A Blithe PALATE

Getting Lost.

Years and years ago, I made a deliberate decision to get lost.  

It came about after a strange "A ha!" moment of realization that until then, I'd spent most of my life in rigid self-control and structure; and thus, had likely missed a life enriched by unexpected adventure and opportunistic flights.

So I began to get lost.  And I was always rewarded with the new experiences and the unique things that emerged because I travelled without a compass.  

For the last fifteen months, I've been pretty lost, mostly without choice.  So lost I had no idea how to document the trip.  The journey has been devastating, humbling and revelatory.  Concurrent to the trio of deaths of those whom I loved was an illness from which my younger son was suffering; an illness that remained unknowable, defiant of diagnosis or comprehension until I was finally able to unmask it.  And the initial fears, while not necessarily unfounded, were not as shattering or as overwhelming as I had originally thought. But while his struggle is not nearly as difficult as autism or a similar developmental disorder, it does fall in the same biologic chain; and I learned that one of the things I could do to help him was to change his diet.

So thirty days ago, I changed my son's menu completely.

No more gluten. No more dairy (or more specifically, casein). No more soy.

I, who have worshipped at the altar of butter and cream; who have swooned in baguette and cookie heaven; who have looked to Julia Child as a my culinary North Star...could no longer feed my child the things that I thought made life most worthwhile.

Sometimes, it feels like karmic retribution for all the times I sneered at vegans and preened in priggish joy at my ability to consume anything without ill effect (oh the joy of third world bacteria with which to line one's cast iron stomach).

But in the last thirty days of learning to remake his favorite foods, reading new blogs to educate myself and starting from scratch in so many ways, I realize that in getting lost, I've entered the wonderland of an entirely new cooking and baking body of knowledge.

I'm having epic fails in the kitchen. But it's okay. Because I'm learning.  And when something goes right, it's all I can do not to dance a little.

Baby loves chocolate chip cookies. So this was the first thing I had to learn how to make for him.  Gluten free recipes were easy.  Finding vegan chips that were soy-less were harder, but they turned up as well.  And the results?  Close to the real thing.

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If you want to give me directions, point me to blogs and recipes and books I should know about, or people I should meet on this journey, please do.  

I'm lost.

But it's okay.  I don't mind. I like to peregrinate.

Cookbook Spotlight: Sugar Baby

You want this book and you want it NOW.

 

Giveaway: Gift Card from HSN

HSN's Cooks Spring Weekend Event, presented by Bon Appétit takes place March 26-27.  The event will feature chefs including Wolfgang Puck, Ken Horn, and the Lee Bros. (whom I adore!).  

HSN gave me a $10 gift card, good for any item on HSN, which I'm giving away to a reader.

Send me an email to: ablithepalate (AT) gmail (DOT) com if you want to be entered in the giveaway; a random drawing will be held April 1 (no, really).  Be sure to include your name and snail mail address.  Pug or Hoss will pick the winner.

Braised Pork Shoulder Ragù

It was on the menu at a restaurant I've been frequenting recently:  braised pork and pappardelle.  How do you go wrong with that combination?

Twice I ordered it.  And twice I was disappointed.  The meat was cooked well enough; but the sauce in which it was entrenched was...off.  Not bad per se; just...not right.  The mushroom cream sauce was the wrong flavor base for the rich, hearty pork; I wanted, and missed, the acidity of a tomato sauce, the comfort of a rustic ragù featuring carrots, onions and the like.

I'm a sucker for slow cooked, braised dishes where the meat is so tender it basically sloughs off the bone and imparts the flavors of the braising liquid in which it has been immersed for hours.  Anything braised that appears on a menu is the dish that I'll likely be eating for that meal.  It's my predilection for comfort foods; risotto is another my other kryptonites.  I'm enamored of fall and winter dishes because stews relax me, allow me to be mindless: you don't have to ponder one-pot dishes.  There isn't much more to comfort food than good ingredients, a heavy pot, low heat, and lots of time.  Before I had children braising meat was a byword for reading time in the kitchen.  And even now that I have kids, braising is an easy way to have a ready to go meal when we come in from playing outside.

