’ve got no clue, I don’t watch the Red Wings.
Sanchez: I just wanted to make sure this isn’t some kind of hallucination I’m having.

I don't know about you, but I find this utterly hilarious.  Time goes slow when you're stoned?  Say it isn't so.

When we were first dating, Hubby and I used to spend our winter holidays in Santa Monica, four blocks from the ocean.  During one such vacation, I went on a fridge raid at our friend's house and found a pan of brownies.  Score!  As you know, I'm deeply fond of brownies and of dense chocolate cakes.  As I reached for one of those delectable squares, a thought suddenly occurred to me.  I padded my way from the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs of L.'s house.

"L.!" I yelled up to my friend.  "Are those brownies in the fridge or are those brooooooooooooooownies?"

"They're brooooooooooooooooownies," she called from her office.

Sigh.  Instead of eating, I got to write a sign which I posted to the fridge:  EMIL DO NOT EAT THESE BROWNIES. YOU WILL PISS HOT.  (Hubby's job required random drug testing).  L. later told me that the brownies were a gift from her boss, who -- at the time -- was 72 years old.  Yes, you read that right.  A septuagenarian made her pot brownies.

Of course, the most famous recipe for pot brownies is attributed to a woman who was in her seventies when her cookbook was published in 1954.  The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, written by Gertrude Stein's lover, includes a recipe for "Haschich Fudge."  The cookbook was meant to be a memoir of her life with Stein and not necessarily a cook book --but apparently this recipe was planted by her friend Brion Gysin as a joke.  It was not until the book was published that the recipe was discovered --and while it was printed in the British edition, it was removed from the American edition.

I'm hopelessly sheltered about certain things.  I once watched a man roll a joint and did not realize what he was doing. Instead, I debated the merits of the interior decorating magazine which he was using as a platform, noting that I preferred "The World of Interiors" when one of my friends, realizing my absolute cluelessness remarked, "For rolling a joint?!"

But still, when I think about pot brownies, I wonder to myself - how do you make them?  From scratch?  With a mix?  Just think:  taste and experience could be completely affected by the type of butter you use, the mix you buy (is Duncan Hines better than Betty Crocker?), the chocolate -- I mean for heaven's sake, there's a whole range of chocolate to consider -- 70% cacao?  Scharffen Berger?  Valrhona?  And then of course, the pot itself!  What kind?  Are there different kinds?  And from where?  Do varietals matter?  Do you need single source marijuana to make a really good gourmet pot brownie?  And if you make it from scratch, would you use organic flour and ingredients?  I mean, it makes me delirious, sitting here and contemplating the creation of a gourmet pot brownie.  I'm sure this delirium doesn't even come close to how I'd feel eating one (no thanks) but the possibilities are endless! 

Why the hell am I even thinking about this?

I wonder what recipe Officer Sanchez and his wife used?

And if you know, please God, do not tell me.  I prefer to enjoy speculatively, not literally.

Gemelli and Rustic Meat Sauce

I have a particular affection for plebian dishes.

"Peasant food," is how Hubby refers to these dishes; in any culture, in any cuisine, it's pure and simple cooking, workhorse dishes meant to warm a tummy.

In Vietnamese cooking, I have a plethora of these favorites, the most favored of which is sweet rice with Chinese sausage or with garlic-ginger steamed chicken.  In French cuisine it's gratin.  For Italian, few things please me more than a rustic meat sauce with pasta.

I've been eating a lot of pasta recently -- when last I ate this much pasta, I was in grad school, relatively poor and on the verge of scurvy from carbo loading.  Time does heal all wounds, even the culinary ones. 

Hubby makes a great meat sauce.  Lots of meat, lots of garlic, chunky tomatos, a good paste, parsley, basil, oregano and wine.  The first time he made it, I was blown away by the flavors -- I later realized why:  a $40 bottle of wine went into making it.  Really it's true:  never use a cheap wine with which to cook. 

It's the sort of dish that requires no accoutrements; no decorative sprinkles of parsley or excessively grated parmigiano, though both are great.

No, if I'm to eat peasant food, I think the dish should be honest:  plain Jane and perfect.