Potato-Peeling as Meditative Trance! - Feasting, Friendship & Healing

My friend arrived for dinner last night around 6:30pm and we didn't stop eating and talking 'til 1:30am, at which point I offered the couch to her. Then we hung out today 'til 11am. So let me share some highlights from last night.

This is the menu that happened:

Caramelized Onions w/Grated Parmesan
Warm Cherries w/Goat Cheese by Chef Maili
Triple Citrus Tiger Prawns w/Thai Chili Sauce by Chef Maili
Sauteed Spinach

Warm Plum & Ginger Sauce by Chef Maili over Vanilla Ice Cream

Bogle sauvignon blanc (her gift)

Caramelized Onions:  I'd made these a few days before (using The Joy Of Cooking) to go with an omelet -- not realizing they'd take an hour and a half to cook. Didn't eat my omelet 'til 3pm! I'd been waiting for a chance like last night to try them out as a side dish/appetitzer the way the book suggested. Warm them up, then sprinkle some freshly grated parmesan on top. So I did, and served the onions along with a warmed-up loaf of Pain Rustique from Trader Joe's. Here it is:

Caramelized onions topped w/fresh grated parmesan

And here is the way my friend prepared the bites -- piling the onions onto the bread.

Caramelized onion on bread devotional

Then I decided to make cherry sauce and goat cheese for our second appetizer. Earlier I'd stopped at Whole Foods to pick up more halloumi cheese (craving that salad -- here's how it came out today for lunch)...

Halloumi Cheese w/Lentil & Cucumber salad redux

...and couldn't resist the shiny cherries. This appetizer was the first thing Chef Maili made at our initial cooking lesson on June 10th. Marilee and I almost fainted from pleasure. Maili uses squares of walnut raisin rye bread (wherever that comes from!). I substituted those with the irresistible olive and fig crisps I mentioned in another post (thank you for turning me on to them, Janet Graham!) You can get them at Whole Foods. The combination of all the ingredients is luscious and lethal.

For the first time, I didn't burn the almonds. (Set the oven to 350, toasted the nuts for only 8 minutes and also checked for when I could smell them...a sign to pull them out fast). While you're sauteeing cherries (something so satisfyingly perverse and unexpected about sauteeing bright red fruit -- at least to me!), you're toasting almonds. These small touches -- warming the sauce, toasting the nuts -- are the kinds of things Maili taught me that can elevate your food -- just like choosing a surprising word or phrase in a story can elevate the language.

Stupid kitchen mistakes:  Grating Parmesan Cheese. You think this is easy. And it is. What's not easy (for me) is directing where the cheese goes. When I grate cheese over pasta, most of it flies onto the floor. Last night, Eureka! The solution came to me -- grate the cheese into a bowl first! I know I know -- you're thinking nobody could be that lame in the kitchen. But I am. And I'm still cooking. So you can cook too.

Sauteeing cherries -- first in butter, then adding a simple syrup

I did not have chervil -- had forgotten to buy some -- so I just left it out. Chervil is a tiny, delicate herb. It, too, adds a certain something to the goat cheese mixture. But I'd forgotten it another time and added mint instead -- which somehow wrecked the whole appetizer. It was too strong and suffocated the other flavors, I think. I'm learning about what I like, what I respond to -- and then trying to figure out why. When Maili talks about foods "liking" certain spices, or herbs, e.g. fruit loves lemon -- it helps, er, humanize the cooking process. Maybe goat cheese hates mint, thinks it stole his girlfriend, I don't know. But it didn't work, so I skipped that part and just mixed the goat cheese with toasted chopped almonds. When I put it all together, it didn't look as pretty as Maili's. You can see hers on her blog (I couldn't figure out how to copy the pic).

Here are mine:

But, my guest devoured them so there's the testament.

Friend gets all reverential on the warm cherries and goat cheese

Finally I could prepare the shrimp. I love zesting fruit. (I use a Microplane, suggested by Maili. It's brilliant!) Somehow it feels like you're playing a zither with food. I scraped a whole lemon, orange and lime into a bowl. Set it aside. (The first couple times I made the zest I'd added a tablespoon of salt!!! mistakenly thinking because these ingredients were in one spot on the recipe it meant they all belonged together. I hadn't read carefully enough to understand that the salt was to be sprinkled on the shrimp along with the zest as you quickly pan-fried them. Not mixed with the zest! The first two times I made this dish -- for myself, practicing -- I couldn't figure out why it was so mouth-puckeringly salty. Despite the swallowing-sea-water effect, I ate the whole plate. This is something I'm working on -- being willing to toss failed dishes, expired foods, items. I plan to explore my resistance to throwing things out, dig beneath my emotional relationship to clutter. More on that another post when I talk the magnificent orzo-arugula salad...)