But back to that restaurant, where I sat dejected; somewhere, I knew the braised pork ragù I wanted had a recipe; so when I got home, I perused a few cookbooks for ideas.  Most offered techniques in braising; none really described the exact dish I craved.  Since the recipe is basically meat + vegetables + braising liquid + low heat + long time, I winged a recipe, throwing in my favorite veggies and using pork shoulder.  I actually used a dry rub on the pork shoulder overnight; but I can't exactly say that it provided anything more than a subtle effect on the overall dish.

I began the dish at noon on a Sunday with the comment: "Now we wait five hours."  It actually took four hours to get to the desired doneness; and while I was immensely pleased with the dish, it was still a little more brothy than I would have liked, probably because I didn't reduce it enough or make a good slurry with which to thicken the sauce.  

Nevertheless: I wasn't disappointed because I had exactly what I wanted.  A good rustic ragù overladen with perfectly shredded and braised pork.

The Sweetness and the Heartbreak: Coda

I wish I had had time to send his chocolate chip cookies to our friend in DC, who brought this frame to Arlington National Cemetary the same day his son was born.

But it was more important to us that on his son's first day of life, the two of them were together in spirit if not in letter.

When we go to visit him in a few months, we'll have his cookies; and a bottle of Scotch to toast the baby he knew about before he left for war; the baby he named in hopes it would be a boy.

And G.  Darling G?

She is engaged to J.

 

Fried Chicken with Dad.

Members of my family dream about dead people.  No, really, we do.  We dream about our loved ones, and in almost all cases, we dream about the fathers who have passed.  They used to come to us when there was a pending death in the family; we think they came to escort those on their way out.  The first time I became aware of this phenomena was ten years ago, when my grandfather was dying; in the days before he slipped away, he told my aunt that her husband had come to help him "change shirts" and to teach him how to go to the beyond.  As my uncle's death, which had occurred only weeks before my grandfather's, had been kept a secret, my aunt was understandably freaked out (later she confessed to feeling comforted, knowing that her husband and her father were both in safe keeping).  And on the day my grandfather died, he whispered that my uncle and "the angels" had come for him.  

Years later, as his sister was dying, my grandfather appeared in dreams to my mother and two of her sisters on the same night.  They all described him as indescribably, ethereally beautiful and filled with joy to see them.  His sister died a few weeks later.  I am certain that when my father's time came, his mothers and fathers came for him.

Recently, my father has been visiting my sisters and my mother in their dreams.  We don't have anyone departing on deck.  It's just as if he's decided to be sociable.  In all their dreams, he is young, as when we knew him, beautiful, vibrant and happy, thrilled to see them as they are to see him.

I wonder why he does not come to see me.

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An acquaintance of mine is a therapist and grief counselor.  After last year's twelve week roller coaster of death, I found myself talking to him frequently.  

"If you had three wishes, what would they be?" he asked me one day.  I told him I had only one.

"I want one more day with my dad so we can eat together as a family, so he can talk to my mom."  

By the time my mother flew back from Vietnam to be with him in his final days, he could no longer speak.  Their last moments together were spent in the bittersweetness of his tube-enforced silence.  But eloquent:  the eyes say oh so much and never more so than when they are filled with love. 

"What would you eat?" he asked.

The possibilities are endless.  There is so much food I associate with my dad.  Cream of mushroom soup is my first food memory of him; in 1977 as he was getting ready to go to work at the grocery store, I came into the dining room and found him eating a bowl of soup I had never before seen; and he let me try it and the cream, stock and fungi literally exploded in my mouth, so much so that 34 years later, that taste memory now causes my salivary glands to go into overdrive in remembered deliciousness.  My mother had made the soup from scratch and that recipe used to be a staple in my food repertoire.  

Dad was a complete and utter carnivore.  Steak and lamb were integral parts of a red meat-infused childhood.  And then there were endless baguettes, and mephitic cheeses out the wazoo.

But who are we kidding?  It would be fried chicken.

His adoptive mother, Edna Bone, introduced him to the joy of Southern cooking and particularly to her buttermilk fried chicken when he was at Ft. Benning in the late 50's and he never got over it.  He passed this love to us, so much so that my brother's license plate reads FRD CHKN, and we siblings nearly forgot to follow vegetarian dictates during our seven week mourning every time we walked into a Publix grocery store and smelled their fried chicken.

