bites and pieces

I was certain Adam Gopnik’s “The Table Comes First” would inspire and propel me to write many entries.  I just didn’t expect to take so long reading it. “The Table Comes First” hinges on the forces that have changed our approach to food and eating.  Touching on history, philosophy and art, the book reads like Gopnik’s personal education on the history of taste.  There is even a correspondence of emails to Elizabeth Pennell, one of the first American food writers he likens to Brillat Savarin and MFK Fisher.  While it was all captivating, I was most interested in the development of the restaurant’s socio-economic effects on Parisian and modern society.  

“Restaurant” was the french name for chicken or beef bouillon, which could be had at any of the public eating houses in Paris.  Called “table d’hôte”, customers ate what ever was being served.  Some people claimed illness after eating at such places and thus, food shops offering broth cooked in clean pots emerged as “restaurants”.   Initially a place to eat healthfully, an entrepreneur by the name of Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau opened a restaurant where eating became a recreational activity which offered a good time.  Suddenly, there was a “free market of food” where almost anyone could make a living cooking.  Did this necessarily make the new restaurant scene progressive? Gopnik aligns the industry with a philosophical revolution, “Jurgen Habermas believed the Enlightenment to be a progression towards a more humane and just world, while Michel Foucault thought it was an effort to answer with absolutes questions that could only be settled for the moment, a con game designed to empower a new class by pretending that they have special access to certain knowledge.”  I can’t picture clearly enough what Paris was like then or now, I can only use New York City as a reference.  Still, Foucault’s belief on the matter is too absolute; people then and now were not pretending to have special knowledge by either cooking or eating at restaurants.  They did in fact possess an experience  that was instructional.  Are we to discredit that knowledge simply because it has to do with preference, taste and often indefinable skill?The con game today lies within the ability to spend money we don’t have, without anyone to stop us.   Considering this great, overwhelming city bleeds money, the pretense of wealth must be empowering while it lasts.  How about those of us who set money aside to have that specific experience? Is it still pretentious?

I can justify, in dozens of ways, the amount I spend on food, but this does not change the facts that it often prevents me from saving, or that I always feel guilty about my purchases.  Is it because I know that the same money could be going toward my student loans? Or because I feel bad that not everyone else indulges in the same expenses? I don’t believe it’s frivolous, yet I know there are plenty of people who would, and that contributes to the guilt.   

 Last week we went to Dovetail, on the upperwest side.  This is a restaurant I have been trying to get to since they opened.  I made impromptu reservations, had a fabulous meal and was thoroughly enchanted.  Across the room, Natalie Portman sat with a group clad in a sweatshirt and converse; behind us  four middle aged men discussing the top surgeons in the country, the best hospitals in the city and what about investing $50k in a new program?  In between, a waitress and a chef. 

Posted at 5:06pm.

If you take the C train to the Clinton Washington stop in Brooklyn, a soft sweet yeasty aroma will disarm you.  More so if you walk south on any of the streets extending from Fulton.  I always notice it and use to want to sniff it out and find the bread making haven emitting this lovely, comforting smell.  Now I find it better not knowing;  continuing to be surprised by how badly I want to be smothered by it.  Today, for the first time since last winter, I underdressed for our pathetic fall weather.  In fact, only my ankles were exposed and I was freezing.  That bread baking scent was so arresting that between Atlantic and Fulton, I actually stopped to inhale it and enjoy.  It reminds me of challah, baguette, potato bread, and maybe even shortbread, or a combination of them all.  If I were religious, I feel I would have said a prayer for still being able to eat bread, and more generally, wheat.  You see, wheat is one of those surprising plants that shares the proteins of birch tree pollen to which I am highly, freakishly allergic to.  And as a result of my over sanitized, urban upbringing, my body has decided to quite literally attack me whenever a concentrated dosage of that protein enters it.  Cooking grains and vegetables often weakens these proteins, yielding me as (so far) the lucky over consumer of many kinds of bread.  

