Friday, July 31, 2009

Vinegar and Vulnerable


Disclaimer: Ugh…as a writer I’ve always made it a goal NOT to explain myself or my writing…but I suppose the circumstances here are a little different…I’ve been giving you tastes and tidbits of what I do creatively…I write from experience and dreams…things that have happened to me and things I have a hard time differentiating from dream or reality…When something inspires me I write..fragmented or whole…true or spindles of truth blowing about in a sky of ambiguity…I’m still unsure of what this Blog will be…it has no pattern or structure…its my thoughts shared with anyone who wants to share them with me…as if we are sitting across a polished oak table with two spoons submerged in a bowl of bouillabaisse…I guess that’s what this is…what it all is…my life centered around the table...food memoir…and I’ve made myself wholey vulnerable to you all..bon appétit

*

Possible Symptoms of Only Child Syndrome: your parents become your best friends. Our travels became focused around dinner when we tasted new possibilities on our palates, let our taste buds roam the nooks and crannies of the places we travel. In the moments between dusk and Merlot stained lips where I feel a tug of war between my adolescence against my adulthood. The friction made itself known this past August, heavy and abrasive

It was twilight in the city. We finished dinner, the silkiness of rich sauces and brine of poached fish still on my tongue. Cool and musky air churned at my ankles, heels clicking awkwardly from misplaced steps from glasses of Riesling and a desert of ice-wine and Camembert. I held their hands as we tried to hail a cab, both warm and malleable. Despite the two-inch heels, I can peer over the crown of my mother’s head and look into my father’s eyes yet I still felt protected, safe, home. I held on tighter than I should have.

*

Food memoir is best ingested through the eyes. A sub genre of autobiography, it has become known to be a form of autobiography, intertwining narratives of family life, travel, growth and the author's representation of an evolving 
self through ones palate. The Shared Table is a haven for self-revelation. Shared implies you are not alone in the experience of eating. Eating is an act that, at time, requires others to provide a context for laughter, tears, and arguments and even silences-punctuated by the chorus of utensils and music of consumption. Life is passed by at such a fast pace as society becomes more focused on progression, innovation and material consumption.

Yes, the importance of educations and labor is important but we never seem to slow down anymore. Something we should share and experience with each other. Less and less do we stop and regard what life what life has to offer us in the form of food and drink, a part of my daily living. A shared meal reiterates and supports generosity. It strengthens relationships and reminds us of the basics of life, of human nature. Sensuality can be found in roasted pork loin, love in apple torts, temper in chili powder. The kitchen and dining room are classrooms, battlefield, ballrooms, bedrooms and libraries. They are places for round-tables, philosophies, debates, confessions and interrogation. Food provides us something to quest for and talk about afterward, giving rise to literature itself. All writers have the ability to bring to life, experiences and ideas that other people cannot. They can make the reader feel connected to a story about a stranger, or a place they have never been. “Food writers make explicit what native eaters know in their hearts, minds, palates.” I have forgotten where I read this but it says everything my words cannot say.

Dining, food, eating, the culinary experience allows us to come together, appreciate what others have experienced and relate those experiences to our own lives. One can revive a past experience with family or friends. Food keeps memories intact. We can almost taste a childhood dish and remember where we were, how we felt, what we were wearing, and whom we were with. We remember barely being able to reach the top drawer just below the edge of the counter but wanting, begging to help an adult prepare a meal. We watched wrinkled hands of our grandmother or deft fingers of our parents chop and kneed. We watched their foreheads fold into vs as they contemplated the precise texture for a sauce or stew. There is a flaw that has come out of culinary memoir. We tend to assume that to write interesting prose on culinary experiences one has to have experienced lands far and wide, exotic ingredients and have to have the means to do so. However, some of the most poignant stories of food come from our own backyards, or kitchens, rather. Holiday morsels, special occasion meals, and childhood favorites are just as interesting and as significant as that one unforgettable you can still taste as if it were yesterday.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Dialect of Taste

Another dream inside reality:

A lift of the fork, prongs of polished silver, slightly hidden by a tiny mound of nude flakes of poached fish meat, obscure tendrils of steam swaying upward from the just-from-the-pan substance. Laying the utensil on my tongue, the meat slides from it slowly, aptly, between my parted lips, the tender flesh left tingling from the heat. Buttery warmth spreads over my mouth like sun on a barely frozen lake.

Food is sustenance to my tongue and taste is sustenance to my brain.