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Sister, reflecting after Dad's funeral:  "If I'd known his time was so limited, I would have let him eat fried chicken every day."

Me to Mom:  "[Sister] said she would have let him eat fried chicken every day."

Mom:  "Me too."

Me to Mom:  "Yeah, but if we had, he might have died earlier from another heart attack."

Snorts all around.

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I think my father does not come to see me because he loves me.  And he knows I am not ready for him. He knows that a visit is not enough; that what I want is to hold him and not let go.  I think Dad wants his visits to be happy occurrences; that they should presage a joyful waking such as those experienced by my sisters and my mother.  

And because I am not strong enough yet to let go, I could only wake up in tears yearning for what will never again exist in this mortal coil.

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But on the off chance that I find my oneiric cajones, I will make Grandma Bone's Buttermilk Fried Chicken for him if he does come to see me.

The Wasteland

"April is the cruellest month..."

And indeed it was because April 2010 was the beginning of a twelve week cycle of hell.

Witness, stage left.  The Sahara Desert.

This is how I feel.

This is how I write.

It's not how I eat, which isn't any less enthusiastic.  It's not how I cook, which isn't any less passionate. 

It's simply that my gustatory joy isn't matched by an ability to put words to paper, intent to writing a post, or concern to follow up.

In the wake of last year's losses, all I want to do is read what others write, to lose myself in someone else's words. 

So I spend my time trawling through beautiful, wonderful food blogs (see in the links), reading beautiful, wonderful cookbooks (more to come).

And I wait for the return of a muse.

No clue.

I compulsively take photos of food.  Not necessarily for the blog, just because.  And when I do it of food I've made, I know it's not always for artistic reasons (read:  narcissism).  But on occasion, my ADS (Asian Documentation Syndrome) is a good leveling agent for hubris.

Witness, stage right.

This photo was taken a year or so ago.  Not only did I never write about this particular dish, I'm not even sure what the hell it is.

And if you look carefully, I don't think we even ate it.

Guesses anyone?

The Sweetness and the Heartbreak...Finale.

It's August.  Their stories always happen in the fall.

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When darling G. first saw J., he was with his then girlfriend.  They were all at a mutual friend's party and G. noted how J. carefully leaned in to listen to his girlfriend, the attentiveness on his face, the careful way in which he held her hand, proffering his rapt attention as she spoke.

That, G. decided, is what I want.
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Warm chocolate chip cookies.  In ten years of friendship with D.,  these are a mainstay.  What distinguishes his cookies from other variations is the Callebaut milk chocolate.  Sometimes with a dash of nutmeg.  During the hard years when he struggled through a failing marriage, I'd routinely drop a plate of these in front of him when he came over to hang out with Hubby, to seek advice, to drink a beer, to watch a UFC match, to be a friend, to be with a friend.

Later, when the Beautiful One enters his life, he tells me about her over trays of warm chocolate chip cookies.  Tells me he can't stop thinking about her, can't wait to talk to her every night.  Marvels over the similarities in their lives. Admires her stoicism and independence.  Appreciates her insistence that he never stop pursuing his dreams even if it temporarily discomfits and disrupts their life together.

This girl, with whom he was so consumed, with whom he confessed to falling for so quickly, so deeply - well, this girl was The One.  In the early days of his campaign to win her over, his fears, his uncertainties that perhaps this was moving too quickly, that perhaps he was thinking about it too much; ah...well, all those concerns were swept away when it became clear to him that this girl -- well, this girl was The One.  The Beautiful One.

Of course they have drama and difficulties.  All relationships must.  But they also complete each other.

One night, when they are staying at our home, he tells her, "I want you to remember this night.  It'll make sense to you another time but I just want you to remember this moment and this night."

That night was significant because - though she did not know it then - he had that morning picked up the ring with which he would propose to her two months later.

It took them nearly two years after the engagement to wed; there were extenuating circumstances during which time D. achieved a lifelong career ambition; and they had a child.  But the end result was the same.  They married on a crisp fall day, both stunningly gorgeous and filled with hope for a lifetime together.

Said he to me, "This is everything I've wanted."

Happy endings.  Nothing like them.

