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This is a custom job. Each piece selected carefully and with personal criteria. Each bit lovingly buffed to a shine. No one action predictable. Assembly line thinking will not fit, hard as I try by reading books, attending seminars, consulting with experts (my friends who are parents).

I am a grasshopper parent. I sang and played until summer had passed and then I had a child. Now my friends who were ant parents, those who had children when they were younger and did their parenting work first, laying the foundation, reaping and sowing, are sowing the benefits of their hard work.

No one would think to call them empty nesters because their nests are so full. So full of all the things I did in my early grasshopper life. I look at them with envy sometimes and then dig deep into my memory. Oh yeah, I did do those things. Long ago. Was it as good then? Who knows? Who will ever know?

Would raising a child have been better then? For me, no. I was way too busy playing the fiddle, singing and dancing, to take the time to raise a child. The poor neglected thing would have been feral.

Do I sometimes wish he was grown now and I had time to ride my bike, play my bass, come and go as I please? Yes, I do. Do I forget who I am, the complete me, the me who rode her bike from Vancouver to LA, played in a band, went out to eat at 2 am? Yes, I do. Then I sit still for a few moments and mine my memory. She is there, just resting, gathering and concentrating her energy into love for a child, that grasshopper of a creature, the boy who is singing and dancing and playing his fiddle to his heart’s content.

Too bad youth cannot be banked,  like many other things. Interest would not be needed, just the opportunity to withdraw.

Okay, I realize that this post is total mush-cliche-saccharin. What the heck?Thanksgiving is around the corner and if there is a time more suited to mining your most cloying impulses, I do not know of it.

The breads that rate for sandwich makers in NYC: Sullivan St., Grand Daisy, Eli’s Bread, Tom Cat, Balthazar. Handmade, each one different. Hard as one tries to fit these oblong breads into rectangular holes, they will not fit. I say, look each sandwich in the eye and see who it is, not what you want it to be. And then savor it. Burned, chewy, soft, sweet, hard, salty, yeasty spots and all.

Suits-Herself Cindy made a guest appearance at Barcroft Elementary during Virginia Farm-to-School  Week as a  FreshFarm representative. She is natural at connecting with kids over a Vegetable Lunch Encounter.

I got to be a rock star in my son’s eyes because I engaged the “speakers”. He asked me to please attend, and to “pretend I don’t know him.”

The brussels sprouts display was popular, and, at the end, I had a group of kids eating raw green beans! Who says these kids don’t eat vegetables?!
I love the one of the lunch table with all the kids raising their cups of broccoli with hamburgers and chocolate milk in front of them.

I suggested that she had found her calling.

Right. I’m going to write a book called “My Five-Year-old Eats Pickled Herring.” I’ll sell it to the Swedish community.

And I do wish I knew what my calling was.

On a separate note, but thinking of food, and what to call oneself, Cindy riffed.

Oh, also, I have a new favorite condiment. My grocery store was giving it away if you bought some cheese. I never would have bought it.

It’s kind of a mayonnaise/mustard mix with some peppercorns in it. Together with the Amish bologna, it makes a very tasty sandwich. BUT, mostly the word “gourmaise” just makes me LAUGH. As I laugh I have to admit that it is really tasty (with the bologna). Yum, gourmaise.

Here’s a photo just in case you ever decide to blog about weird, made-up condiment names.

I have heard about this Amish bologna that Cindy has been fetching  from the farm market she managed on Tuesdays. Apparently she’s been ingratiating herself nicely with those farmers because she’s has been invited to “Squirrel Fest” later this month. And, she took a lift in the back of a pick up, perhaps with some bologna and squirrels along for the ride. I am hot with envy.

I believe it is my calling to post about weird made-up condiment names, so there goes. Once this is, as they call it on WordPress, published, I will have fulfilled my destiny, met my calling and can spend the remainder of my life as a diletante. Squirrel Fest attendee, rock star, Amish bologna connoisseur, undercover mother, author of “My Ten Year Old Says He is Going to Eat Salad When He is Thirteen”, and repeat snooze button pusher.

Crackin!

Banh mi, smanh mi. I know, I know, we are already so jaded about banh mi. Like the New Yorker cartoon circa 1970 of the boy in the schoolyard investigating his bag lunch, “Oh no, not pate again.”

