For Next Time

      “Honey, I swear to god I wrote this out in ’96,” my mother sighed over the phone, digging an old slip of paper out of her recipe folder.

      "You found it?" I asked. 

My mom and I sitting on a bench. 

      “Yeah, it’s here. I can’t believe it! It’s a sign, you know? Now you have to make it.”

I had frantically called my mother Thursday night to ask for advice.  I had been assigned a paper a few weeks before where I had to make my perfect meal.  At first I had thought this would be a great opportunity.  I could eat meat!  I would have a reason to buy expensive ingredients that I knew I couldn’t afford.  I could kick my housemates out of my kitchen for an entire evening! 

      But as I flipped through my homemade composition-notebook bound recipe book for inspiration, I quickly realized this would test my indecisiveness, my lack of pro-activeness and my inability to settle for anything less than perfect. 

      I wanted to make meat. I wanted to find a way to feel good about eating a food I love, a food I believe should be consumed by humans in a healthy, moderate, sustainable way. I wanted an excuse to visit the farms in Kalamazoo, MI where I had been purchasing my local eggs from for the past seven months.  I knew where my meat came from in my hometown of Minneapolis, but I was ashamedly ignorant of my current surroundings. And really, I was just craving a delicious breakfast sausage, covered in peppers.  Or eggs benedict, made with REAL thick cut, locally raised, grass fed bacon. Even meatloaf sounded appetizing. 

      But what to pick? There were too many options. I haven’t eaten any meat—besides the occasional sushi binge—since I was home this summer when my mother could afford to purchase meat I could justify eating.  

      I called her because I couldn’t decide and because we hadn’t spoken in over two days, way longer than maternally acceptable. 

      “Don’t cook meat. You won’t be happy in the end.”

      “What? Why mom? I would visit the farms, I’d be okay with it.”

      “You’ll feel bad. You’ll cook it. It’ll taste good. But you’ll feel bad. Make something that you know will make you feel happy when you eat it.”

      “You don’t know me,” I responded, knowing that she was undeniably right. 

      “Han. Make mushroom risotto.  You’ve never made it all on your own.  And you’ll remember how to make it for the rest of your life. And there is absolutely no way you can feel bad after eating risotto. Especially if you throw in a wad of butter at the very end like the Italians do.”

      It was perfectly obvious. Mushroom Risotto was my perfect meal as a child, before I became a vegetarian. And now that meat was off the table, I found a lot of comfort eating it with my family, one of the only meatless-meals my parents and younger sister loved eating as much as any meat-based dish. 

      My mom first made mushroom risotto when she was in her early 30s, when I was just five.  She wrote the recipe down from her Italian sister-in-law Zinni who assured her it was the way real Italians made it.  Serendipitously, my mother found the piece of paper she had written the recipe down on fifteen years ago.  

      “I’ll scan it to you. You won’t understand my directions, it’s in the short-hand I use for all my recipes. But I’ll explain it to you.”

      I thanked my mom and went to bed happy that I had made a decision, and hungry for the delicious dish I had craved constantly as a child. I resolved that I would make the dinner for my housemates the following night, and fell asleep dreaming of little button mushrooms dancing on my eyelids.

      I woke up Friday morning with my throat throbbing and my nose dripping with mucous. 

      I’m not going to lie, I shamelessly cried about it. I think I was just worn out.  I had been organizing a big poetry event on my college campus and I had been getting very little sleep to keep up with my homework and my social life. But I also just really wanted to go for a relaxing walk downtown to get my groceries before cooking a meal by myself, two luxuries I’ve rarely allowed myself to experience this year. 

      Two of my wonderful wonderful housemates witnessed my breakdown and took pity on me.  Max and Emily offered to go to the local People’s Food Co-op for the majority of the ingredients and the nearby one-stop giant grocery store Meijer for the parsley and fresh mushrooms for me when they went to get their weekly groceries.  They didn’t let me resist their kindness.  Max wrote down my list of ingredients while Emily made me some tea. 

As they drove off, I drifted off to sleep for the next six hours, hoping I would wake up somewhat revived. 

***

      Sunday was a beautiful day in Kalamazoo, and the perfect day to make my perfect meal. I had recuperated from Friday’s sudden sickness, the poetry event I had organized had gone well and I was on a high from all the beautiful sunlight coming through my house’s windows.  I had invited all my housemates to my meal, but had asked them politely to stay out of the kitchen while I cooked, something that otherwise would never have happened, as the kitchen is a common gathering space for the seven of us. 