I sprained my ankle not too long ago and was resigned to being a couch potato for many many days.  Yes, I got to read a lot and watch movies and pretend that if my cat were a baby sprawled out on my torso, with his little head nuzzling my chin, he too would be just as happy.  Never mind that Kitty is often left alone for many hours, with irregular feedings of small portions…he has an um, eating disorder. Whenever we give him a healthy portion of food, he immediately regurgitates it all.  Anyway, I’ve regressed very far from the point. Which is: the highlight of not having to work in the morning for so many days was having caffeine and a croissant.  Simultaneously, sitting down.  Without rushing off to work, or laundry, or studying or anything else.  Just my redundant thoughts, my cappuccino and a plain croissant.  This was glorious.  Maybe it;s because as a waitress in a bistro esque kind of restaurant, I watch so many people live out these inconsequential parts of their day.  That the money is half what the nighttime servers make doesn’t matter because I so cherish bringing people their coffee and pastries in a  timely manner.  Relax, I’m half kidding.  I do kind of love dealing with people early in the morning, everyone is so…vulnerable.  It’s sweet, until lunch time hits and those same people are demanding and rude. So it could be just that, because I wait on people half the week, it’s rewarding to have someone make my coffee and bring it to me.  Then again, it’s also the coffee and the quality of the pastry.  I adore my little chemex pitcher and the ritual of manually grinding fresh coffee beans.  Yet that doesn’t compare to a cappuccino pulled from a beautiful, statuesque la marzocco machine.   A short, tight shot with caramel tinted crema and what at my current place of work they call “silk”, that moment where the milk goes from warm to hot and becomes creamy and smooth (it might be more endearing with an Isreali accent). A very short moment, you can miss it entirely as it goes from cold to burnt causing the steamer to make terrible embarrassing noises and the milk to smell, well, burnt.  A smell which I am not as offended by as others.  In fact I rather like it.  It reminds me of old ladies who keep their long white hair in a braid down their back.  

I like to smell my cappuccino before i squeeze a little honey on top.  Then I take my croissant, usually from Choice Market in CLinton Hill (thats where Sit and Wonder gets them) and smell the butter too, then rip of little pieces following the direction of the crescent.  They are so exquisite, the tips of my fingers are always a little greasy from all the butter.  Each piece gets dipped into my flawless cappuccino and I am reborn for the day, wishing that the whole days was just me dipping croissants into coffee.  When I finish the croissant, which always occurs before the cappuccinos even half way done, I always consider getting a second.  Then I recognize that would be $9 spent on nothing substantial and also, i’m not exactly mobile at the moment so perhaps my fatass should chill on the calorie intake. But really? I just don’t want to be judged by the cashier. 

Posted at 8:23am.

I was so enchanted with the discoveries of Bill Buford in his memoir Heat, I read it like a fat kid eating cake, never stopping long enough to admire the craftsmanship.  I dog eared many pages, mostly about the shape and history of pasta. Then I moved onto Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, the chef and owner of East Village restaurant Prune, a memoir so nostalgic it made me  consider my childhood food memories (some more).  The most ironic observation was my introduction to pasta, which was through my father.  As a child living in Peru, the only pasta I knew was spaghetti with a cilantro pesto, which sounds fancy considering we called it noodles in green sauce.  I stumbled upon it on my last visit to Peru a few years ago, in a stall at one of those open air markets.  The soapy, herbaceous smell of the cilantro and overcooked starch was more familiar and welcome than the the flavor.  

When I moved to New York to live with my mother and father for the first time, I was nine.   My father did a lot of cooking and for reasons I can only speculate about, we ate many many noodles.  Maybe because he ate like a teenage athlete (incessantly and like an animal), maybe because we had little money, pasta was on the menu four to five times a week.  The man had a thing for ribbon pasta.  Spaghetti, fettucine, varying widths of linguine.   While the shapes never changed, his preparations did.   Primavera with frozen peas and lima beans, carrots and broccoli.  With pesto, tomato or alfredo sauce, sometimes even with sautéed chicken.   Always a minimalist, Carlos’ favorite was linguine with olive oil, garlic and parsley.   While these dishes did not bow at tradition, I found the starchy food inviting, open to ingredients in a way many foods are confined. After all, tradition tends to derive from a need to be resourceful.  Bill Buford teaches us that dried and fresh pasta were actually more distinct than we think.  The dried stuff had been in Sicily since the 12th century, probably introduced by Arab traders and made with durum. The wet kind had been around for thousands of years known as “laganum” to the Romans and “laganon” to the Greeks.  Buford explains that “pasta” was not inherently a kitchen word, but a way to categorize ship cargo and referred to any food.  “Macaroni” was the generic term for what we know as pasta; fresh pasta was called “lasagna”, a thin sheet of rolled out dough sold by “lasagnari”.  It was made from water and flour until the appearance of eggs in the fifteenth century.   