The only Blanche I know...swoon...

In another pan, I sauteed spinach. Just heated the pan to medium high, glugged some olive oil, sprinkled salt on top of the leaves, stirred them, and voila. However, my friend suggested another way to do it was first blanch the spinach. (I don't know what "blanching" is...) Then saute and drizzle w/olive oil upon serving. (She said she couldn't taste the olive oil -- which was weird to me since I'd used a lot to saute them. Maybe too much, she said gently. Because the spinach was heavy with oil and yet didn't have the taste. Always more to learn!)

By this point, we were so hungry and primed for the main meal, we scarfed the whole plate of shrimp before I remembered to document. My friend had no comments on this dish. She was too busy inhaling them all! Here's a shot from apres-feast. Even my friend's hand looks relaxed and sated, don't you think?

We finished the evening with warmed plum and ginger sauce spooned over a few scoops of Haagen Dazs plain vanilla ice cream. Downed the last of the Bogle sauvignon blanc. Drank up conversation for our aperitif. Then we fell silent, rubbed our happy bellies and patted our overly-analytical heads. Kidding. But there is such a simple pleasure in this cooking and feeding and sharing that it seems to bring out the child in you. When small things made you smile with contentment.

You'll notice there was no Proscuitto & Tuscan Melon w/Fresh Mint on the final menu. When I drove to the Valley yesterday to shop, I lost my cojones to face Costco. Costco's amazing, but it's like a city. You have to be brave to enter, and endure the warehouse overwhelmingness, the aisles like backstreet industrial alleys, the towering shelves jampacked with stuff.

Instead I stopped for a $25 hour massage. You heard me right. $25 for an hour. Lucky Feet, right on Topanga Canyon Boulevard near Dumetz. Check it out. If you recall, I'd only slept four hours and was wasted. I was also stiff and sore from working out.

I haven't mentioned yet that along with my cooking odyssey, I signed up for a five-week three day/week group physical bootcamp with Sonki Fitness. Getting in better shape while learning to cook made sense. I wanted to explore new foods without worrying (at first) about what was fattening, or unhealthy -- and focus instead on taste. Just have fun.

We meet every other evening on the breath-taking Santa Monica Bluffs. Interestingly, the trainer has a background in the military; so does Maili. Sonki Hong's an army guy whose job I believe was training recruits who'd failed the physical training. Maili's married to a West Point graduate, and her father cooked in the military. They're not messing around.

 I love the rigor, and feel these are the right people to entrust with Beginner's Mind.

Speaking of Beginner's Mind, my friend and I spoke of a thousand things last night -- but the topic of healing fits this blog.

When I gushed about the joys of living on the edge of the wilderness and the tonic effect of staring at green all day, my friend mentioned some places where she found healing in times of distress. One was the Santa Monica rose garden on the bluffs. What rose garden? I worked out there several times a week and had never seen one. Was this yet another reminder of my love junkie tendency toward tunnel vision? I was beginning to see my addictive hyper-focus could be turned to positive use, but it still could be myopic. Then I remembered finding the red rose on the street right where I parked the beat-up cherry red metallic pickup this past Wednesday.

Santa Monica bluffs public rose garden

And today, what do you know. On the walk back to the truck, after bootcamp, I spied that very rose garden to my left. I'd parked right next to it. So I wandered through the garden -- stooping to smell the roses. (Not stopping, stooping. That extra "o" is the only thing preventing me from truly become a walking cliche). Laugh all you like. It was a lesson I clearly needed, and keep needing. One tied closely to cooking.

