Grandma Clara

Every afternoon Grandma Clara used to sit down for her Four O’clock Fix: a cup of black coffee and a cookie. The coffee was weak and very hot—real Midwest coffee. The cookie was usually one of her homemade cream cheese cookies. She would sit and rest and quietly enjoy this. Can you even imagine being that sane?

She smoked exactly one cigarette every day, in the morning with with the L.A. Times Crossword.

She ate watermelon with a knife and fork and a bit of salt.

She said that when she first came out from Michigan to California she ate half a cantaloupe with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle. And you had the impression that’s why she decided to stay and marry my grandpa.

When she first got married she didn’t know how to cook. She made pea soup, but she didn’t know it was supposed to be thick, so she made a clear broth with peas floating in it. “This is pea water,” said my grandpa. And she cried. By the time she was telling us the story we were eating her wonderful thick creamy pea soup, cooked with a big ham hock.

She made the best Santa Maria style barbecue—barbecued tri-tip, pinquito beans simmered long and low with a big ham hock, potato salad and garlic bread. That was her signature meal. There were no recipes. The food was in her head and her hands.

I’ll leave out the meat, since my Grandpa did that. Barbecue some tri-tip--that’s the recipe. I’m sure there is some high art to this, but I don’t know what it is, and it’s hard to make tri-tip taste anything but great.

The potato salad. I happen to make great potato salad, and she did some things that I think are wrong—like peal the potatoes before boiling them instead of afterward. But this is the way she did it, as well as I can remember. Peel and boil some russet potatoes. While they’re still warm, cut them into large chunks, sprinkle with salt and apple cider vinegar. Mix together mayonnaise, mustard powder, salt, pepper, and chopped green onions. Add the potatoes and mix it all together, trying not to break up the potatoes. Chill. Were there hardboiled eggs in there? I’m almost sure there weren’t. I wish I could call and ask. Her number is still in my phone.

The Beans. Soak some pinquito beans. Cook slowly with ham hock, , onion, garlic, and a small can of Las Palmas chili sauce.

The garlic bread. Make garlic butter with softened butter and mashed garlic. Get a loaf of grocery store type French bread—not sourdough, not artisanal, just soft white French bread in a plastic bag. Cut it lengthwise and spread the garlic butter. Toast under the broiler. Don’t burn.

Here are a few more of her recipes.

Cream Cheese Cookies

Cream together:
1 cup butter
3 oz cream cheese
one cup sugar
one egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Sift or just mix together:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt.

Then mix everything together and (this is not in her written recipe, but she told me) don't over mix. Shape into rolls and refrigerate for at least three hours. Slice and bake for 16 minutes. Yes, that is correct, there is no baking soda or baking powder.

White Fruitcake

This is a big recipe because she gave it away for Christmas. It was the fruitcake that you actually liked to get.

Cream together:
3 cubes margarine or butter
3 cups sugar

Add, one at a time, beating between each one:
3 eggs

Mix together:
5 cups of sifted flour
1 tablespoon baking powder

Add 1 1/2 cups milk to the butter/egg mixture, alternating with the flour until it's all combined.

Mix in:
One package coconut
1 cup walnuts
12 ounces each red and green glace cherries
12 ounces candied pineapple
1 ounce brandy.

Bake in small loaf pans for about an hour. I think she lined the pans with baking parchment. Not a bad idea.

Open & Notorious

There's a dead end alley behind our house blocked by a big dumpster about thirty feet from the dead end, leaving a wild, unclaimed patch of weeds where no one drives and no one goes. We're kitty-corner from the weed patch, so that it would be easy to run a hose, or even a drip line from our house.

It took about thirty seconds for my thoughts to go from Community Garden to...Real Estate Scheme. I could see the raised beds, the neatly mulched rows, the neighbors meeting by chance to exchange gossip and produce. And then a voice from my real property law class went though my head: open, notorious, hostile, adverse, under claim of right...the elements of Adverse Possession. I couldn't remember how long you have to occupy the land to get it for yourself, but probably seven years. Geez, if I'd started this when we moved here, it would be ours by now. In fact, MINE.

I could fence it, run drip line, build a gate in our back fence, or maybe even a short corridor from our yard to the garden. I could plant a small orchard--figs! Maybe instead of a fence, espaliered apples and pears. Raised beds, of course. Drip irrigation on a timer. Goats, chickens. Perhaps a small vineyard. A picnic table. A shed. A worm box. Hell, a gazebo. Enzo could make a fort.