      I started to prepare my meal.  But before the actually cooking started, I had to set the scene just how I wanted it.  Our perpetually dirty kitchen had to be clean if this was going to be my perfect meal.  So I set out scrubbing down the stove, tackling the giant pile of dishes in and next to the sink, sweeping the floors and putting away the dry dishes.  

      I’ve started becoming more and more like my mother since I’ve started living on my own, and I’ve stopped resisting it.  I enjoy cleaning now, I find it relaxing. My mother cleans before our cleaning lady, Dasha, arrives.  I also couldn’t start making my perfect meal without opening the small kitchen window a crack, grabbing a handful of berry scented candles and some music to play in the background.  When my mother cooks, it’s an event.  There’s James Taylor and Carole King playing, a fire in the fireplace, flowers on the counter, and my father steps in for a dance every now and then. 

      I wanted that. I wanted to be at home with them while I cooked. 

I lit the candles, turned on some music, poured myself a small glass of boxed wine and started to cook. 

Filtering the liquids. 

      Risotto is a lot harder than I remember as a kid. The ingredients are simple: arborio rice, unsalted butter, olive oil, a large onion, wine, chicken broth—which I substituted with mushroom broth—white wine, cream, Parmigiano-Reggiano, a little bit of parsley, dried porcinis and fresh mushrooms.  But the process is rough.  

      “Risotto is always the same, except for the liquids and how you finish it,” I remembered my mother telling me as I sauteed the chopped onion in the butter and olive oil in my housemate’s beautiful red pot. I added the rice and coated it in the buttery mixture.  I poured in the white wine and stirred the golden-mixture for several minutes. Then I started to get anxious. 

The arborio rice starts to absorb the liquids.

      The liquids need to be hot when you add them to the risotto, that’s the key. That’s where the patience comes in.  I had started heating the mushroom broth, but I didn’t know if it was quite hot enough.  The risotto was supposed to stay just short of boiling, my mother had told me.  I hesitantly added a cup of the broth to the rice.  I was shocked at how quickly the rice absorbed the liquid.  I constantly stirred the rice with one hand while the other scooped the almost-boiling liquid into the pot. 

      Then I realized I had forgotten to reconstitute the mushrooms! They needed to boil in water for twenty minutes in order to be ready to add to the risotto. As I reached for a new pot, three of my housemates walked in to the house. 

      The sun was setting and my candles were not sufficient lighting.  I had to turn on the fluorescent lights I hated so much. I have nightmares with bad lighting.  I felt my perfect atmosphere slipping away from me as Max started stirring my rice, Emily danced to the music, and Ryan stared at his chili heating up in the microwave. And I needed to add liquid to the rice!

      “Guys, I’m sorry to be a bitch, but I really need you all to leave the kitchen.”

   

The re-constituted porcini mushrooms. 

   I was even more like my mother than I thought. I had kicked people out. I felt horrible. My I couldn’t add the liquid fast enough, I had been rude to my housemates, and I was getting sweaty from all the stress. 

      But suddenly, the risotto started tasting right.  It was slightly creamy, yet a bit al-dente, just like I remembered it.  I was getting close. 

      I pulled the porcini mushrooms off of the burner, strained them, and gave them a rough chop. I added some of the leftover liquid to the risotto like my mother instructed and was feeling pretty good about my dinner. 

      I had forgotten to saute the fresh mushrooms. 

Delicious rustic country bread from WaterStreet. 

      I was so disappointed.  As I watched the fresh mushrooms saute into beautiful brown clumps, I felt my risotto going from that perfect al-dente to a mushy, sticky consistency. 

      Pissed, sweaty and hungry, I added the mushrooms, cream, cheese, salt, pepper and parsley to the pot, threw in a clump of butter for good measure, and called my housemates down for dinner, embarrassed by what I was serving them. I wanted them to taste my childhood, and I was certain this wasn’t going to be it. 

      I set the table with some tulips I had bought from my favorite local coffee shop, Waterstreet Coffee Joint and lit some candles on the table.  I pulled the bread out of the oven that was also baked and purchased from Waterstreet and we sat down to eat.