Close-up of roses at Santa Monica bluffs public rose garden

You can't stoop to smell the roses if you don't even see them. You also can't sniff these blossoms if you're sprinting past like a speed-demon, hellbent on passing the guy in front of you. Addicts sure do love the speed, the immediate gratification, the grand experience. So it makes sense that even in my cooking odyssey, I'm ramping it up. One friend who came to dine remarked that if I did want to write a memoir about this journey, I wouldn't have any arc because I'd already gone from 0 to 60 in the first few weeks. Exactly! I said. Because that's a love junkie for you! Only in this case, it's a positive focus of energy. Instead of penning insane love letters to destructive and/or unavailable lovers, I was cooking up food, feeding myself, and feeding others. Going full throttle was part of the tale. So was finding a balance in the slowing down.

My friend mentioned another favorite place, the Santa Monica Farmer's Market where I'd also never been. When she urged me to go, I knew it was time to plan a trip. I imagined her walking through the market, past bundles of fresh asparagus, piles of dusty red tomatoes, basketsful of zucchini, boxes of gently layered parsleys and thyme. She would move through the fragrance of sliced oranges, and peaches, crushed mint, fresh plums, and her senses would awaken. I wanted that experience. I wanted that rebirth. Wasn't it a natural extension of living at the edge of a state park, in a rural area? Why had I resisted this whole foodie world for so long?

I thought about the girl on Twitter who admonished me when I complained about the worms I found on the corn I bought from the local Topanga farmer's market. Get over it, she Tweet-teased. Worms shworms. Then she explained in another tweet that she was a farmer's daughter, so that stuff didn't bother her. Would I prefer my corn hydroponic and chemically clean of bugs? She gave me pause. I thought about how pleasurable shucking the measly corn was, how gathering the silken greenish threads and pulling them away from the cob calmed me. It was as if time strolled, was filled with color and sensation. At dinner last night, my friend and I talked about how any kind of emotional healing seemed to require slowing down of time.

"When I saw the photo of you peeling potatoes, Rachel, I knew. It was exactly right. This cooking journey is meant to be. I could see peeling potatoes put you in a physically meditative place." She paused. "I know you needed that." What she left unsaid filled the quiet space around us on the deck. She knew me well.

 "Once a psychic told me I should be throwing pots. Same idea."

Balinese dancer

When I took pictures of our dinner, I photographed only my friend's hands. They were so expressive. This was out of respect for her request for anonymity, but also a way of commemorating our shared meal. I wanted to celebrate our reconnection, our conversation about food and healing, about memory and the mysteries of the body And I wanted to capture the artistry, articulateness and compassion that extends to my friend's very fingers.

M.F.K. Fisher in her kitchen

When my friend left, I was reminded of this quotation:

"There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk."
-- M.F.K. Fisher

If I can cook, anyone can. Eat well!

RR
xo

Your Mother Couldn't Cook

Could your mother cook? If she didn't, did that affect your own attitude toward cooking -- maybe without you realizing? Let's dish!

First attempt at Triple Citrus Tiger Prawns, June 22nd (looks pretty, but I misread recipe and SEVERELY oversalted!!!)

Ate them all anyway -- something Chef Maili would never do

Today I'm wiped out from posting another lengthy entry yesterday (check it out! I'd love your feedback!), cooking a meal for a friend last night, staying up 'til 4am afterward to tweak and edit the Muu-Muu post, and today needing to plan and shop and cook for dinner for another friend tonight -- so I'm going to take this day as an opportunity to gather some of the hysterical and incredible responses people have posted on Facebook and elsewhere to my questions above. If you want to join in, send me an e-mail or respond in the comments! Tomorrow I will also share about the meal I prepare for my friend, a beautiful woman and fellow memoirist whom I haven't seen in many months. We have a lot of catching up to do. On the menu so far:

Proscuitto & Tuscan Melon w/Fresh Mint (maybe)

Triple Citrus Tiger Prawns w/Thai Chili Sauce
(Triple Citrus Tiger Prawns w/Thai Chili Sauce by Chef Maili)

Caramelized Onions w/Grated Parmesan

Sauteed Kale

Vanilla Ice Cream w/Homemade Ginger & Plum Sauce
(Plum & Ginger Sauce by Chef Maili)

Meanwhile, feast on the following:

YOUR MOTHER COULDN'T COOK -- 

HYSTERICAL, HEART-RENDING TALES OF UNSPEAKABLE, INEDIBLE DELICACIES!