Baoguette, in NYC, makes a superlative banh mi, worth a long walk out of the way. I have eaten many banh mi, living about the length of a baguette away from “Little Saigon” in Arlington, Virginia, and Baoguette demolished all previous impressions.

Although I had read that the catfish was especially delicious, I asked for the top-of-the-menu choice, pork terrine and pâté. Not adventurous necessarily, but a way to check the bar. The bar at Baoguette is higher than the withers on a Central Asian Ovtcharka.

And the bread is from Tom Cat. Like the gingham dog and the calico cat, there was not a trace left behind when I was through.

That Christoph Niemann is a genius. Clever too.

Thanks much to Mr. Toth for bringing this superb toast picture story to my attention. Everything you need, and more, is there, all around you. Let’s be honest here…I’m talking about myself. Everything I need, and more, much much much, more is all around me. Thank you holy rolling mother of toasters for the friends who point out life’s riches to me. Without the personal alerts I would be blind, trip hard and knock out my front teeth. Knock out my front teeth on life’s riches. What a shame that would be.

The people who surround me make me tangible. Without them/you I exist in theory only. I think therefore I am? Nah. iPhone therefore iAm? Nah. I am a herding creature and feel real when I press up against the crowd around me.

Thanks to Suits-Herself-Cindy for spotting me on the cover of the Times magazine and making me tangible.
See, there I was, waiting to be made actual through the recognition and visual editing of friendship. Call me shallow, call me callow, call me coreless. Nope, that’s not it. I’m here, all firm and strong and founded on a cornerstone. It’s the people about who bring you out of the stone, find the sculpture of you within the mineral, give you edges, boundaries, features. And tell you how to wear your hair. Cindy had the sense to give the girl who was masquerading as me a haircut. Snip, snip, she became me. Revealed.

Must admit, I often feel most comfortable entering through the Employees Only entrance at restaurants. Just as I can get sensu-drunk on the smell of hockey equipment and ice, the mingling scents of not-too-distant dumpster, fresh stacks of industrially laundered linens, faint grease trap, and bones roasting make me feel right at home. Right where I should be.

The Palm has always been – in my imagination – a place for business dads and their faceless business compadres. I can’t imagine sitting at a table and not having an Alice in Wonderland shrinking experience. I shrink to my 12-year-old self. Next to my dad, who is suited up again, pocketchief and charm facing the world with ease and attitude.

The Palm DC had me in their pocket for a few days last summer, and I came to know their food well, up so close I could not correct the focus. The joint is not too shabby and wants the world to know. The Palm’s history alone speaks warm volumes.

“How long have you been here?” was a question I spread like buckshot. The employees seemed so at home, I needed to know how that came to be. The shortest duration mentioned was seven years. More common was a much longer stay, say, uh, thirty. Not too shabby.

Photos by Renee Comet Styling by Lisa Cherkasky

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the flea, Let us fly.
Said the fly, Let us flee.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

A girl and a girl ate a slew
Of sandwiches just in St Lou.
Mammer Jammer, Prosperity,
St Pauls, three for verity,
The Gerber, covered in goo.

Along-for-the-ride Heidi and I drove west to St. Louis with LouFest in the center of the compass. At points north, south, east and west were indigenous sandwiches that had been filling my daydreams – The Prosperity, The Gerber, The St Paul and The Mammer Jammer.

We did well while there, and we did well en route. Both journey and destination were sandwich and music-packed. Heidi did reconnaissance on the music, loading her iPod with Lou Fest tunes by Cory Chisel, the Bottle Rockets, The Airborne Toxic Event, Alejandro Escovado, the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

I did reconnaissance on sandwiches, excavating my files, not paying attention to Heidi’s recent vegan/vegetarian semi-conversion. I was not along for the ride on that one, so I took on a lot of sandwich eating, sometimes two or three at a time, with meat, meat and more meat. You gotta make hay when the sun shines and the sun was shining on big, sloppy, meaty wiches that weekend.

We loaded up our brains, and hearts too, with To Kill a Mockingbird on cd, checked out of the public library. Between Columbus and Indianapolis this line slid into the air, spoken by Sissy Spacek, “The shadow, crisp as toast…”. It was, you must know, Boo Radley, behind the parlor curtain. Crisp as toast. Crisp as toast.

