Food For Thought

Coin, pewter, bad breath, pencil lead, wet sand, school lunchmeat, foggy mirror, dust bunny, glue gravy paste, American possum, gravel, thunder…ah, sorry, still counting shades of gray from last week. Hoped the weather might’ve shifted by now, but it’s still raining.

We’re currently in the van heading northeast toward Spokane for ArtFest. My cousin who lives there just called and told us to be prepared for even more rain. Well, her exact words were, “It’s gonna be ugly,” but I’m remaining optimistic and do declare we’ll have something yummy to report after all is said, done, sold and told.

Moving on, we recently received an email from a woman who Googled “drooling goats,” and ended up on our blog site. She enjoyed the goat adventure from a year ago and her main question, after having read it was, “Does your father cook?”

Short answer. No. Long answer. Nope. Family lore about dad in the kitchen involves a trip to the grocery store when he purchased 13 boxes of Cheerios. Because a dozen wouldn’t be quite enough and 14 would be too many?

Or there’s the time he tried to make instant mashed potatoes sans clue my mother refilled the plastic canister with flour instead of the starchy flakes. Okay, that alone should tell you something about my mom’s kitchen filing system, but Dad did his best. He persistently added flour to the liquid (milk or water, not sure which), trying to thicken it in a cast iron skillet.

The result of that dinner was gray gravy paste. As you might imagine, it was nasty in both texture and flavor. I vocalized that it was gross to eat glue for supper, but he ignored my protestations by scooping more onto his plate and repeating “Yum” like a mantra for the duration of the meal. Unfortunately, saying “yum” did not make it so.

My parent’s approach to food is that it’s fuel for the body and that people “eat to live, not live to eat.” Their philosophy has served them well as they are both approaching 80, have never had weight problems and seem pretty healthy.

The other day, my mother was thinking out loud and thus said to me, “I’m trying to think who in the family is like you. Ummm, no one.” Her comment made me laugh and of course I responded with a cheerful, “Thank you!” We banter easily with each other at times and at others confess our follies when we think enough time has passed, hoping to avoid a lecture.

My parents have gotten to the age where they’ll try to hide things like dad climbing on a ladder, crashing on a bicycle or walking home alone in the dark. When I catch wind, I’ll squawk, “I thought I raised my parents better than that!”

Last Wednesday it was the other way around. Although my mother promised not to lecture me, she requested permission to make one simple statement. “I thought you had better sense than that!”

So did I.

Have you ever known something was a bad idea, yet decided to do it anyway? Let me set the table. Groom and I have cast our intention to travel through Italy when the time is right. We purchased an Italian calendar for the New Year and every Calendar Day (what my cousin in Spokane celebrates on the first of every month), we flip over the new page and ooh and aah at the Tuscan countryside, the canals of Venice or the grand architecture of Rome.

We read Italian-centric books (I just started Death in the Venetian Quarter), watch Italian themed movies (can’t wait for Eat, Love, Pray to come out in August), and select recipes from the Italian cookbook we received for Christmas, all with the enjoyment and purpose of manifesting things to come.

Which is one reason I finally said yes to attending an Italian dinner last Wednesday evening. I refused politely the first time I was asked after previewing the menu and my gut told me no grazie. But relented when friends persuaded us.

I’m not usually a sucker for peer pressure but when it’s done with finesse, ah, well, I was weak. The finesse included delicious words of inclusion tossed with a light vinaigrette of calling me out. You see, I tend to have a bit of a swagger when it comes to eating. I like to think of myself as adventurous and tend to boast a little (okay, fine, a lot) about how hot I can take my food.

This braggarty nonsense was turned around and used against me as friendly ammunition to sway my attendance. A challenge? Uh-oh, I was doomed. The choice was clear; eat the dinner or eat my words. Dang! Why do I have to go and shoot my mouth off?