As Max, Emily and Melissa ladled heaps of risotto onto their plates, I started passing the bread.  They all thanked me for inviting them and I shrugged, hoping it was edible. 

      It may not have looked like my mothers, but it sure tasted like it. 

Setting the mood with candles and tulips. 

     It was just as creamy, just as mushroom-filled as I remembered it. I had been freaked out for no reason, and my friends loved it.  It was then I realized how silly I had been.  In search of my perfect meal, I was searching for perfection, something I now know I cannot achieve. But what I found was friends who care enough about me to buy my groceries for me when I’m sick, who get out of the kitchen when I ask them to, who put up with my silly love of good-lighting, and who take the time out of their day to eat my mush of a meal. 

      We laughed throughout dinner, finishing all the bread and all of our piles of risotto.  As the meal ended, we turned up the volume on my speakers and danced in our living room until our stomachs hurt from too much cream and just enough laughter. 

      The next day was Valentines day, and just as lovely as Sunday with the sun and the birds out from hiding.  I got a text from a friend saying I had a package in the mail center. It was a Valentine from my mother. Inside was a package and a plastic bag full of dried morel mushrooms and a card that read, “For next time.”

McCain Potatoes Commercial

I saw this commercial at the British Advertising Awards in Minneapolis this summer. They present the awards annually at Walker Art Center and they're always amazingly done. This was one of my favorites. I think it relates to the discussions we generated about advertising while reading Omnivore. Plus it's just so dang cute!




Also, here's a link to their website if you're interested in learning more about the company. They're part of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform and seem to be very invested in coming off as 'all natural.'

An Acquired Taste

Carol Daly isn’t domestic. And she’s proud of it.
My grandmother, affectionately referred to as Grams, is not your typical grandma. She is a feminist, an art-lover, Brooklyn-bred, ethnically-Jewish-now-agnostic-who-likes-to-talk-about-string-theory and she is loud. You know Grams has arrived before you see her. Now that all three of her sons are grown, she frequently brings up her lack of maternal nature and how she never got the whole mothering-thing.
Grams will be the first to tell you she can’t cook. She can microwave. And she can put together appetizer trays, pineapple and strawberry fruit bowls, cheese and crackers, potato knishes, shrimp and plenty of toothpicks. When my father and his two younger brothers were growing up, she would make them liver and onions, boxed mashed potatoes and white bread. My father’s idea of fancy was a SaraLee All-Butter Frozen Pound Cake. The only thing Grams prides herself on in the kitchen is a handful of traditional Jewish foods we eat for Christmukkah every year. She can make a pretty mean Kugel, a kind of sweet, baked noodle casserole, brisket with mushrooms and onions, and potato latkes. But now that you can buy those at Crossroads Deli, she usually does that instead.
When I was ten, she took me to New York City to “see where I come from.” We went to the Museum of Natural History, played checkers on a Circle Line Cruise, saw the World Trade Center a few months before it collapsed, and spit off the top of the Empire State Building, aiming for the brown specks below us.
But I mostly remember those events through pictures. What I really remember is Katz’s Deli.
Grams had trouble finding food we could both enjoy in New York. She had already accidentally revealed to me that there are anchovies in caesar salad and scolded me when I smooshed my leftovers into ‘polyjuice potion’ at a restaurant close to our hotel. Katz’s Deli was her final attempt at finding a place we could both enjoy.
I ordered the half-pound cheeseburger, not realizing that it would be twice the size of my head, and got some coleslaw that I refused to touch due to my distain for anything with mayo. Grams bought us some New York style cheesecake to share and mumbled something with the word sandwich at the end. We sat down with our trays at a booth in the back. I got through about a third of my burger and couldn’t finish. But I did have some room for cheesecake, of course.
I reached my fork out towards the fluffly, cream-colored wedge. But just before I dug in, Grams grabbed my arm.
“Nuh, uh. Not until you try mine.”
“Your sandwich? What is it?”
It was really pink. Not pink like ham, but more red, like raw beef. It was on a giant slice of white bread with nothing else, just a whole-lotta meat.
“It’s a special kind of beef, Han. Now, don’t freak out . . . but this sandwich is made from cow tongue.”
I think I dropped my fork. I hope I did. I had never heard of a tongue sandwich. It looked like normal deli meats, it couldn’t be that bad. And I really wanted some cake.
Grams cut a small corner off and handed it to me. I took a small bite.
It tasted like beef, only more muscle-y and salty. I didn’t mind it. But then I started thinking about it. I was chewing on something that had chewed on something else. My tongue was tasting another tongue. I started picturing a bunch of cows out in a field chewing on human tongues, mooing in pleasure. I wasn’t hungry for cheesecake anymore.