"This is so amazing. My mother used to boil a package of Hebrew National hot dogs and leave them on a plate on the kitchen table for like a week so we could pick at them. that's how bad a cook she was (is)."
-- Malina Saval, author of The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw, Emotional World of Male Teens (Coming out August 24 in paperback!), Malina Saval's site

Betty Draper "cooking"

"Monday was meatloaf so the leftover could be crumbled into Tuesday's spaghetti sauce (open glass jar of red glop, scorch same in saucepan). That was until about 1977 when some MAD MEN client invented boil in the bag chicken parmesan. I'm not kidding - my mom would toss the four indivdual bags into boiling water. Drain, cut open and dinner was served. (There were 5 of us but I think my brother opted to go hungry those nights.)"
-- Jane Claire Purden

"Another meal -- and I use the word tentatively -- my mom used to cook was elbows and cottage cheese. She'd boil a pot of elbows pasta, then once it was drained, smack a heaping spoonful of Breakstone's cottage cheese (it's a Boston brand; not sure we have it out here) on top. Then she'd mix it all together. She'd pair it with some incongruous beverage like Minute Maid lemonade or orange juice (it also works great with Coke). It's like peasant food and it's so good. Today, I make it for my kids."
-- Malina Saval

"I cook to create something, to let go, to meditate, to relax. I'm confident with a moderate repertoire of mundane to moondancing munchables I can prep and graduate with honors in an hour or less. Who would know -- with my timing, choice of ...a dominant spice, proud sauces -- that I came from naivete in the cupboards and cutlery, alongside culinary luminaries in our hood. Nonetheless, I was lost, bored cutting on the cutting board, more drawn to forklifts than lifting forks. It certainly wasn't from my family that I got any talent beyond enthusiasm with a spatula. To me, until college, whisk was the start of whiskey, and wine, though it rhymed with dine, was more interesting than eating. I grew up in a household where food was always wounded, invalid things dropped on plates after an accident of indescribable heat and attention deficit disorder. My Mom was a terrible cook, steamed veggies until they resembled green, drowned gingerbread men. She was totally uninterested, untalented with intuitions of spicing, uncaring for texture and balance of flavors, uncreative planning a meal, unfocused at the stove and mixing bowl; who would have thought she was an overeater?"
-- Don Helverson

"Anyone remember a unique to the 70's product called "1-2-3 Jello" ?? My mom thought it was a glamourous addition to any gathering. Nothing says celebrate your 25th anniversary or Happy Birthday quite like a dinner of burned Shake N Bake pork chops preceeding this: An orange or lime FLAVORED powder that will, with the magical addition of water, separate into a layer of solid followed by a layer of sponge-like foam topped with a seductive froth of faux chiffon. I think handfulls of shredded coconuts or diced pecans got flung on top - seasonal accents!"
-- Jane Claire Purden

"My mom could never warm the rolls, they were hard and black and hot as cinders by the time she remembered them..."
-- Vicki Whicker

"My mother didn't say don't cook, she just didn't do it well and didn't teach me, but I wasn't teachable back then and am barely now because recipes smack of math...so much precision in the printed recipe...Give me a pinch of that...a palmful of this...if you don't have this ingredient then why don't you try this...it this was how it was pen to paper, then maybe."
-- Vicki Whicker

"My mother refused to teach me how to cook or clean so I wouldn't wind up a housewife like her."
-- Adrienne Urbanski

"Rachel, I have always been wary of cooking and saw the whole subsisting on take out and frozen entrees thing as part of being a hip single girl. The same goes for having a cluttered apartment. But this summer I have been seeing cooking as a means to have better nutrition and save money, and also something that can be fun. I only cook for other people on holidays though, and have never cooked anything for a man. Cooking is something I just do for myself, to take care of myself."
-- Adrienne Urbanski

Tip Of The Day:  Snapware from Costco, $29.99. A set of 18 pieces. Super-sealing lids. Glass storage containers. You'd be amazed how much tastier your leftovers are, and how much longer they stay crisp and fresh. Thanks, Maili! If you need a few additional groovy glass storage containers, (generally overpriced but good in a pinch) Sur La Table in Santa Monica has a sale on Italian Bormioli Frigoverre -- "The Guarantee of Glass"!

Also coming soon...the various incarnations of Chef Maili's signature dish, Triple Citrus Tiger Prawns w/Thai Chili Sauce. You will wince when you hear how innovatively I botched the first two or three times I made them (see pics way above). This will be the fifth attempt. The fourth worked well, at my first dinner party (post TK) -- and then I served them the next day chilled on a bed of cucumbers. Totally worked! (I hate it when you make something and it goes bad the next day...) 