The nonsensical part of this equation is that I also possess a trigger-happy gag reflex. I suffer from the opposite of bulimia. I eat lots and have a phobia about throwing up. The fear factor began in elementary school when a kid upchucked in class and the teacher called a reluctant janitor carrying a bucket full of sawdust. Oh the shame and humiliation that poor boy endured on the playground. He was a pariah after that and I absorbed some of his pain and became freaked out it would happen to me.

My mom often shakes her head in wonder that she ever got me all growed up. I was a nervous, neurotic little kid full of ticks and quirks and the fear of vomiting was just one of them. “Oh, I think I’m gonna throw up,” I’d say, morning after morning, while she scooped my hair into a severe ponytail. I think the very notion of morning sickness was enough to make me sterile.

Back to dinner Italiana. We were invited to join 18 foodies and epicures. Now, I don’t know the official difference, but I can offer an educated guess. Foodies are aficionados of food and drink for passion, while professional epicures have refined tastes as their line of work. Say, a lawyer who collects wines is a foodie while the epicure is the person who makes their living selling it to them.

Foodies are a distinct hobby group; people who are obsessively interested in all things culinary from shopping and preparation, to educating themselves and of course, consuming.

They often invest in deluxe kitchen equipment, are likely to watch the food networks and most definitely collect and pour over cookbooks like others read novels. They insist on the freshest of ingredients and are sure to know the best places to shop on which days. You can spot foodies in their natural habitat; open air markets, buying wholesome, local organic offerings, or in gourmet boutiques selecting saffron, Himalayan salt and imported French or Italian truffles.

Me? I’m a fragmented foodie or a foodie groupie. I enjoy surrounding myself with those who take pleasure in creating epicurean delights and discovering fine wines.

The French word for bread is le pain and the French word for friend is copain. Which makes sense when you think about it - a companion is someone you can break bread with.

Personally, I think Jesus was a foodie. He loved breaking bread and sharing wine with His copains on rooftop gardens, and boy could He entertain (think of the heavenly wine He produced at the wedding feast of Cana of Galilee or the 5,000 He fed with the loaves and fishes).

I cannot claim to be a full-fledge foodie as I do not enjoy the preparation or shopping as much as the education and consumption. That’s why these fabulous wine tasting dinners are so interesting. Somebody else does the shopping and cooking and I get to learn while noshing. C’est parfait. Mi scusi, I mean, e perfetto

Which brings us full circle to the Italian dinner Wednesday night with the 18 foodies and epicures: Professional gourmands paired equally with ardent hobbyists. Now that I’ve created all this build up, the actual story might not hold up to the hype.

As far as food education goes, I did learn something that evening. While my intestinal tract is built for heat in the form of jalapeno peppers, habaneros, garlic, onions or wasabi, my stomach is not equipped for rich foods.

The first course of the evening was Carne Cruda. Sounds harmless, right? Another name is steak tartare. Still not familiar? Raw beef. It was served in a miso soup spoon (see photograph) next to Involtini di Zucchine, a zucchini roll “stuffed” with fresh herbs, goat cheese and hazelnuts. As one of our friends commented, presenting the raw beef in the spoon did little to distinguish it from cat food.

Gulp. It looked just like hamburger. Only it wasn’t ground. This was finely chopped filet mignon. Tootie rooty snooty, it was still fatty, bloody raw meat. And I ate it. I tried not to pull a face while spreading the red flesh on bread, but I’m not sure that I succeeded.

The second course served was Rabbit Spinach Pappardelle tossed in a tarragon cream sauce. Next came the Braised Beef Cheeks in red wine sauce and sautéed bietola, which if I remember correctly were two cherry tomatoes. No wait, it was Swiss chard, the cherry tomatoes must have been garnish.

For dessert we had Semifreddo and strawberries. None of us knew what Semifreddo was and when the Chef appeared, we asked. Her Semifreddo was whipped cream folded into heavy cream and partially frozen. Ah, semi-freddo, duh.