* * *

My father takes after Grams. He doesn’t cook, he mixes. While my mother braises, butchers and broils, my father fetches the white wine from the basement and pours it into glasses filled with ice cubes. He can grill, fry and scramble, but he can’t set a table properly. He does the dishes and takes out the trash, but when it comes to daily family meals, he does the prep work and the clean up, but tends to back away from the actual execution.
When my mother used to go out of town for business meetings, the task of feeding my sister and me fell on my dad. This meant one of three things: take-out from King’s Wok, the sketchy Chinese place that uses oil as a sauce, baked ziti from the nearby Sbarro, smothered in cheese and breadcrumbs, crispy on the top from sitting under the heat-lamps all afternoon, or he would try and scrounge something together from scratch.
Like Grams, my father has a repertoire of things he ‘dabbles’ in in the kitchen. He can grill—that’s his thing. Kebobs, grilled corn, smoked salmon, he’s got those down. And he can make some mean eggs. He never breaks a yoke that isn’t meant to be broken. But those are his only real comfort zones. When it comes to cooking for me and my sister, he had several go-tos. Simple spaghetti, noodles stuck together because they were overcooked, Jack’s Original frozen pizza with extra shredded cheddar sprinkled on top, and—it makes me cringe now to think of them—those horrible ‘Kid Cuisines,’ the pre-portioned frozen meals that came in the fun blue trays and always had a fun, colorful desert in one of the quadrants.
My memories of my father’s cooking exploits tend to involve microwaves, lots of carbs, cheese and a lot of laughter. Leftover smörgåsbords and kraft mac and cheese in front of the television followed by tickle fights. But it’s not the food that I find myself missing now that I’m far from home, it’s those spray-milk-out-of-your-nose moments that we always seemed to have.
Now that I can cook for myself, I rarely eat my father’s meals when I’m home on breaks. The only food we make together is on random, lazy, sun-soaked Sunday mornings when we both find ourselves with time we didn’t know we had. I sit at the kitchen counter in my pajamas, my legs dangling off the edge of the stool while my father gathers the ingredients that Grams always had in her cupboard: Manischewitz Everything Matzo, a few eggs, a bowl filled about half-way with luke-warm water and some salt and pepper.
Now, matzo brei is definitely an acquired taste. My mother and sister can’t stand it. Most people I’ve met don’t like to eat matzo brei. They have to eat it over Passover, a set of Jewish holy days, when options are limited. Once you’ve had or heard of matzo brei, you understand why it’s not something most people drool over.
The dish consists of soggy matzo crackers scrambled with eggs. That’s it. I’ve heard that some people doctor it up, but really, simple matzo brei is best. My dad would let me break and soak the matzo, letting the cracker fragments bob up and down in the bowl of water, getting murky from all the salt salt. My dad whisks the eggs up with a fork, a skill that I always admired as a kid. I could never get my wrist to move that fast, and whenever I tried I would always spill the yolky mixture on the counter.
Once the matzo is almost-mushy and the eggs are sufficiently scrambled, they both would go into a heated pan on the stove with a distinct sizzle sound as they hit the scalding metal. I’ve tried to make the traditional Jewish dish on my own, but I can never scramble it just right. My dad has just the right amount of patience to get it golden and just a little crisp on the edges.
When the brei is finished, we sit together at the counter and eat. It tastes like bland, over-salted scrambled eggs, the most distinct flavor coming from the garlic and poppy on the everything matzo. Its not as good as my mother's brioche french toast or even my own breakfast concoctions. But there's something about sitting with my father at the kitchen table, just the two of us, eating the food his mother made him as a child.

Mark Bittman in the New York Times

I love Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, so when I saw his name on the NY Times website I was instantly intrigued. His opinions article, entitled "A Food Manifesto for the Future" discusses some potential ideas that would bail American out of our unhealthy, unsustainable habits. I'm hoping Pollan will offer some more developed thoughts on how we can fix the food industry we've created as we finish up Omnivore's Dilemma.