*

The belly of the fish, supple, melting into my palate as it slides down my throat

The brine of it dissolves away the bustle of the waitstaff, clinking glasses and dim lights, twinkling like a city skyline at twilight .

Cross and recrossing my legs for a distraction of what this kind of food does to me as I look for a distraction and lick the oil and salt from the crevices of my lips, outlining them with the tip of my tongue.

Shifting on top the plush chair cushion, I curl and uncurl my fingers and toes, limbs I know exist because I feel them, because the handle of the fork balances between my thin fingers. And in looking at my own hands I think of his fingers that have wandered the places on my body that know its sweet perspiration and salt from long exhales and low barely audible sounds.

*

Another flick of the wrist and the curve of the fork separates a sliver of glistening fish from the rest of the fillet.

He curls four fingers around a mound of fish flesh and white meat, his nails and knuckles shiny from the oil, the same gloss that reflects under dim bedroom lights after I extract them from between my pursed lips.

The fork flickers under the muted crystal light fixture as I bring another piece of the sea to my own mouth, but I let my eyes linger on damp lips as I take another full bite.

He dips his dead and brings his fingers to his mouth and lips again, steam disappearing with his exhale and he blows.

The metal is warm as it leaves the confines of my mouth.

*

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Tastebuds and Tantalization




I woke from a dream this morning...the sweat from the heat of it collected between my shoulder blades.

It reminded me of how consumption and taste are such transverse expressions..I think being a connoisseur of food, of exploring taste and the complexity of the palate, I've come to learn that taste can be a way of exploring someone's body, a lover, the self...a way of learning something about the body and sexuality that words sometimes cannot convey.

But I tried anyway...c'est la vie of a writer I suppose.

*

After the salt from another’s tongue and mouth have faded from the moist part of my lips and the insides of my cheeks, the taste is replaced by the bitterness of red wine that stains the same places of my moth that he explored. The alcohol leaves a dull burn of passion and solitude from my years when it mixes with tears as they slide down my face and in between my parted lips. Licking them away with my tongue, I taste the questions that are bursting inside of me, bubbling into my throat.

Dissolving like salt in water.

The way he feels on my tongue reminds me of nighttime after a storm. Dark and musky, pungent as an aftertaste.

A kind of sensuous, sumptuousness with using all part of the mouth to taste him.

The body becomes a map, a sequence of trails and destinations that my lips explore, that my tongue uses to journey from one place on his body to the next.

How foreign flesh feels on my palate, to detect the crook of his arm, or the dip in his waist, the space between his fingers, where suggestions of pine and freshly cut grass, maple syrup and a hint of pepper, sometimes unsweetened chocolate, or the brine and honey of sweat on his collar bone.

I taste him between sweetness of my own fingers, like morning oatmeal with brown sugar, how it mixes with the smell of herbs on my wrist from my perfume. Cappuccinos have a way with my mouth; the foam from the froth of milk is left in the empty spaces of the cup when the liquid is finished off. I drink them slowly, with patience and suggestion, take note of the warm liquid down my throat. Once the milky brown espresso and milk are gone, remnants of subtle, sweet, milk neglected in the bottom of the cup. The tips of my fingers scoop up the froth remaining on the circumference of the vestibule and before placing the weightless substance onto my palate I remember how I’ve tasted his fingers in the same way, a methodical, sensual motion, breathing hot breath onto the back of his hand then taking his fingertips in between my parted lips.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Mud Soup




It began with love:


The silver ladle is submerged in a soupy mixture the color of my grandfather’s hands after he mixes his homemade fertilizer for his garden. My hands were small and struggled to stir the goop that had settled to the bottom of the “pot”, a left over yogurt container that my grandparents reused after they have finished off the last of it.
I remember the previous morning when my grandmother handed my grandfather the oversized tablespoon thick with the white substance. He dabbed a bit of honey from the teddy bear shaped bottle onto the spoon, tarnishing the bright white yogurt with a blip of gold, inspected it, then slid the utensil into his mouth, cleaning off the spoon with one swipe. Flecks of yogurt and honey stuck to his grey whiskers and my grandmother, with her throaty giggle, swiped at her own upper lip with her index finger.

“Grandpa, saving some for later?” Her eyes crinkle as she half smiles.

“Of course I am. Because I knew you’d want some later.” He doesn’t skip a beat and my grandmother leans over and kisses him fast and hard, a love peck she calls it.

“Yum.”

I was caught up in them as a child, their unabashed desire for each other.