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When G. and J. met again, he was free.  Over the course of a weekend they were thrown together by social circumstances and mutual friends.  It was snowing hard one night when she departed a friend's house for her own; J. insisted on walking her back to her apartment.  When they arrived, a blizzard was piling the streets with snow and ice.  Snowbound that evening, they stayed up and talked and talked and talked.  And the attentiveness she noted that first night - not only did he listen, he heard.

And in the ensuing weeks and months, he continues to listen and to hear.  G. blooms.

When Hubby and another friend meet J. at a baseball game G. has organized, both are reasonably impressed with J.  And they warm to his obvious affection and consideration for G.  She laughs when I tell her Hubby made sure J. understood that his limbs and life are forfeit if he hurts her.

"I'm willing to take that risk," she tells me with a wide smile.

New beginnings are a state of bliss.

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Why can't happy endings last longer?

I thought when I wrote about D. again...it would be about his marriage and his happy ending.

Men of war are unique creatures; and those at the tip of the spear tend to be even more singular.  A few years ago, before he left for a deployment, Hubby and I gave D. a copy of Frank Miller's graphic novel, 300.  In this aphorism D. firmly believed:  Ē tan ē epi tas. It is Greek; it means, "With this, or upon this." It was the phrase uttered by Spartan women to their men as the hoplites departed for war.  Simply put, come back victorious with your shield; or die in battle and be borne home upon it.

For five deployments D. came back with his shield.  Three and a half weeks ago, he was borne home upon it; and last Wednesday we buried him at Arlington National Cemetery, amongst his brothers-in-arms, as his newly married wife and now newly minted widow; his elder daughter; his siblings; and his parents watched and grieved. And those of us who were his friends - we stand by with gaping holes where once our hearts beat.

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B. sent G. a text message.

"I behaved terribly and did not deserve you. I understand what a true friend you were and are.  I want you know that if you ever need me, you need only say so, and I will be there."

"Wow.  He beat my prediction by four years," I tell her.  About two years ago, I told B. without rancor that he would be useless as a man for at least another six years.  He understood and agreed.  "He matured faster than I thought he would."

"I never expected an apology," G. says.

"What do you think?"  Read:  what happens now?

G. shrugs.  "We'll see.  It's a start."

Some endings can be a precursor to a new beginning.

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It's August again.  Their stories take place in the fall. But never in the last four years of recording them did I ever imagine that I should write a finale.  I thought, foolishly perhaps, that I'd have decades left in which to put my observances to paper.  It is incomprehensible to me that D.'s story is finished, that the bookends are now complete.  Impossible for me in a year already marked with loss that I should have to say good-bye to yet another whom I loved.

When Hubby flew to Dover to escort D.'s casket back to Ft. Benning, he took with him a bag of chocolate chip cookies.  Such cookies which made their way into D.'s casket along with coins from the units in which he had served without peer; and with which he led the way; a Cuban cigar; a flask of favored Scotch.  Chocolate chip cookies I promised he should have in endless supply when I rested my hands on his casket at the gravesite to say goodbye.

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Make every day as sweet a beginning as you can; because some endings...are heartbreaking in their finality.

The Buttercream: A Eulogy for my Father, Part 1.

When I made the buttercream, my father was still alive.

It's an Italian buttercream, made with the egg whites separated from the yolks that went into the French buttercream which decorated Lulu's birthday cake and cupcakes.  There's an entire tub of it left in my mom's fridge.

I made it on a Sunday morning, when I still thought Dad was coming home.  He had been in the hospital since the Wednesday previous.  We knew he would not be present for Lulu's birthday party that day but we expected to have him home the next day to finish out the Memorial Day holiday with us. 

But the next morning, the nurse on duty, unable to bear our continued ignorance, finally broke down and told us what his attending physician lacked the balls to do:  she told us that our father had weeks, not years remaining.  And Tuesday morning the prognosis was that he had but days.  The reality was actually two days.  Thursday evening, he took his last breath, but not before opening his eyes one last time to look at my mother, me, and my younger son, who is his namesake; a final, corporeal exchange before slipping into the ethereal.