Objections crowded in. You have to pay the taxes to adversely possess land. And I doubt you can adversely possess against the city. And the small patch of sunlit vegetable garden in our own yard is a weed-infested ruin. The only things I can grow are tomatoes and arugula--which have been wonderful. Those two crops can take you a long way. But how would I satisfy the open and notorious part if the lot still looks like a weed patch? And how much arugula can three people eat?

And then, it's the secret, untamed wildness that attracted me to the lot in the first place. I remember an apricot tree near the house where I grew up. It was in a vacant sliver of land between an abandoned road and the new road, surrounded by weeds and dry grass, unwatered, unpruned and unobtrusive. The apricots were small, rosy-speckled, sweet and firm--and free in every way. Free because I was free and exploring and found them myself. Free because they were a secret.

Operation Ass Wipe & Other Miscellaneous

Enzo is into apple juice popsicles. He also loves plums. So when I got a mother lode of plums from a friend, I pitted and pureed them and made popsicles with plum, yogurt, apple juice and honey. And he refuses to taste them. He wants what he’s used to. He wants the apple juice.

That’s what’s wrong with children. (One of the many things.) They are so fucking conservative. Also contrary, perverse, uncultured and ungrateful.

Plus now that he’s into peeing standing up, he keeps peeing on my Moroccan mint, spraying around with great glee.

*

Enzo’s starting pre-school in a few weeks. We knew he had to be potty trained, and he’s been that for a long time. But Teresa learned at the orientation that he also has to wipe his own ass. So Operation Ass Wipe has begun.

When he poops he usually kicks off his shorts and underwear completely. You hand him the wipe, and he just shoves it between his cheeks and then runs off with the wipe waving bravely behind, as in flag football. We chase. We wipe. He is delighted with himself.

You'll be relieved to know there is no food component to this story.

*

My ancestors left Norway about thirty seconds before oil was discovered in the North Sea. They were poor and so was Norway. Then Norway was rich, and they were still poor, but they were American poor, which is supposed to be temporary.

Anyway, I decided to reclaim my Norwegian heritage, and since I can't afford one of those fabulous sweaters, I bought a rutabaga. I put it on the counter and watched it for a while. My grandma always made mashed rutabaga for Thanksgiving. And how about a meat pie with lots of onion and rutabaga? That sounded great but also like a lot of work. So I ended up chopping it into a large dice, drizzling with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasting it all very hot for about forty minutes. It was delicious--nutty and sweet with a little radish-like bite.

There are so many foods--like rutabaga--that I like a lot but never think to cook. And they're not hard. I just forget about them. Like I used to eat fennel all the time, and now I can't remember the last time I had fennel. And soon I'll be lying in my grave, thinking, "Fennel!"

One small advantage to having Enzo around is he makes me try new things. He usually doesn't try them (see above) but the hope that he might makes me try things that I otherwise wouldn't. Like he used to love those calamari rings from Trader Joe's. You pour them frozen, straight from the bag into a pan with garlic and olive oil, and they're done in about three minutes. And they're cheap, too.

Then Trader Joe's stopped carrying them. Calamari costs a fortune at Safeway, so I decided to get whole squid, guts and all at the Farmer's Market. But the first time we went to the fish stand I saw this strange pure white squid-like fish next to the calamari--cuttle fish. I bought one big one and left the calamari for next week. And it was delicious--white flesh, delicate firm texture (less rubbery than calamari) and tasting cleanly of the sea. I'd heard of risotto with cuttle fish ink. What I bought appeared to be ink-less. Why? Never mind. It was delicious sauteed very quickly in olive oil then tossed with lime juice and a little mint and parsley. (Enzo didn't eat it. See above.)

The next week I got plain calamari. Enzo loved the guts and eyeballs part. He inspected them carefully. "Where's his mouth?" I showed him the strange beak-like mouth at the base of the tentacles. "Where did his eyes go?" I found the eyes,which had somehow receded into the body, and popped them out again. I managed to clean and cut them up and and cook them. And now Enzo doesn't like calamari anymore. These were big squid. Too big for calamari rings. And he likes the rings. They're what he's used to (see above).

*

(A week later)

Enzo and I want to the Farmer's Market this morning. "What do you want to get?" I said.

"Fish!"

