The Lunch Encounter

Photo by Dan Whipps

Story from another life. I remember it, but I can’t feel it in my bones anymore.

My boyfriend was sitting at the breakfast table, coffee cup raised and wide-eyed as I snatched the hot waffle iron – waffle baking inside, snapped the plug out of the outlet and slid the whole mess into a doubled paper grocery bag. Swinging the front door open wide I marched down the apartment building hall to the trash shoot. Wham! went the iron into the shoot. Swoosh~ went the bag as it slid into the dark. As the shoot’s maw creaked shut I brushed off my hands and sighed.

Final episode of the sticking waffle battle. Waffle iron 1, Lisa 0.

I now know better. Cold batter + hot iron = permanently affixed waffle. Scrape, scrape, scrape with a table knife.

Anyway, I purchased a non-stick iron shortly thereafter and began life anew. The boyfriend knew what he was getting into, I would say, and he stuck around. Tiger by a tale, I was called, and so obviously so. No apologies for natural disposition.

That was 20 years and a few crispy waffles ago. Now I have bigger waffles to fry and can’t go to battle with appliances. We have more than one waffle iron model – the Flip ‘n Fluff, whose sobriquet is The Flippin Fluff if it misbehaves,and a Waffle Stick Maker, the better for dipping, my dear. The nice people at Hamilton Beach gave them to me.

See the Publisher’s Weekly review of Tom Colicchio‘s ‘wichcraft, written with Sisha Ortuzar, right here.

Witch craft, for good or evil, is behind motherhood.

Tonight, over dinner – sandwiches at the bar – he said he would like to time travel to the future. To find things out. Would he die from tragedy? Destruction? Assassination?

One can only hope that their child thinks these horrid thoughts because tragedy, destruction and assassination are so far out of their realm. Exotic, extreme, unimaginable.

Tom Robbins says, “It is never too late to have a happy childhood,” a funny notion. While I believe it’s true that where you have been is not where you are going, it does take hocus pocus aplenty to dissolve an unhappy childhood and replace it – true witchcraft.

Tryin’ with all my might and right to be at least 60% Glenda the Good Mum, and hopin’ my 40% Wicked Mum of the West will become memories deeply buried and never exhumed. Stirring a child-brew slowly and steadily, with dreams my son will rise from the cauldron right as rain. Right as rain while he is a child by nature and stature. Right as rain on the first go round.

Is this an art or a craft? A craft, I think. But which craft is it?

When the market is down, Spam is up! Read the story in the NYTimes Business Day, November 15, 2008.

I am a defender of Spam although I have to admit that my opinion is just that. Opinion. No facts about it, I have not eaten Spam in over 40 years. Maligned foods almost always appeal to my tough-tender heart, whether they are a part of my practice or not. The name is not glamorous, the package shouts at you, Spam itself screams budget. The name is brilliant. As good as Kleenex, PF Flyers and Tater Tots. 

 
Ouchy! HOT!
The Toastove turns up the dial on combo-vision. Toaster, hot plate and warmer. Keep it next to your bed, you never have to get up.

A couple weeks ago the Post food section added feathers to the beds of praise for Taylor Gourmet and for Andy Smith’s new book about burgers. Both entities, sprung from the imaginations of verdant minds and hearts, were known to me, as peripheral acquaintances, so I learned a bit more about them from the Post’s reporting. I was in pursuit, the Post upped the heat on the trail, and soon both Taylor Gourmet and Hamburger: A Global History will own real estate in my collective unconscious. You might want to make room too.

Here is my earlier, albeit brief, post on Taylor Gourmet. And the Post’s words on
Taylor Gourmet  The local rag got scooped by me and I was scooped by that e-rag, Daily Candy.

The hoagie guys who run Taylor are attached to their Philadelphia roots. Is DC north or south? Philly leaning or more toward Atlanta? We do not call them hoagies here. Simply subs, which to me is newscaster-speak, no known affiliation or accent. DC is stateless, but not without identity.

Andrew Smith spoke last Sunday to the Culinary Historians of Washington about his new book Hamburger: A Global History. This week the Post ran a short interview with him. You saw it all first here. Oh, cutting a scorching path!

While we are on the hamburger trail, I must chime in on Ray’s Hell-burger. The word is not chime. The word is pontificate. Hell that’s a hell of a burger. A leap followed by a long, slow, airborne sail over most others. Dastardly delicious. It’s the meat. Meat. Grass fed? Don’t know. Outspoken. Do know. Yes.


I’m of two minds, at least two, on burgers on this blog. They are sandwiches, no doubt, but such an enormous sub-section that they rule a separate and equal universe. Sub, the burger is not. One mind warns against wandering too far down the burger trail, and the other mind says, Oh what the hell!

Why is plain almost always old?

Plain is good. Think Donald Judd*. New can be good too. Think bread.

*

Donald Judd corner chair.