To close, rather than recounting the dinner and visit with my friend (let me do that for tomorrow's post) -- here is a fabulous addition to the various Your Mother Couldn't Cook tales:

"Once my mom made Lemon Meringue pie and forgot to put sugar in it. That was the only time she made it ;-)

"Once we picked wild raspberries and decided to make raspberry jam. We mixed the sugar with the berries, and stirred and stirred as it sat on the stove. We were convinced we saw the mixture on the verge of boiling. Those little tiny dots must be about-to-boil bubbles. After an hour, my sister came in and pointed out that the stove wasn't on. Apparently we thought raspberry seeds were bubbles.

"We often had burnt popcorn and apples for supper. A mom specialty that was kinda good - peanut butter chops. Peanut butter sandwiches cooked like grilled cheese. Burnt of course, but the charcoal mixed with the peanut butter for a taste that was kinda pleasing."
-- Amelia P. 

If I can cook, anyone can. And so can you -- even if your mother couldn't cook. Eat well!

RR

xo

Nude Streaking, Radioactive Pot Roast & The (Almost) Perfect Omelet

Omelet on a mission

My mother dropped me off that morning at the new house. She said she'd be back soon with food, my books, my brother. She was in some kind of rush, so we hadn't eaten breakfast. Once again, she wore the raggedy jean jacket -- this time over a cheap pink turtleneck, Wranglers jeans, cowboy boots. So embarrassing. Other mothers wore dresses, aprons, had polished helmet hair. You know. They looked like mothers.

"Why do you wear that jacket all the time, Ma? And how come you have a gray streak in your hair?" I was stalling for time, I think, trying to make sure she remembered me when she left. My questions always irritated her. But today, she seemed cheerful. Suspiciously so. I wondered if she was meeting a man later.

"'You are old, Father William, the young man said, and your hair has become very white," my mother sang-recited in her lowest of low tones -- which was almost as low as the Uncola Nut man, whose molasses-smooth musical voice warmed me like a summer night. "'And yet you incessantly stand on your head. Do you think at your age it is right?' Lewis Carroll. Your mother is an old soul, Rachel. The hair is proof."

I just shook my head, but I smiled, too. Maybe helmet head moms didn't know Lewis Carroll. Maybe she would come back fast.

"Hurry up," I said, "'cuz I have to practice penmanship, and I have a test in social science tomorrow. Don't forget my books!"

"Don't be uptight. Stay inside, okay? I'll be right back."

Lou Reed, king of not uptight

She drove off in her battered green Ford pickup with the white & brown camper top, even though I'd requested she buy a pink Cadillac with fins. My mother never listened to me.

It was 1973. I was in fifth grade. Ten years old. Mrs. Livesey would not give me any higher than a B+, no matter how much I tried. She was built like a gray-haired ol' linebacker with piggy little eyes, her mouth always pursed in a thin don't-even-think-about-it line. None of my charms had any effect. So I practiced like mad, bore down on the letters so hard the notebook pages curled up. Things were desperate. The end of grading period approached. Another B+ would ruin my straight-A report card. I was considering creating a special hand-written illustrated book with made-up monsters for extra credit, just for Mrs. Livesey. But I needed my notebooks, sketchpad and 48 Magic Marvy Markers to pull it off.

I wandered around. The house was large, empty. Boring. Wood floors. Check. Fridge. Check. Windows. Check. Closets with nothing in them. Ho hum. Upstairs, beige carpet choked the floors. Ick. I wondered which room would be mine, leaned on a sill and pressed my face to the glass so it made a moist ghost face that disappeared as you watched. Then I kissed the glass with a loud smack. I wished I had a pair of those big red wax lips right now, so I could stare at people from the window and freak them out, then chew the lips up since they were edible. Or at least I thought they were.

The new house squatted on a tri-corner lot, one side of which looked out onto lazy pond water. I preferred the rhythmic chop of waves, white caps, more drama. Like over at Buzzards Bay, where my mother's family's summer house stood with its weather-beaten gray shingles, scaled like my dry shin skin. I heard something scraping, falling, and jumped. But it was probably just a twig or something dropping down the chimney.