  We learn that outside Italy, ravioli is seen much more than tortelli, yet technically  the ravioli goes inside the tortelli, which is the casing, and the diminutive of torta, a small tart. Tortellini of course, is the complex knot tied around a filling with tortelli.  It was my mother who introduced to me to filled pasta.  I grew up eating lasagna with layers of spinach and shredded carrots, always surprised when I encountered it only with meat and sauce.  She introduced me to tortellini and ravioli, which we usually purchased at Russos, on 11th street. Mom bought spinach, cheese and meat filled (tri-colored) tortellini by the pound to make a salad with olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice and leeks.  She melted butter with sage to dress pumpkin and cheese ravioli.  These were decadent dishes I was always excited by, in sharp contrast to Carlos’ austere preferences.  My complex relationship with Carlos swiftly became nonexistent and it’s with some resentment and a twinge of sadness that I think about how my love for pasta surely derived from these dinners, where I learned that simple can be good, and less can be more.   In life, my mother is the one who makes simple things grand, but with food, she’s specific about the ingredients.  I reside somewhere in the middle, appreciating simplicity while recognizing that something basic should not detract quality. 

Posted at 11:38am.

Sunday evening again and I’m amazed at how quickly the week has passed.   Does my week end on Sunday just because the Gregorian calendar says so?  Sundays certainly have a definitive quality to them.  People stroll outside, restaurants close early and fiscal/government institutions don’t open at all.   My day off is Wednesday, making Tuesdays the day I rejoice at the idea of sleeping in a little; feeling proud at the tiniest growth of certain virtues.  Another week passed of learning how to be patient and kind with people, as if they were children.  Every so often, mentally challenged or temperamental children.  I keep expecting it to get easier, but it never happens. Im hoping the ease appears as I continue to develop my approach - shed the ego, and don’t be lazy.   Much easier said than done.  

 At the end of my shift, the sun is still shining though no longer blindingly as it was a few hours ago when I struggled to make eye contact while asking people about their eggs. I walk around the east village restless, wanting to sit but not alone, considering only a handful of people I would like to share a bottle of wine with.  None are available right then. If they are, dreaded coordination will ensue soI walk aimlessly, stopping at a Spanish wine store I’ve been frequenting.  Surprisingly, no one seems to be aware of it although it’s the only of it’s kind. I feel special there, like I can talk about wine honestly and not wonder if i’m conveying what I mean accurately.   All the wine I’ve purchased there has been good to exceptional.   There’s a Tempranillo in particular from the Northwestern region of Toro that left a lasting impression.  Bodega Cyan is the winery, here producing an intense, almost smoky fullness with subtle fruit and just a touch of acid.  Having sold out of it, the owner easily talks me into a bottle made from unnamed grapes in Rioja.  She describes it as big with a funky “barnyard” flavor.  If adjectives can be trendy, this is one i’m guilty of attaching goodness to.  I’ve heard it a lot in relation to beer and generally they are good, at worst, interesting.  The flavors attributed to barnyard/farmhouse flavors derive from the tradition of beer brewing in Belgium and France, on farms, during the months of winter when the more beneficial farm labor of harvesting and sowing could not be done.  These beers were made entirely for consumption on the farm which meant they were probably inconsistent in alcohol content and less refined in body and flavor, characteristics we perceive as positive in our era of processed stability.

 In the wine, this attribute translates into depth and a sweet murky fruit, probably the funk she was referring to. At it’s first opening I thought it might have turned. I put it to the side and forgot about it till the following evening, when I decided it was quite good, totally different from the night before.  