"What kind of fish?"

"Big ones."

"What other kind?"

"Tiny ones."

"What other kind?"

"All of them!" But the fish stand was closed.

Crawdad Capers

Yesterday I committed the sin of buying and cooking and eating something only to write about it.

And I paid.

We went to the Farmer’s Market, where Enzo became entranced with the live crawdads. We hung out for a long time watching them.

“Crabs?” said Enzo.

“Crawdads,” I said. “They’re like tiny lobsters.” And then we bought some. I had the guy tie an extra bag around them because they’d have to ride home in the bike trailer with Enzo, and I didn’t want them escaping and crawling on him, though I suspect he wouldn’t mind.

We made it home and showed Teresa. She was horrified. "I’m not even going to be in the house when you eat those. I’ll be outside eating a bowl of cereal--nice, dead cereal.”

I poured the seething, clicking mass into a big stock pot, clapped the lid on it and put it all in the fridge. I promised Enzo we would look at them again after his nap.

I was already beginning to dread the whole ordeal. What if Enzo starting thinking of them two pounds of adorable pets? Should we set them free? But where? And what if they set off some exotic species type ecological disaster? Though surely they must be a native species, since they’re here in my house and still alive. I mean you wouldn’t fly in live crawdads from Asia for the farmer’s market. Or would you? The fish stand has frozen fish with Chinese characters on the packaging.

We were stuck with each other. I opened the fridge and stared at the pot. You could hear them moving--a faint clicking. There was something so repulsive and cruel about the mass of them all crammed together, fighting for air and escape and probably at this point eating each other. I thought this was going to be so Annie Hall, and it felt like The Killing Fields. I closed the fridge and left the house. Teresa and Enzo napped.

When Enzo woke up we got out the crawdads. Enzo ran to get his chair, pulled it up to the counter, climbed up and peered into it. “We cook them?” he said.

I poured the crawdads into a big bowl and filled the stock pot with water, garlic and salt. Enzo had his elbows on the counter, chin in hands, peering at the crawdads, which were moving even more now that they were warming up. He poked one.

“Be careful,” I said.

“They bite me?”

“No, but they can pinch you with their claws.” I showed him how to pick them up, by the body. He tried that. Then we put one on the counter and studied it. They are beautiful creatures. It lifted up both claws to the sky in what seemed like a desperate, defensive fighting motion.

Enzo picked it up and put it in my grandma’s bean pot, which was standing by, mostly as a prop. (Too small for cooking crawdads.) “Enzo’s a good helper today?” he said. I said he was a very good helper. I was still dreading the moment when the seething mass went into the stock pot. Then I had an idea. I filled a plastic tub with water and poured the crawdads in so they could move about in the water.

Then they started killing each other. The water was a boiling, thrashing mass. And I realized that now I couldn’t just pour them into the stock pot. The cold water would cool down the pot. And I didn’t have a colander big enough to pour them into—I’d have to take them out one by one, by hand--or with tong, yes, tongs, thank god for tongs. Then I remembered the big salad spinner insert. I poured them into that.

By this time two very good things had happened. Enzo had lost interest and wandered off and the water was boiling. I poured the crawdads into the pot, hating them by now, which made it easier. Four spilled onto the stove top. I picked them up with oven-mitted hands and popped them in the pot, slammed the lid on and set the timer for six minutes.

When I poured them out they were bright red, extraordinarily beautiful. I liked them so much better dead. Two of them went into the sink, halfway down the drain, and while I was frantically looking for the tongs, they went down into the garbage disposal.

The problem with tongs is that it’s hard to open them to grab something when they’re thrust down a drain. I finally got a purchase on one crawdad and brought it up, slowly, slowly so that it wouldn't break apart. And then I got the other.

Enzo came back and helped me pick them apart. He picked one up and looked at it closely.

“Eyes see in the dark?”

Hell if I know.

We pulled the tails off and then prized them apart to get the meat out.

Is there a consensus on whether you eat the crawdad crap? I mean the stuff in their guts that looks like baby poop--yellowish-brown and liquidy. I tasted it, and it tasted like nothing, but I still decided to rinse off as much as the crap as I could. By the end of all this we had two small handfuls of crawdad meat. Enzo tried a bite.

“What does it taste like?” I said.

“Cai,” he said, which means calamari.

I tasted one. It tasted like pond water. We slid the carcasses into the trash.

Never again.