Heidi‘s pumpkin pie for breakfast today, finishing off the whipped cream as well. Ate it all while washing up the last of the champagne glasses.

The Post Sunday inserts arrived a day early and, flipping through the magazine, I came upon Slices of Life, something I styled for them a few months back. Nice pies, the lot.

Allison Dinner took lovely shots. Just a millicentimeter below the apex of the pies, the next pinnacle of that day was our lunch from Amsterdam Falafel. That’s Allison on the Amsterdam page, in fact.

On to a turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich. With just a smear of mayonnaise on both slices to stick the turkey in place. I’m whupped beyond whupped today, with nap on the brain. My brain feels like a heavy clump of cranberry-sauce-and-pie-stained tablecloths. Long nap.

Chris Kimball from America’s Test Kitchen visited Steve Inskeep’s kitchen a few weeks ago to tape an NPR Thanksgiving segment titled A Thanksgiving Meal from the Test Kitchen. I was there too, carrying all the food – some finished, some in parts. The segment aired yesterday, and you can listen to it and read about it at NPR.org.

Some of the pictures include me although I was support team only, not to be seen or heard. There I am between Chris Kimball and Renee Montaigne, and I appear to be dashing. I did need to zip about that morning – many bits and pieces, lots of cooking, very precise and lively.

We had a lot of fun and I learned some stuff about turkey, which I am putting into practice as we speak. The better for midnight sandwich making, my dear. Had to trade up on the turkey for a bigger one when our numbers swelled. And pick up a nice loaf of white sandwich bread.

The NPR gig was elaborate and cooking-minutiae packed. You wouldn’t think there would be anything more to learn about pie crust at this late date. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Sitting here with deep conditioner on my hair, trying to save a few bucks this month, and thinking about stuff.

Feeling thankful for all that I have. Tomorrow I will sit at the table with family and friends. My hair will look great. What more could I want?

Can a person “have it all”? In a word, no. That’s my word anyway. Having it all, however briefly, requires hitting it on the cusp. Perhaps a cusp can be enduring, but I don’t think so. No, you can’t have it all. Not all at once. Thank the heavens above. What on earth would you do with it?! There are not enough closets in the world for a person who has everything they need and desire.

Linda Kulman muses on the substantial menu of “everything”, meaning family AND career, in her blog post Sarah Palin and the “Post Palate Era”, and raises the ghost of dinner parties past, The Silver Palate Cookbook.

I wonder if a woman can have it all in this sense – young enough to have good skin, face, body, hair AND old enough to be wise, self-aware and informed. From what I understand, 34 is the golden age, although at 34 I was still quite the psychological morass. Had my current wisdom level kicked in sooner, I could have had maybe not all, but close to it, at ONCE. It being the essentials of a physical human entity, edited to the essence. It’s a cryin’ shame, but the world was spared the monster that would have been me. Phew.

Family and career? Yes, I have all that. And it’s a feast. Sleep enough? Money enough? Sanity enough? Maybe later.

A clipping just in via Malcolm Riviera in Taylorsville, NC. I have never wrapped my mind around the fact that he does not live here anymore. Huh? Taylorsville? Malcolm? Are all 50 bazillion 8-tracks in Taylorsville?

From my home town newspaper the year I was born! This is what they were feeding kids for a “snack” back then…. no wonder our generation’s kids are all ADHD! Just wash that slab of Snickers loaf down with a quart of chocolate milk (whole milk, of course!)!!

Dates? Does this recipe include dates? Shhhhhh, don’t breathe a word to the youngsters.

Honey, could you bring me my cigarettes? Now where did I put my cocktail?

One of the many joys of dating is the likelihood of random, intimate, astute remarks from near strangers. A comment was made, “You are having a conversation out loud that most people have in their heads,” and I thought it was pointedly hilarious. Should I have been embarrassed? I was not, although I don’t believe the remark was meant as a compliment.

A large amount of the thinking I do is out loud. The Danes think sandwiches with the inside on the outside, and with pride. Smørrebrød.

Heralding Christmas, the Danish Club of Washington, DC‘s Christmas Bazaar is held every year at the beginning of November, this year one week later than usual. Perhaps that accounts for the interminable line for kringle. Could it be that the shorter days sharpen our desire for almond kringle? Warmed till the almond paste scorches your tongue, with a cup of hot, black coffee.

What have we here (in the snapshot below)? In the back, frikadeller, and that apple dessert that I love so much and mean to make but never do. In the front the vet’s midnight snack, crisply fried fish (perch or?), and shrimp salad. You can’t see the bread but it’s there, under the overhang. Buttered. I like the bread buttered and am surprised that pre-buttered bread never hit the market. And thankful.

My mother, who took us all to lunch, said, “Nice to see Teddy enjoying his smørrebrød. He is growing up!” Bread + butter + smoked salmon are his super fuel, and he is still young enough to battle windmills and balloons.