That same evening after I purchased my wine, I continued to walk around a bit toward the train on Broadway-Lafayette.   On Lafayette near Bond I run into a co worker from the other restaurant I work at.  It’s strange seeing people out of their associated element.  You glimpse an honest perception of them until you realize who they are.  He’s a big man, with a childlike gait.  What’s up? Nothing just got out of work. Going to go home and drink some wine. You? Me too, I just got out of work. Im going to Astor to buy some whiskey.  A little discomfort. Should we be drinking together?

 How was it? It was fine. Busy. A shrug of the shoulders to signify, you know how it is.  I do. The brunch crazy is pervasive across the city.  We smile at each other and say goodbye, I  happy to know there is at least one human being on this tiny island feeling exactly like me. 

Posted at 9:44pm.

I’ve been watching the afternoon light change through the window of  Taralluci e Vino in the East Village.  When I work a lot, I want to drink a lot, as if one productive deed negates the vice.  I’ve given up alcohol for Lent, with an occasional glass of red wine as my caveat.  When the sun finally lowers itself to the other side of the world, I can stare at the pastry show case  in the glass reflection.  This place has incredible pignoli cookies, not too sweet with a subtle granular texture from almond paste.  I’ve sworn off sugar too - with the exception of dark chocolate.  If it seems i’m cheating all over the map it’s  because you’ve no idea how arduously I crave cake and whisky cocktails.  I’ve been working six to seven days for several weeks now, using that to justify my hedonistic evenings.  After one particularly sluggish morning and a breakfast of cookies, I decided to significantly cut back.  Although broken up between two restaurants, six to seven days of bar tending/waitressing has been overwhelming.  I’ve been suppressing the anxiety  of  a new environment and the exhaustion of dealing with so many people under alcohol and television.  My subconscious is not so easily fooled and delivers transparent dreams. A couple nights ago, my innards were bursting through my skin.  I noticed it when I excused myself from an interview to use the restroom.  I pulled up my shirt to unbutton my pants and sitting in a neat  conglomerate of blood and veins was one of my intestines.  The skin wrinkled tightly around the erupting parts, like plastic when twisted to form a bubble.  I registered it with calm fear as if I had been expecting something like this.  I was most taken aback by the small burgundy square that could have been cow liver’s except it was mine-encased in a sheer lining of bubbled fat.  It was nasty. Somehow I was not repulsed by it.  After all, suspicion was not inspired when I walked past the lively, crowded restaurant that was the Meat Ball Shop and into the empty, otherwise nondescript restaurant next door.  

It’s the result of neurosis toward a limited schedule.  It’s been a challenge finding time to write, (discipline  is a more accurate word)  or exercise, or eat well.  Sometimes I want to give up, be lazy  and not worry so much. But without some concern for the imminence of older age, where do we find ourselves in ten years? I want to make sure its somewhere I want to be. For now, keep chugging along, enjoy my one glass of nero d’avola while I catch up on my reading. Mostly a stack of two week old Sunday Times. At least I’m exercising some part of my brain. To interact with hundreds of people through the same increments of language makes me feel i’m losing brain cells by the day.  If I don’t write, the next best thing is to read.

Posted at 9:33pm.

The other day my subway stopped on the bridge for about half an hour.  Typically this is a situation that would have me wrecked with the fear of spending hours on the train with no proper place to relieve oneself. This sentiment was  exacerbated by the cappuccino I consumed right before boarding the slow, lurching, unreliable Q train. Pretty much since high school, thinking myself grown with a bodega coffee in one hand and a marlboro red in the other, coffee was a calorie free, energy inducing treat I could never have enough of.  Back then there was only deli coffee and Starbucks. Now there are three coffee shops near our Brooklyn apartment.  Their purveyors are Stumptown, Counter Culture and Gorilla, respectively. In spite of the need to ration out my caffeine intake, I’m thrilled to have a good, sharp cappuccino when I want it.   It’s all good coffee with an intensity and depth of flavor in huge contrast to generic coffee.  The packaging and aesthetic of these coffee shops is hard to miss, it’s akin to walking into a club monaco or anthropology, all of them wanting to sell a lifestyle, even if it’s just four dollars at a time.  Read the descriptions of a Stumptown blend and one would think they were describing a wine varietal.  In fact, this is exactly how the company approaches their coffee beans- as varietals.  It’s interesting and cool, and I love their website, but it’s precisely because they evoke the allure of an unknown place or much desired feeling that we enjoy these coffee spots.  Don’t get me wrong, if  the coffee was garbage, they would be just as popular with a different crowd. Probably the one that goes to Starbucks.  The coffee craze is a trend, and like all others, you have to wonder about the origins and politics of our consumption.  