First stop for sandwich – one for me, meatless sides for Heidi – Shapiro’s in Indianapolis, second day, first lunch.

Living “in the moment” has a nice ring to it, or could, if a moment was firm and could be rung, like a bell. Moments keep moving though, melting into the next and the next and the next. I’m gonna ride the wave of time, time being liquid, one sandwich at a time. We experienced Shapiro’s in time forward and back, going to St. Louis and on our return as well. The sandwiches eat stupendously, moving from east to west, moment by moment, or west to east.

Rilke’s words, part of a poem, this part not in quotes because I cannot remember his exact choice of words, Temporary-ess-ness (had to make up a word because I cannot think of another way to say it succinctly)…got that?, Temporary-ess-ness “is the fragrance of our lives.” That last part is the poetry part, and it lilted into my brain and stayed to rest.

We did rest a bit in St Louis, just long enough to check in, catch our breath and check the map. Ruma’s Deli, home of the Gerber Sandwich, is in south St Louis. We got there after dark, not too long before closing, and my heart was pounding a bit.

The racing of my blood slowed to a creep simply from the scent of a Gerber. Eating the Gerber and the Prosperity essentially Perry Como’d me. Not quite comatose, but close.

Second day, second lunch – The Gerber and Prosperity for me, Same thing minus the meat for Heidi, more or less – at Ruma’s Deli in South St Louis.

Thought we were done for the night after the Gerber adventure, but noooooo. The glowing OPEN sign on the Oriental Wok revived me. Whoosh, I was wide-eyed and on an epic St Paul alert. We followed the trail of fortune cookie crumbs.

Second day, third lunch – Three St Paul’s for me, Pork, Shrimp and Vegetable, Vegetable St Paul for Heidi – from the Oriental Wok, South St Louis.

They were so so so cheap, I ordered three. Under 10 bucks with a 20% tip. Who did I think was going to eat three of these things?

A St Paul is a 55% sandwich eating encounter because the top slice of bread sticks as tightly as epoxy to the top of your mouth. There is no chewing and/or swallowing it. The bottom slice I used as a napkin. That left the egg foo young and condiments. East meets west in a melding moment. Time almost stands still, holding its breath.

Third day, first lunch – BBQ all around the truck cab – from the Iron Barley via Blues Fest.

Third day, second lunch – THE MAMMER JAMMER!

We did have another full day of music before we hit the road for home.

Fourth day, first lunch – Shapiro’s reprisal.

Fourth day, last meal on the road.

Please forgive the bizarre syntax and egregious spelling error. Too, to, two late now for corrections.
Oh, nevermind my apology. The previous two photos are out of orders. That explains everything. It does take chutzpah to open something this fine in a such a quiet stretch. The Upper Crust jazzed the part of me that has faith in the future.

No, they are not sandwiches. When my clients say “Jump”, I jump. Jumping feels so good and all.

I had a business partner once and we were looking to open a restaurant. He did, in fact, open a restaurant, a very successful, rightly so, restaurant, Obelisk. It is the perfect restaurant.

Anyway, way back then we were looking at real estate. Everywhere. All over town. Looking for something unusual, something quietly spectacular that no one had noticed.

One afternoon I took him to see a long closed Greek diner in Alexandria, the Majestic. The parents of a high school friend of mine had owned it for many years. The glass had been covered with paper for a long, long time, and the secrets behind that paper intrigued me to the point of making me itch all over. We looked. At the glass, at the door, at the beautiful sign, the MAJESTIC.

The paper covered the glass to about 6 feet above the sidewalk. I jumped. Split second peek. A tease. I jumped again. Same tiny tease. “You gotta jump,” I said to my partner. “I don’t jump,” said he.

It’s coming!

I’ll be there! Presenting!

With my pals Renee Comet and Elizabeth Stewart.

You would not catch me dead doing it alone.

A bit more information here.

I am liking the description, especially certain choice words such as connection, shared, friendships and experience. As I said the other night, to quote myself in a me! me! me! moment, “I do not like the combination of food and competition.” “The two are redundant to me,” snorted Walter Nichols.
I know I need to do some planning, but what concerns me most is, what will be served for lunch?