I looked back at the yogurt cup where drips of the mixture have sloshed over the sides and left brown trails down the sides of the container, thinking of the specks of yogurt in my grandfather’s beard. Sitting with my legs tucked under me, my nightshirt scrunched up to my knees, I stared into the murky confection. Something was missing. The morning dew had left the edges of my nightshirt damp and it stuck to my bare legs when I stood up. Blades of unruly grass clung between my toes and the tops of my feet as I searched the yard for my next ingredient.

-*

“I could care less about naked men.” My grandmother shrugs next to me on the robins egg blue couch, pausing after to wink at my grandfather who is seated just across the room. She turns to me again.

“I’ve seen so many of those things dangling between men’s legs it’s absurd.” She giggled like I used to when I talked about sex when I was in middle school. Her girlishness has emerged over the years. Her body wrinkles and bends with time but her soul grow young and supple, vivacious. I see it in her eyes when she looks at my grandfather. Their love comes from a place that most people cannot discover, and if they do they are shut out from it, haven’t earned entrance. They have silent conversations that no one else can hear, but I can see it playing out between them. The way their touches and caresses are so subtle that you would miss them if you blinked,

“Grandma! Too much! Even I haven’t seen my share of them.” My face grows hot with flush and I concentrate on my bare feet. I wonder why I am embarrassed to talk about this with my family. Hushed I add “By choice. Those dangling things intimidate me.” My laugh swallows the end of my sentence. She pats my thigh, her collection of thin silver bracelets shimmying with the movement.

“Don’t rush it. Let me tell you, when God made men he did not have beauty in mind when he created their…” she clears her throat, “paraphernalia.” She looks at my grandfather again. He catches her eye and I watched them share an intimate smile, full of experience and remembrance of nights when they laid wrapped around each other.

It wasn’t until I eased out of my teenage years that I began to notice the way they lived within each other. I like to think I’m the only one who catches their insinuations. How my grandfather, on the way to Starbucks this past Christmas, slid his hand along the leather interior of my fathers car and hooked his thick index finger under my grandmothers first three delicate knuckles, rubbing the pearly knobs of her arthritic joints, willing relief into them. Her hands always seem to flow more steadily after his touch. I watched them in the review mirror in the backseat that day because they insisted on sitting next to each other, even if it meant scrunching themselves into a less spacious automobile. I hope they saw me watching.

-*

I grew up spending long days stretched into evenings at my grandparents house while my parents filled the hours of their day with work and wages to keep us buoyant. Growing older, its become less and less a priority to keep in contact with them, something that weighs heavy in the confines of my stomach each time we visit a few times a year. To have lived only minutes from my grandparents as a child was a luxury, but now it’s become difficult for me to remember that until I see them.

The puffed kernels of my grandmother's homemade popcorn disappeared by the millisecond in the middle of my tongue, melting away into a brine of salt and oil leaving behind an afterthought of cinnamon and sugar. Popcorn nights only come to me in the context of scorched summer days cooled into nights that left a chill on the top of my bare feet. After dinner dishes were left soaking in mountains of suds the ritual began. I sat patiently on the tweed couch and pretended to immerse myself in the latest coloring book. My grandmother sat with a pile of yarn at her feet and crochet needles working finger eights between her nimble, curved fingers, fabricating what ever blanket, hat or pair of slippers she may have been working on for the coming fall and winter. Enough time passed where dinner was only a distant memory on our taste buds. By the time my stomach gurgled, she had disappeared into the kitchen, abandoning her needles in the rocking chair.

A sound like some exotic tribal maraca ensued from the kitchen and I have no proof, I can picture my grandmother taking extra effort to swish the raw corn kernels around in the container. Maybe she turned it upside down then back up again to make the kernels slide and ping against the glass jar and metal lid. I scampered into the kitchen where she was waiting with a giant plastic bowl and a jar half full with golden, teardrop kernels.

“Ready to wake up Grandpa?” Her smile was mischievous and alluring, her collection of silver bracelets shimmying on her strong wrists, accentuated with lean muscle as she popped the metal lid from the container after I failed to unscrew it myself. My little hands and arms were too weak to release the kernels.

She was, and still is, beautiful like an antique piece of jewelry. Skin with a dull sheen in the muted light of their home reminded me of the way the sky burnishes just after the sun sets and her scent was a mixture of salt, lavender and rainwater. The way my grandfather would look at her as he made his way into the kitchen was one of longing, as if he knew he had all of her but all was not enough, as if he wanted nothing but to absorb her into his pores so when he worked in the yard the next morning, she would flow from his pours as he perspired. His love for her is consuming.