Suffice it to say, the combination of raw meat, bunny wabbit, pasta in cream sauce, beef cheeks and partially frozen cream put me over the gastronomic edge.

While it was charming to be included in an after hours champagne affair later in the evening (I mean, who doesn’t love being asked to party with the “cool kids”), I was unable to partake as my stomach was beginning to lurch on the high seas. Groom, a tad disappointed (who could blame him), gallantly took my arm and escorted me home in, you guessed it, the blustery rain.

The heel of my black boot caught on the edge of the curb and I did a most magnificent, graceful pratfall straight onto my back. Only by the grace of my foodie Copain Jesus, did I not smack my head or break any part of my body. Lying there in a grand puddle, Groom helped me up and we cautiously made our way home, laughing all the way.

Figuring I’d be mighty sore and bruised in the morning, I took a preventative over-the-counter painkiller. That probably was the last straw. The shock of the fall on top of the naproxen sodium layered in between the cream, fat and blood, well, it was just too much.

Uh-oh, my elementary school phobia kicked into high gear. Groom came in with a bucket full of sawdust…

In hindsight, perhaps eating my words would have been tastier and easier to keep down.

Say "Cheese"

I remember the first time I heard it. Well, heard may not be entirely the correct word, as that image conjures up voices in the head. Perhaps memo is a more accurate term.

Okay, let’s start again. I remember the first time I got the memo. It contained three words and no explanation. “Stop Drinking Wine.”

I promptly ignored it and booted said message to the recycle bin.

A few weeks later, those three words reappeared in my mental “in box.” This dance went on for about a year with the same memo coming in and me ignoring it. In August of 2007, the message doubled in size to six words, “Stop drinking wine for thirty days.”

In that moment, I let loose a victimy sigh and said with great melodra-martyr flair, “Fiiiiine.”

As I was walking with Groom at the time and my dramatic exhalation came out of nowhere, he looked at me with appropriate puzzlement. I did not have a chance to utter a word before our cell phone rang. It was my dermatologist calling and she said, “I want you to stop drinking wine for 30 days.”

Are you kidding me??

My face is often rutilant and Doc suggested cutting back on the vino as a last ditch effort to minimize the ruddiness.

Before you picture me as a lush, you should know that my fermented grape juice consumption was limited to a glass a day. No, not day, per evening with dinner. I admit it, I indulged in an hour of pleasurable ritual every night. These 60 minutes comprised a special trinity: a glass of cabernet, a television show and delicious food.

As Groom and I broke bread, we relaxed, allowing the stress of the day to disappear with each sip of mirthy grapes. We tuned out, the television performing an hour of mental dialysis.

I did not want to give it up.

When I folded the phone after talking with my skin doctor (darmnit, I can’t hang up anymore), having committed to my version of Lent, I had the task of informing Groom of my impetuous decision to forgoo the happy juice.

Now I knew better than to announce to Groom that WE were temporarily abandoning one of our pleasures, so I simply shared the interesting timing of my intuitive guidance with the dermatologist’s request.

Groom decided (on his own) to join me. Phew!

I will not regurgitate the list of doo-doo that hit the fan, but trust me when I say all manner of mierde leapt from the woodwork and challenged us to see if we were serious in our commitment.

People reacted in a variety of ways to our month long wine-fast. One couple, prior to our decision, had made the proclamation that if we ever stopped drinking they would NOT be amused. They were true to their word. The invitations to dine became less frequent until they were non-existent.

It was a long 30 days.

The surprise was that by the end of it, we’d lost both our taste and desire for Bacchus’ titty.

A year of abstinence later (okay, not quite, but one glass per month as opposed to 31 felt like abstinence), I received another memo. Uh-oh. This one also contained six words, scarier than the first. “Stop watching television for 30 days.” What???

If we thought people reacted strongly to us eliminating wine from our diet, we were thoroughly unprepared for the hostility that came forth because we turned off our boob-tube. In hindsight, wine was an easier addiction to see, but television? Well now we were stepping on people’s toes just by making that decision for ourselves. Yikes!

