Food

Memories and the food we eat

define who and what we are.

A life in food.

 When I was eight

it was hot oatmeal, sugar and milk.

In a kitchen on a farm.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches eaten on the run to school along a snowy country road.

At ten it was

cabbage boiled in milk.

Tomatoes cooked with bread.

Neither one of my favorites.

Flatbread hot out of the oven

with goose fat and crispy onion topping.

At Easter jelly beans

and chocolate bunnies

to be discovered in nests hidden under bushes.

In June raspberries picked that morning with fresh cream.

And at twelve,

when I became the cook,

it was pancakes and crispy bacon,

keeping a piece for that last bite.

Warm honey-colored doughnuts

fried in bubbling lard.

My specialty.

Apple pie with Crisco crust

baked in an old-fashioned coal burning oven.

While at fourteen,

in between pruning the apple trees,

I would climb the cherry tree,

and eat sour cherries till my teeth hurt.

Wild small sun-warmed strawberries

hunted out in the grass

while chasing the goats in the pasture.

Corn on the cob straight from the garden –

I once ate ten, dripping in butter.

In the years before and after,

Christmas meant Stollen

with candied citrus and

peanuts since they were cheaper.

Chewy raw potato dumplings

swimming in gravy.

Roast goose instead of turkey.

Butternut squash and sometimes sweet yeast dumplings cooked in milk.

Eighteen was a watershed,

first time away from home.

Mango, an unknown fruit discovered in the Mexican market,

 juice dripping down my chin.

Guacamole on tortilla chips.

Faggioli refritti.

Tequila lemon salt.

At twenty-two it was

pastrami on rye on my way to sketch class.

Bagels and cream cheese.

Spicy Indian curry with rice

as the notes of a flute

wafted through a dark room

at midnight.

Dark chocolate Mound bars

between classes at Columbia.

At twenty-five there are memories of sea urchins

offered by a fisherman on the wharf  in Taranto.

Spicy fish stew in Pisa and Livorno.

Fried polenta finger food in the streets of Florence.

In my thirties maritozzi con panna top the list,

sweet raisin buns slathered with whipped cream,

treats for my sons, as well as me,  on their way to school.

On market days it was

slices of whole roast pig with fennel and garlic.

Sausages grilled over glowing embers.

While in my fifties it was

prosciutto sliced thin and sourdough bread

sitting at a kitchen table

in a small hillside town.

Accompanied by wine aged in a cellar

at the bottom of a flight of tufa steps.

Aunt Ada’s home-made tagliatelle.

In those years, before and after,

it was always turkey at Thanksgiving,

and in the Christmas Stollen

the more aristocratic

walnuts now replaced

the more plebeian peanuts.

Easter meant ‘scorch your fingers’ lamb chops

with summer just around the corner.

Even though I’m now well into my nineties,

I’m proud of the fact that they still rave about my

fried artichokes. The secret for the batter:

a good shot of grappa, ice-cold sparkling water.

And in November nothing can beat bruschetta rubbed with garlic and doused in emerald-green new olive oil.

A life in food. The where and when.

Perhaps, with globalization,

who knows whether 50 years from now

what we eat

will still define us.

Will tell you that way back

my family came from Germany.

And that now my new homeland is Italy.

 Will there still be rites to celebrate the events of the year,

of nature and her yearly rounds?

It may mean going to a local fair and partaking of this year’s fragrant red aleatico wine accompanied by small fried smelt from the lake of Bolsena and porchetta and buying ropes of garlic for use during the year. Or gorging on fried porcini mushrooms at the autumn festival where even if one goes alone, one never stays that way for long, for those who come to sit at your table quickly become new friends.

From Homer to Beowulf, Proust to Camilleri, a ten-course feast, a madeleine with a cup of tea or a Sicilian arancino, food has been, and will always be, part of life’s traditions. The cinema, like Babette’s Feast, and literature, from Doctor Seuss and Green Eggs and Ham, to Pearl Buck and The Good Earth, and countless others, all bear witness to the importance of FOOD and of sharing a meal. And if you can’t eat, you can always dream.

And now it’s your turn to tell me what you eat.