Last year I read an essay by William Roseberry that stuck with me, his catch phrase being that coffee is a postmodern beverage, much like tea, sugar and chocolate (which anthropologist Sidney Mintz called “proletariat hunger killers” in 1979).  A few hundred years prior to this, coffee was indeed ubiquitous among the working class of Europe. Once a beverage belonging to the affluent, the warm, stimulating effects of the drink fueled the workers of the Industrial Revolution.  The shift from exclusive to pervasive consumption conveys the standardization and mass production coffee experienced. Roseberry writes that as consumers, we have arrived at the need for diversity in our food products, a requirement which can’t be met by a corporation.  The generation and marketing of coffee has been reassembled to coordinate with the times.  We want organic, flavorful coffee produced by a community who enjoys benefits from this commodity.  These are the qualities purveyors like Stumptown, Gorilla and Counter Culture exude.  Coffee pods are carefully picked and their beans roasted in small batches.  Their shops are the best dichotomies: elegantly rustic or industrial chic. Their shops and websites convey happy healthy farms and farmers with photos reminiscent of an educational retreat you might want to visit with your family.  Sidney Mintz has devoted his life to the anthropology of Central and Latin America, places that have produced coffee for centuries.  A key element in Mintz’s work is the interrogation of how the western consumer has molded the economies and therefore societies of places we don’t have to think about.  Many products we take for granted have an effect on some far away place.  We try to ignore this because the alternative tends to be more expensive.  Yet hopefully, it is also higher quality  and the repercussions of it’s production, good.  With this mind, I hand over my four dollars for a perfectly steamed cappuccino and wonder if purveyors like Stumptown are the lesser of two evils or if they are committed to an admirable endeavor.  

Posted at 3:09pm.

There are several culinary landscapes I visit in my dreams.  The pioneered American West of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather where wealth was measured by a fully stocked cellar. Imagine fixing a dessert out of freshly fallen snow or breathing in summer air that smells of baked bread from the abundant wheat.   Dijon, where Mary Frances K. Fischer spent the first years of her first marriage learning cooking technique from her landladies while tasting the wines of Burgundy.  Today it would only take three hours to drive from Dijon to Paris, the setting of The Sun Also Rises.  The allure of Paris is in the intimacy Ernest Hemingway develops with it; in this novel it’s hard to choose between Spain and France.  It was in the latter that Hemingway wrote  satisfaction only arrived to him after having written one true, real thing.  The Sun Also Rises salutes that; this Paris of the 1920’s is shrouded with a sadness relieved only by tangible, material elements.  The truth is always in the banal.  A good cognac, a hearty meal, a night of absolute inebriation. For our narrator Jake, a vacation in Pamplona is meant to offer relief from his Parisian life. As the story shifts locations, food and drink become definitive symbols of the character’s well being.  

Jake and his group of friends are admitted “drunks” which is conveyed as an observation rather than insult.  Cognac, brandy (fines), cocktails and wine are imbibed continuously, with only one moment highlighting the modesty behind the aperitif.  The word is taken from the Latin aperire which means “to open”.  The moment is appropriate; Hemingway has begun the story with Robert Cohn, forced down a quick fine and nudged him out of his office.  A day later, Cohn returns to fall asleep in Jake’s office after a sleepless night of “Talking”.  Jake says, “I could picture it. I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.  We went out to the Cafe Napolitan to have an aperitif and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard”.   Aperitifs are a European tradition  of serving a light, dry cocktail of low alcohol content before a meal.  Usually mixed with a wine or liquor fortified with herbs, roots and or fruits, they are meant to stimulate one’s appetite.  Campari and Dubonnet are common ones often had alone; Vermouths are also well known and come in several contrasting versions.   Once the drink has gone, Robert leaves Jake alone to appreciate the city.  He is the only of his friends to feel certain about Paris. He likes the rhythm, the streets, the coffee and brioche.  