Another unexpected result was that we tasted our food and noticed when we got full much quicker than when we were hypnotizing ourselves with the magic box. I was accustomed to stretching out my dinner for a full hour and without the digital entertainment, I pushed my plate away in less than half the time.

We also ate half as much.

Without the wine calories and then naturally cutting our dinner proportions by half, Groom managed to lose around 65 pounds. I wish I could cluck about any figure improvements for myself, but I just wrote about my clothes not fitting last week, so I’ll say nothing more about it…

The wine-fast led to the television diet, which led to the weight loss. Each contained a surprise benefit that I didn’t know about ahead of time when I decided to follow my guidance. You’re right, I guess that’s why it’s called a “surprise.”

For a small excrement of time without my wine, I mean increment, I felt antsy. But without my television, I felt downright itchy. It provoked existential angst, “Who am I without the relationship to my T.V.?” Until I stopped watching, I had no idea the dependency I had created and I was not enjoying the withdrawal symptoms.

One morning during my DT’s, while traveling north along the coast from California to Oregon, I was taking pictures with my pocket camera in Arcata. A third memo fluttered into my awareness, this time in the form of a question.

“What would happen if you developed a relationship with your camera?”

In that moment, I decided to take pictures of anything and everything. After a few months of pursuing this, I knew I was outgrowing my pocket-size Olympus, yet a relevant quote from a camera magazine pointed out, “The best camera is the one you actually take with you.”

I was actually taking my little camera with me everywhere as it fit conveniently in my purse. Would I really haul around a larger one? I’m not inclined to research a bunch of statistics online, reviewing which camera merits the best rating. Techni-babble makes me verrrry sleepy. No, I decided to do my study in the field.

This research included knowing what kind of photography I wanted to pursue and then discovering which camera would be the best tool for the job. Anytime I saw a person carrying a serious looking camera, I’d ask them about it. What kind, how did they like it, what was the shutter response time, could I hold it, etc.?

I was pleasantly delighted to discover how friendly people with cameras were and how much information they were willing to offer. I kept notes and yet could not seem to make a decision. What if I chose the wrong one? What if a better one came out as soon as I did make up my mind? What if I outgrew it? What if what if what if???

Apparently the photography Muse became exasperated with my indefinite deliberations and made the decision for me. At a family BBQ a few weeks ago, Brother-In-Law arrived with his brand new camera. I gravitated toward it instantly and he was very generous in letting me play with it during the evening.

Naturally, I asked him all kinds of questions and he answered that he liked it just fine except for…Except that he discovered too late that an even newer model had been introduced to the public with an HD video feature that he was salivating over. Ah, my fear being played out…what if I plunked down the pennies from the piggy bank and then an even better camera vied for my affections??? Now he was in existential angst.

The next day I received an email from Brother-In-Law, offering the camera, a case, two batteries, chargers and four lenses for an amazing price. If I said yes, then he would go High Def.

Ah, what to do?? I consulted Kimmm, Bee Bugg and Goat Mama, all photographers. Kimmm had the funniest, least technical answer. She said, “Why are you even questioning this? Of course this is your camera. It so fits your story arc.”

Huh? I have a story arc?

“Yes,” she affirmed. “You do. Of course a camera would be delivered to your house at a next-to-nothing price.” She just laughed and shrugged like she was talking to a simpleton.

On Saturday, I was holding my new acquisition, wondering a few things about it when a man appeared in my booth. With no introduction or preambles, he said, “What would you like to know about your camera? What would you like to know about photography?”

I was stunned. An inner prompting told me I had manifested a tutor and there he was, showing up. Groom watched the booth as I wandered around the outdoor marche with Kimmm and Richard, having a fun photography lesson.

There are many more words I could use to describe the experience, but I’m going to save you about 1,000 of them, as that is what the current market value of a picture is worth.