Grocery Goddess

Ideally you’d be at the Farmer’s Market yourself with no plans, no recipes, no lists--ready to be inspired by whatever is fresh and cheap, but who’s got the fucking time? So I give Teresa a grocery list for Safeway full of arcane instructions and contingency plans.

• Apples—Fujis, but only if cheap. And not from Chile

• Lettuce--romaine or oak leaf, whichever is cheap and looks good

• One bunch of celery—not in a bag. Get the kind with just a little plastic around the bottom and lots of leaves on the top.

• One pork shoulder roast--around five pounds, but only if still on sale, should be $1.99 a pound

• Jack or cheddar cheese--only if on sale and NOT pre-grated, unless the pre-grated is super-cheap.

• Green enchilada sauce--but cancel if you don’t get the cheese.

• Corn tortillas--three dozen if you get the cheese and enchilada sauce; one dozen if not.

• Flour tortillas--be careful not to get the supposedly butter-flavored ones, also NOT low-fat.

• Coriander—not from spice section, get from Mexican section in little envelope. Also, whole seeds, not ground.

• Cumin--same as above

• Olive oil--cancel if going to Trader Joe’s anytime soon, because it’s cheaper there.

• Red wine (Shiraz, second to cheapest bottle you can find.)

• All the usual: eggs, milk, frozen things you need

I know that shopping with Enzo is pretty much like having an unexploded bomb in the cart. An unexploded bomb that says, "Cookie, cookie, cookie." Translation: tick tick tick. He is only going to stay there so long, and it’s almost impossible to comparison shop or change plans or even follow complex instructions. You’ve got to move.

So I get out of court and check my messages:

Hello, this is your family. What’s cheap for lettuce? And how am I supposed to know if it looks good? Call us!

Hello, this is your family again. [Enzo in background, “cookie! banana!”] How can you tell if the apples come from Chile—do they have a sticker or something? Why don’t you answer your stupid phone? And what’s the matter with Chile anyway?

Hello, this is the last time I’m calling you. The pork roast says it’s still on sale, but it’s not $1.99 a pound, it’s $2.50. Do you still want it? Never mind! We’re getting it.

Okay, this is last time. They don’t have whole cumin in the Mexican section. Do you want me to get whole cumin from the regular spice section or ground cumin from the Mexican section? Never mind, you don’t get cumin. Deal with it. Or answer your phone.

It’s us again. Do you think we’re mature enough to get Nutter Butters? They’re on sale. Remember The Debauch?

That last message refers to one time when we ate a hole package of Nutter Butters at a sitting, while playing chess. That was pre-Enzo, of course. We still talk about it fondly as The Nutter Butter Debauch.

I think most of our life together is like this—messages in writing and then on answering machines, a few emails, an occasional debauch. It’s like an epistolary novel of domestic life. And the plot goes like this: muddling through somehow–more of the same–Nutter Butters—answer your phone!—Cookie, cookie!–Check Mate.

Recipe Rebellion

Every few months I buy tofu. Meat is expensive. Also sort of disgusting, but only when you think about it, which I don’t. I adore charred flesh far too much to think about it.

Tofu seems like the perfect food—clean and cheap and easy and nutritionally excellent--if only it didn’t taste like pencil erasers. But time passes and I forget how hopeless it is, and I buy tofu again thinking this time I’ll marinate it, rub it with spices, or perhaps massage it and then light it on fire. My latest attempt sprang from the recognition that tofu is pretty much a vegetable, and almost all vegetables are wonderful coarsely chopped, drizzled in olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in the oven for about an hour. So I did this and ended up with something that had not just the taste but also the texture of pencil erasers—a tough, bouncy resilience.

Why not try a recipe? I obviously have no intuitive tofu-sense. Oh, all right. I’ll get back to you on that in a few months. I have to wait for my tofu hopes to rise again.

Meanwhile, the honeymoon is over with Marcella. The bloom is off the rose, baby. Last week I made cauliflower with raisins and pine nuts and fricasseed chicken with onions and cognac.

The cauliflower. What is the point of first boiling the cauliflower until it’s tender and then breaking it up and sautéing it with the raisins and pine nuts? Do I look like I have time to wash extra pots and pans? Surely you could break up the cauliflower raw, sauté it with the raisins and pine nuts and then put in a splash of orange juice or water or broth, cover it and cook until tender. Basically braise it. And why are there no onions in this recipe? Was this a clerical error?

The chicken. And here’s the problem with recipes. There’s always one expensive ingredient that you don’t have on hand and will never use again. In this case, cognac—two tablespoons of cognac. I put it on the grocery list, and Teresa refused to buy it because they only had big bottles at Safeway. So I ended up walking to the corner store with Enzo to buy the stupid cognac. Enzo had a cold. Earlier that day he had knocked his head hard against my cheekbone, and I had a pretty bad black eye. It was raining. Enzo wore his cute slicker, and I wore my homeless-looking Carhart jacket. We found the smallest flask of cognac and got in line. We bought nothing else. Of course there was a young mom in line in front of us with two small children buying a quart of milk. I clutched my flask and my crusty-nosed child. I felt like saying, “It’s for a recipe. It’s Italian. Northern Italian.”

Another problem with the chicken recipe is you had to cut up a whole chicken. I usually just get thighs for braising type recipes, but the Marcella said cut up a whole chicken and I was by-god following the recipe. I haven’t cut up a chicken in years. I do not own poultry shears. It’s a grisly task. Also, the breasts cook faster than the thighs and legs, so doesn’t it make sense to choose one or the other? I have to admit, both recipes turned out pretty good, and I ate them for lunch all week.

But what to do with a flask of cognac? I called my mom ask about what we always called The Brandy Show. It’s basically pepper steak (but made with hamburgers for kids) and you deglaze the pan with butter, lemon, Worschester sauce and brandy or cognac and set it on fire. I thought Enzo might like that. So I got to the flambé part, and told him mama was going to do a magic show. He looked noncommittal. I turned off the lights and lit a match pausing for a moment to heighten the drama, then touched it to the pan. Blue and yellow flames sprang up, and Enzo ran out of the room. I couldn’t follow him. There was a fire to deal with. But in moments he was back looking extremely serious and carrying a big plastic fire truck. It was pretty fucking adorable.