Empty houses were weird. It was like they were waiting for something to happen. They each had their own personality. Some were more alive than others, more haunted. This one I couldn't get a read on except that it didn't feel welcoming. It wasn't so long ago I'd been terrified by the bottles stashed in the cupboard behind where I slept in another house we'd rented. I knew there were imps in there, curled up, with long nasty fingernails and bulging frog eyes. They slept during the day, then at night, I could hear them scrambling to get out of the bottles. I didn't sleep well at that house. When did we live there? I couldn't remember. I couldn't keep track of all the places we'd lived -- me, my mother, and my little brother Michael. Now I was older, and I knew there were no imps in bottles. I knew a lot of stuff, and I could deal with being alone in a house with no food, nothing to do. You throw it at me, I can handle it. I will survive, as Gloria Gaynor said. Any girl who could climb the rope to the top of the gym and do the most chin-ups in the Presidential Physical Fitness Award program was pretty much certified tough. In other words, I was scared out of my wits. I just couldn't afford to be.

After running up and down the stairs, then all through the house as fast I could, many times, switching off with staring out the window and counting doors and bathroom tiles, I went to the front door and considered my options. I could leave, but where would I go? I didn't have money. I didn't know the neighborhood. Maybe I could hang out in a restaurant and they'd give me something, like at Angelo's market where I stood watching the doughnut machine the whole time my mother was shopping, just inhaling the crazy good smell of fresh doughnuts, until the bakers broke down and gave me a plate of doughnut holes. "You sure love these doughnuts, don't you?" Thing is the door would be locked when I got back. Plus, I might miss my mother. And my homework.

Time passed. I don't know what else I did that day. Tried not to think about being hungry, drank water from the tap by sticking my head under the faucet. I know the sun kept sweeping across those vacant windows, sending stripes on different parts of the floor, like a slow hypnotizing, like Kaa did to Mowgli in The Jungle Book. The hunger held onto my stomach like tight fists, squeezing. The frown in my forehead dug deeper. I bit my lip until it bled. Then I imagined pounding my mother in the arm, or screaming "You left me!" until her eardrums shattered. People said my voice carried, that I had "projection." "Your voice goes through walls," said my homeroom teacher. Right then, I shouted all the dirty words I knew 'til the house shook. But when I stopped, the house settled right back into stupid stillness. The sky darkened while I kicked the walls and made an artistic series of black scuff marks. If you're an artist, anything is your canvas. Least that's what my mother said, when she used to drag me to those wacky street craft fairs in New York, where people set up dough sculptures, tie-dye vats and cloth art tunnels you could wriggle through.

I went upstairs to the room I'd decided was mine, shut the door, and tried to get comfortable lying on the carpet, pressed up tight as I could against the wall to stay warm. At least I could take a nap, rest up for the work I had to do, sleep through the hunger. But every time I shut my eyes, the anger shook through me. It felt like the shock I got once from touching an electric fence on a dare at the Nyman's horse stable. That was better than eating a cigarette though, in another game of Truth or Dare. I never backed down, but that time I go supersick and vomited all over the Nyman's daybed.

The truck rumbled up, ripping at the gravel. Maybe I did sleep because the truck woke me up. The keys scratched for some minutes at the lock, jiggling this way, then that, then this, then that again. I held myself in a rigid mummy pose. Hugged the wall with my back more closely. Finally the door banged open.

"Rachel!" my mother's voice sang out. "Yoo hoo! I made something special for you!"  I sprang up, but I was dizzy walking down the stairs. It was pitch dark behind my mother, who stood in the doorway of the new house, her hair frizzed out to the sides, her eyes glassy and wild under the fluorescent light. In her arms she held a white covered dish containing a bright orange meat and sauce.  Orange sauce glopped on her jacket in great gooey spots where the dish had sloshed. It looked radioactive.

"Look at this nice pot roast I made you!"

Fists clenched, scowling, scared and furious -- I hunched like I did in Bombardment before the coach blows the whistle in P.E. and people let loose with those red rubber balls that whine through the air and sting your whole body. I had to tell the truth. I didn't care what happened. I didn't even care if I got to eat. I was over it all. Dammit.

"Where were you? You left me here all day, Ma. I hate you. I hate you so much."

"Why you little bitch."