Jake hosts a friend from New York.  His first evening in Paris, Bill is already tight and wants hard boiled eggs for dinner.  Jake suggests “a regular meal” on the island, the Ile de la Cite where the Notre Dame cathedral is located.  Madame Lecomte has a great restaurant he never visits, “It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place.  Some one had put it in the American Women’s Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty five minutes for a table.”  They have a good meal, one that resonates with our times; roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some apple pie and cheese.  This is the only meal described in Paris.  Jake and Bill drink for fun, the way two people with old camaraderie do.  After dinner they meet Jake’s friends: Brett and her fiancee Mike. Of course it is Brett’s dominating beauty, arbitrary codependency and general weak will that creates most of the turmoil in the story. Many men love her, no one can really have her.   Jake has previously made plans to visit Spain with Robert and Bill, here adding Brett and Mike to the roster.  Henceforth, Brett’s relations with Cohn will strain the group dynamic.  Only the dining scenes untouched by her will retain the wholesome quality Jake and Bill enjoy here. 

Jake and Bill end up trout fishing alone.  They enjoy each other’s company in the tranquil setting of Burguete, a small village high in the Pyrenees.  The men stay at an empty yet expensive inn offering unlimited wine.  Upon arrival they drink a pitcher of hot rum punch to warm up.  For supper, “The girl brought in a big bowl of hot vegetable soup and the wine.  We had fried trout afterwards and some sort of a stew and a big bowl of wild strawberries.  We did not lose money on the wine and the girl was shy but nice about bringing it.  The old woman looked in once and counted the empty bottles. After supper we went upstairs and smoked and read in bed to keep warm.  Once in the night I woke and heard the wind howling.  It felt good to be warm and in bed”.  That cushy, pleasant sentiment contrasts starkly against Paris, and what is to come later.  Jake has a hard time sleeping in his Paris flat because the darkness amplifies his everyday pain.  

After five days of fishing they return to Pamplona where they are reunited with Robert, Brett and Mike.   Robert is relentlessly and unrequitedly hung up on Brett, his emotions creating a debacle that make the group miserable.  After watching the bulls run into their corral when they arrive in Pamplona, they all sit down to dinner.  Their first dinner together has a horrid formality to it.  Jake tells us, “It was like certain dinners I remember from the war.  There was much wine, and ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening.  Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy.  It seemed they were all such nice people.”  Actually they were were rotten people sometimes, continuing to make bad decisions through the San Fermin fiestas.  In the whirlwind of bullfighting and intoxicated dialogue, we receive scattered detail about their inconsequential meals; coffee and buttered toast for breakfast, shrimp and beer for lunch, and hard boiled eggs to snack on. 

Food is brushed to the side while the drama develops.  Not until after the fiestas, when Jake is alone in Bayonne does he bring attention to a meal, “It was a big meal for France but very carefully apportioned after Spain.  I drank a bottle of wine for company.  It was a Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone.  A bottle of wine was good company.  Afterward I had coffee.  The waiter recommended a Basque liquor called Izarra.  He brought in the bottle and poured a liqueur glass full.  He said Izarra was made of the flowers of the Pyrenees.  The veritable flowers of the Pyrenees.  It looked like hair oil and smelled like Italian strega.  I told him to take the flowers of the Pyrenees away and bring me a vieux marc.  The marc was good.  I had a second marc after the coffee.”  Jake  is damaged at the end of it all and takes nourishment for granted.  The alcohol is taken as a mental lubricant of sorts. From the Bordeaux region, Chateaux Margaux was rumored to be Hemingway’s favorite wine.  Always timely, the author begins to close Jake’s story with a digestif,  literally meaning digestive in French. An after dinner drink meant to aid digestion, Izarra is one example. Made with dozens of herbs in Bayonne, Izarra comes in yellow and green, the first taste like almonds, the latter like peppermint. The vieux marc Jake prefers is most likely a brandy made from marc grapes, their skins, seeds, and stalks followed by an aging process in oak casks.  Only two days later, Jake is summoned to Madrid by Brett.  He has a meal of suckling pig and three bottles of rioja alta.  They go for a ride through town, and are exactly where the story begins: neither here nor there. 