The jar of kernels was awkward in my grasp, but somehow I managed to pour just enough into the bowl with only a few escaping and bouncing onto the counter like golden hail. Placing a lid over the bowl I inserted it into the microwave, punching 3 minutes for good measure. While the microwave whirred, my grandmother pulled a bottle of thick, golden oil from the cupboard above our heads with on hand and turn on the front burner on the stove next to us with the other. As the coils began to turn from black to fuchsia my grandfather slinked up behind her and placed his chin on top of her head, tilting his nose into her gray-white hair, his chest rising into her back as he inhaled her scent into him. Grandma reached around to find his hands and encircled her waist with his arms, guiding his palms to her belly. But her attention could always be in two places at once.

“Sugar and cinnamon today, Hal?”

Saturday, July 25, 2009

So I have this job.

But I'm not so much digging that term because job, to me, implies a series of tasks or actions that are not necessarily what one actually takes pleasure in. A "job" equals obligation, and bouts of crankiness, and agitation possibly smattered with random incidents of flying objects and number pushing.

But none of this describes what I do.

Because I love what I do. and I'm good at it.

You're probably expecting some glamorous, eccentric occupational description bit what I am, in simplest terms is a hostess.

And no not the cupcake.

I'm not just a diner. True I love restaurants, menus, wine lists, little amuse bouche treasures etc. but it hasn't stopped there. I don't just want to be entertained and awed by food by being a spectator in an audience of sorts. I want to be right in there, getting my hands dirty, greasy, sticky, damp what have you.

I'm turned on and tantalized by the temperature difference my skin feels when I pass through the front of the house into the jungle like atmosphere of the kitchen. The smell of spices and sauces infused into my hair and pores like some exotic perfume. I love the way my pulse quickens just enough that a slight dampness forms on my brow, the feel of the muscles in my calves constricting from pacing back and forth through the restaurant, the feel of smooth leather bound wine lists tucked under my arm. The way I have to find an excuse to go into the kitchen so I can catch a glimpse of our chefs at work. They hypnotize me, pivoting between counter tops stopping to taste bubbling liquids, adjusting the burner take a pinch of something from a container above the stove and flick whatever spice chosen into the mixture only to turn to the opposite counter to tend to a crowded cutting board.

Its a drug: the smoke and steam from the burners and ovens leave the ends of my hair slightly warm to the touch and I'm addicted to the feel of the heat coming in slight wafts, grazing the apples of my cheeks: the scent of roasted butternut squash and soft shell crabs simmering in the pan

For me, as a writer and avid connseuier of pleasure, sensuality and all things culinary, there is nothing like observing the curve of a spoon or the pronged tips of a fork being lifted to parted lips, nothing like the slight pause as one lets the flavors spread over the tongue, nothing like

the face contort and morph into a reaction of pleasure, perplexity or pain. Smiles of satisfaction unfurling, each face like a snowflake, not one is the same as taste buds react to the food they have taken on. Food writing is nurturing. It is sustenance for the mind. Those who love to eat and want to know everything about cuisine learn the extensive vocabulary.

Food is the dialogue and the language is how it is prepared, presented and consumed. It was an old Chinese proverb that said, “Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.” And those whom I work with do just so.


Oh and this is pretty sweet. We were just recognized in Wine Spectator. Kind of a big deal. I'm aloud to brag because I'm ridiculously proud of everyone I work with. :) Check it.


Losing my blogging virginity


Bloggity blog blog. I am only doing this in hopes that someone..anyone will be..or at least present to be interested in what I have to say. I am a writer and identify myself as that first and foremost. Food is my passion, my palate is my compass (at the risk of being cliche), and since I was a wee little bitty thing I have been forever epicurious. Where have I been? What have I eaten? Why do I adore chefs but cannot actually be one myself? That..you will learn..I hope..through this blog..of which I am a virgin. Think of me as the virgin food bloggette. Yes? Ok. Here we go.

Zee Photograph above is from a little shindig I discovered while in Chicago the past week. It's called Farmerie 58 on the corner of Rush and Ontario across the street from the chic boutique The James hotel. Though I'm trying to accept and actually (excuse my harshness) give a shit about "local" and "organic" and "fresh" it's been a little difficult for me in the past. I could care less if my greens have been given a vitamin enriched shower or if my fish ate its weight in the periodic table of elements. I just want to eat the damn food and I want it to blow me away. However, this place has opened up my eyes with their philosophy. Check it kidz. www.farmerie58.com