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When I danced with my dad at my wedding, the song I chose was Edith Piaf's Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.  It's a love song, but I've always considered it an anthem to his life. His was a larger than life kind of life.  A son born into privilege in Vietnam in 1932, his mother died when he was only a year old, her role subsequently fulfilled by an older half-sister and an aunt; his father passed away when Dad was 15.  Shortly thereafter, Dad left home and went to Hanoi after a dispute with the wife of his elder brother regarding money that had been set aside for his education.  He made his way in the world by himself and achieved for himself much success.  But my father always considered his greatest success was raising us to be productive and reasonably sane members of society. 

In Vietnam he had been a senior member of the intelligence community.  In Vietnam, he had been a Lt. Colonel.  When his country fell, with it went every security he had previously enjoyed:  position, wealth, a future.  He came to the States as an immigrant, considered his options, and decided that his future, the one he had planned for himself, was a thing of the past; the only future(s) on which he wanted to focus, was ours.  The CIA wanted him to come work for them; but he demurred.  That wasn't his life anymore. 

His first job in the United States was as a fry cook at Long John Silver's.  Because he was competent, because he was focused, because he was timely, because he never complained, he was promoted to assistant manager.  He earned $2.10 an hour.  To supplement his income, he took another part time job, as a hotel security guard.  He had a wife and five small children.  He was proud but never TOO proud; or prideful.  Just quiet, capable, professional.  If ever he looked back on the life he had had...we never knew it because he never referred to it.

He moved us to Arlington, Virginia because he thought it offered us so much more than the quiet college town in which we were then ensconced.  And he became a cashier at a local grocery store where for 27 years, he never missed a day of work and was late only once - but that was because he had to walk the five miles in 3 feet of snow.  He even had his massive heart attack during the week he took vacation.  If I took a picture of my father and titled it, "Work Ethic," everyone who knew him would agree.  And they would also agree with this other epitaph:  "Great Father."  At this job, where during his healthiest and most profitable year he cleared maybe $43,000, my father achieved the singular feat of putting five children through college.  Hello financial aid, second and third mortgages and everything else he had to put on the line to secure our futures; he considered education our birth right.  We never knew we had an option to not attend college.  He was in debt until the age of 73, when he happened to catch a lovely real estate crest and sold his home for enough money to clear out all his debts.

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Dad suffered from Parkinson's the last seven years, during which time it robbed him of his facility with life (though it never took his zest or zeal for it).  But that's not what took him from us.  It turns out that the prostate cancer which had afflicted him fifteen years earlier (oh did I mention earlier that he never took time off from work even during chemo and radiation treatments?) had actually metastasized into the bone approximately five years ago, but none of us knew this...not even Dad.  How such momentous information could have slipped us is at once staggering...and a blessing.

Let me share with you what happened in the last five years:  Dad moved from Arlington to Orlando; he visited me several times in Georgia, visited my siblings in New York and Santa Monica; and saw the births of three grandchildren. 

What I'm trying to say is that Dad lived his life fully and richly.  He didn't spend it in treatment for the bone cancer.  He didn't suffer through more chemo or radiation.  He didn't live with a death sentence hanging over him, with hopelessness marking his days.  Instead, he simply lived, taking every day that came along as a treat.  And we did too.  Because none of us knew he had advanced bone cancer.

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I took his shirt from the hospital bag, the last one he wore, the only one that still smelled like him.  The scent is fading and every day it smells less like him.

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I can say with all certainty that my father died without regrets; and while we are stricken to have lost him, we have no regrets where he is concerned, either.  I would gladly have another hug, another kiss, another moment to talk.  But I had this throughout my life and even to the end, he still kissed us, or tried to; so I don't feel that I missed out on anything with Dad.  What I do miss...is Dad himself. 

I miss him so much I wonder how this yawning emptiness will ever be filled again; I wonder how I can meet the next five or six decades of my life with this huge gaping hole inside.  I wonder how I manage to wake up every morning and function in a world where my dad no longer exists.

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Children should love their parents.  If they're really lucky, they're in love with their parents.  Guess what category we put ourselves in?

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Before I left my mother's house, I cleaned out the fridge.  But the tub of buttercream sat there.  I couldn't touch it. 

Because when I made that buttercream, my dad was still alive.

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Updated: Here is Part 2