Posted at 12:41pm.

I was in tenth grade when my brilliant friends thought up the baking club, really a premier way of orchestrating hook ups.  Or so it seemed in retrospect.  My memories of it are muddled, mostly because we would spend much of our time drunk and or high, in a style typical of inexperienced fifteen year olds. The premise was to execute baking projects at alternating households.  It took place at our house at least once.  I associate these times with winter in Manhattan;  frigid and sloppy with grey strokes of filth on the high mounds lining the streets.  After my parents divorce we rented a tiny six floor walk up on the corner of 9th and C.  The heat was ferocious and we rather liked it.  It felt good after the long walk from the train.  I remember our slushy shoes scattered outside the apartment door.  

The process was fun because it turned into a whole production;  Who’s bringing trees, who can get beer, now we gotta buy ingredients.  Back then the closest grocery store was C and 11th, across the street from the projects. It was funny to see a group of white kids march through it. They looked out of place in the mostly Puerto Rican- Dominican neighborhood.  There were plenty of them in my school too but somehow I never really made the cut as their close friends.  People are always surprised to find there’s any Latin in me; its always Indian, Iranian, Thai.  

Eventually we had all our prerequisites, shedding our coats and shoes for the last time. Six, eight, even ten people could fit in our combined living room kitchen.  My controlling tendencies were already in full swing.   Underneath my man-hating facade I really enjoyed domesticity and earnestly looked forward to actually cooking for people.  Of course, there was the added excitement of proximity to boys I found attractive.

Group efforts were a concept I disliked even then and this would be the only context in my life where I didn’t have to explain myself.  A rendition of a frosted lemon bunt cake came into our hands.   Did I instruct someone else to measure and sift while I mixed? Most likely.  Maybe someone else greased the bunt pan.  I like to think I poured the batter and closed the oven door before taking my turn on the silver bean bag in my bedroom.   Propped in a corner by the hot pipe and the open window, that bean bag was the best spot to smoke a phillie. The guy offering - it was always a guy -sat across from it on my bed.   

On the bean bag I would sit and be amused by everything.  That was the charm of a beginner’s high, no matter the calibre of the pot.  I didn’t know or care that like everything else in life, there were tiers of marijuana.  These were good, serene times;  there were funny boys and laid back girls and cake too.   We never got around to making the frosting, nor could I tell you if the cake was any good but the experience always was.  Cake wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy the munchies of a group of teenagers.  My mother always kept bread and cold cuts in the house.  These weren’t just any cold cuts - it all came from the Ukrainian butcher on 1st Avenue.  They smoked their own ham and cut it really thick so it was fleshy though cured with subtle smokiness.  I haven’t had any smoked ham since that compares.  A lot of smoked ham ends with some sliminess perhaps because they cure that rounded part of the animal (the ham) in it’s entirety to preserve moisture.  Seems like Kyrawycky cut theirs into big slabs before smoking it. In any case it was delicious; sober, drunk high, depressed - you had to appreciate it.  We also bought the round loaves of thinly sliced peasant bread there.  There was nothing outstanding about this bread. In fact, with some mustard and mayo, it was clear this bread was made specifically to showcase the ham.  So we would make grilled or warm sandwiches with smoked gouda.  

The day ended whenever my mother was close to coming home. I would like to believe the apartment was sufficiently aired out and the kitchen left the way we found it. Sans food in the refrigerator.  The bunt cake is one occasion I remember parts of; other meetings were messier, a little more alcohol resulting in a little more drama.  Without regard to the initial inspiration for the club, I don’t believe anyone ever hooked up.   We were friends who probably experienced fleeting crushes on each other as we learned how to to interact with the opposite sex.  In the process we learned about other things, like how to make an apple pipe to go with our apple pie. 

Posted at 5:41am.