My mother came at me so fast, the dish dropped to the floor, a sickening wet crash, and...I know she grabbed my arms. I think she slapped me. Did she? I blank out. The smell of beer and wine and cigarette smoke filled the air. I remember that. My mother was strong, even though she had a limp from a long-ago horse-riding accident, even though her father was an orthopedic surgeon (why didn't he fix all the floating bones in her ankle so she didn't walk with a creepy limping step/slide?) and when she grasped my arms the skin felt like dough in the way of the bones she wanted to reach and snap in two. There was the sound of glass, the thwop of meat and gush of spilling sauce, and there was the sound of a slap. On my face. So hard my neck twisted back, the neck that was already stiff from sleeping on the floor. The cheek was now radioactive. Is this what happened? Was it worse? Were there blows? I can't remember. I don't want to remember. I don't know. I do know I backpedaled, wanting to stand my ground and be tough, a warrior, a Presidential Physical Fitness winner, but also wanting to run for my life once she lunged at me. Too late. The kitchen was small and I hadn't planned an escape, hadn't planned on saying what I said, hadn't thought. Too late. The rest of that night I don't remember at all.

We didn't live in that house long. Since my mother had a habit of picking up hit animals from the side of the road (we wrapped them in a dirty white sheet we kept in the truck tucked in with the many beer bottles rattling behind the bench seat) so we could either take them to the ASPCA or home to nurse (although sometimes it was my mother herself who hit and ran over animals, meaning pets, including my cat Daedalus, but that is another story) -- somehow we ended up with a goose and a possum in the basement of this house -- at the same time. What a noise. What a stink. It was the seventies, baby. Loose and free and psychedelic, geese in the basement, Sly and the Family Stone and Deep Purple on the record player, chianti in a basket, Bonne Bell bubblegum lip gloss, the birth of "check it out," streaking. I remember one time my friend Wanda and I tore off our clothes in the upstairs bedroom, drenched ourselves in Love's Baby Soft cologne mist and streaked through the house, right through the party my mother was throwing with Wanda's mother and some other friends, and how everyone laughed, and how beautiful all the rumpus was, and how delicious it felt to run naked through that house which felt like ours for the first time that night.

Years later, I drove by that house and it was burned to the ground. Only the foundation remained, charred black stones scattered in tall grass. And a few feet of busted-up blackened chimney. When I asked people what happened, they said a mother and her three children lived there. That the mother had left grease burning on the stove, that the stove had exploded, the house had caught on fire instantly, and that the mother and her three children had all perished.

*

Why did I tell you that story? I woke up, knowing I had to tell it. When you embark on a journey, when you choose a perspective (or rather, a perspective chooses you if you're lucky), you follow it. That's your job as a writer and as a seeker. So my impulse was to rush to the computer and type. Record this latest pit stop memory encountered on the road to healing through cooking. But I made a conscious decision to feed myself first. To honor my morning hunger, even though in the past I might've ignored it. 

And so I did. I prepared the smoothest omelet I've yet prepared. It was the third try. I used The Joy Of Cooking to guide me (the Firm Omelet recipe). Yesterday, I'd caramelized a large pan of onions (it took hours! The house, on its way to becoming a true home, smelled warm and caramelized itself). So I would add those to the mix. I had some leftover baby arugula from the Gina salad, some feta cheese from another recipe from the magical Chef Maili. This time, I knew to slide the pan around so the egg would cook evenly (Alexandra mentioned that tip when she came to dinner the other night!), and what do you know. It didn't burn. I was able to fold the omelet and jiggle it onto a plate. This simple feast emerged from my kitchen, my hands, untrained as they are?

I'm sharing these memories as they arise because it seems when you go on a journey, when you open yourself to a part of you that was suppressed for many many decades -- in this case, the nurturer, the one who cooks and feeds, the self-nourisher -- then what was blocking this part of you seems to come rushing in. And you must face those hoary old memories and scary tapes because though you thought they were over and done with, in their sneaky, subterranean way they have still been messing with your life and preventing your stepping into your full radiance (whatever that means!) Maybe full radioactivity, in the best sense. Fully alive. You get my drift. Or you can taste it.

I wish I could've shared the omelet with my mother. I wish we could've cooked together. I wish she had been able to feed me, feed herself. It is too late now, for that. 

But it's not too late to feed myself. 

If I can cook, anyone can.

RR

xo