Food
We’re coaxing happiness out of the last bit of French sunshine before we return to the US. The kitchen window looks out over an ancient hill town, old Mediterranean roof tiles - directly across the window, vine hangs on wall, heavy with passion fruit.
The back bedroom window looks over fields of grapevines, and the Pyrenees mountains are purple on the horizon. In the back yard we have several fig trees, and they just happen to be ripe right now. The owner made some fig jam and left some for us to try. She bade us eat as many figs as we like. I roasted some in the oven last night and served them over yogurt.
In the morning Smith walks three minutes to the bakery, and brings back fresh croissants or a baguette.
I have the feeling that it won’t be possible to travel here again - with global warming, we don’t think it’s ethical for us to fly across the Atlantic - and more than once is more than we can afford to do unless we make it as artists or writers. So this month is my good bye to Europe. But I’m excited that we’ll be settling (at least for a while) in Chicago. It’s always been one of my dreams to live there as well. Kind of like a big version of Cleveland. Familiar Midwestern culture plus a lot of diversity, a literary scene and arts scene. The future is a big unknown but I feel positive about it.
Sep 03 2007 05:59 pm |
Being and
Food and
France |
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“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?” - Another Brick in the Wall Part II, Pink Floyd
“I hear water in the walls,” Smith says.
“You hear the treacle pudding. I’m boiling one behind your head.” He’s right. The boiling does sound like water doing something mischievous.
“Treacle? Doesn’t that mean something disgusting?”
“Close. I think it’s a sugar syrup.”
I’ve decided to try treacle and pudding. Both words I’d associated with the British, not having a real concept of what they were until I happened upon some Heinz pudding cans at the grocery store. I bought two cans: “spotted dick” and “treacle.”
(Incidentally, Heinz was one of the companies to try to institute–along with Grand Daddy Prescott Bush–a corporate coup d’etat of Roosevelt’s government. Heinz and Bush were also fascist Nazi sympathizers.)
I boil the can for 35 minutes, according to instruction. I gingerly move it out of the pan. As I open it, it makes a little “splut” noise. I turn it upside down into a bowl, and open the other side. The pudding collapses down neatly. I garnish it with whipped cream.
The grain of the pudding is like a finely baked moist cake. It’s intensely sweet, and hot. I don’t think I’ve eaten anything this sweet before.
“What do you think of this?”
“It’s nothing I would choose to eat. It’s not bad or anything. Just a little bit too sweet. Plus it’s got a horrible name. Treacle, and spotted dick.”
Smith picks up my plate after I finish.
“Oh, you’re sweet. But not as sweet as treacle.”
“Thank God. I’d get diabetes. Don’t Dick and Jane have a dog named Spot? They could have spotted Dick.”
“See Jane lick Dick.”
“Now, now. Jane speak with spotted tongue.”
Aug 06 2007 09:06 am |
Food and
Humor and
London |
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From Moroccan tannery
I’m vigilant about nutrition. I try to follow the food pyramid, count calories, walk or run daily, etc., and I weigh myself every morning. This is how I’ve maintained my weight loss for two years. It took five years to lose my “other Kathy” and I refuse to get fat again.
I eat a cookie. I look for the box. I want to know the magnitude of caloric damage.
“Where is the box for this?” I ask Smith. “I need the nutritional information.”
“I folded it up and put it in the trash.” He pops a cookie into his mouth. Sees the last one, tries to give it to me. “Here, you eat the last cookie. That way it’ll be fair.”
“Don’t ask me that. I don’t want another cookie. I don’t even like these. You eat that. You’re bigger than I am. You don’t want me to get FAT, and I don’t want to BE fat again.”
“Oh, if you get fat, I’ll put you in a cage.”
“You couldn’t have FIT me in a cage.”
“It’ll be tight. Your flesh might ooze out around the bars. That’s what I do. I put fat people in cages. That’s how Mom lost weight. She got tired of her cage. I kept making the cage smaller, increased her desire to get thinner. I don’t even have to use bars. I just use society as my cage. Plus I make the fat people suffer. I put wheels on the cages. Then I drive real slow past the french fry windows.”
“Oooo… french fries.” Fresh McDonalds fries sound really good to me right now.
“I also toss them plastic potato chips.”
“I want a half pan of Pizza Hut Pizza, that’s what I’m craving.”
“You gonna buy products from the corporate evil-doers? I thought you had principles. I guess I better order your cage. Let’s go…”
