I was next to the iceberg lettuce in the grocery store when an older gentleman asked me to help him select one. English is not his first language, so at first I thought he wanted to know what they were. I've seen baffled tourists congregate around our shelves before, confronting American produce for the first time along with the scary realization that we are more than is typically presented on t.v. for mass consumption. We are more than hamburgers and swimsuit models, so much more. When faced with the actuality of our harvest abundance, a visitor is forced to confront the reality of who we are, and that begins with our diet. What is this? I can relate. Have you ever tried to select a fresh dragonfruit in Chinatown or the best foul-smelling durian?! That's what it feels like.
With typical machismo, he waved away my chatter about water content and the generic quality of iceberg as a variety. "Wheeh one?" he brusquely pointed towards the pile. Ah, a man who does not like being a stranger in a strange land. Not my type of traveller. Being a great trekker requires a sense of humor and the willingness to accept that you are not in control. You have to have a strong sense of self. He must be used to a certain type of woman not native to these parts. I laughed him off and quickly selected a perfect shrink-wrapped head for him, which he quickly tossed in his cart and rolled away. Hmm. Poor guy, I thought to myself. Looking for a Latina wife to do house chores for him. Well, well, well. Welcome to reality.
My mother famously said to me years ago, "Marie, you will never be a housewife", and she was so right about that. I do not flatter a man's ego to make him feel better about himself. As good as I am in the home and at the stove, I do not work specifically for a man. I work for you, all of you, for the world at large—that's the role of an artist and a writer. I'm used to men with self-esteem and innately large talents of their own. This ain't no housewife school, homey. This exchange happened in seconds, and it didn't mean much to me other than yet another one of those great New York encounters that we are fortunate to have every day of our lives.
As I dickered over the lettuce pile, I was thinking lightening fast to myself "Do I need this? Is it in season? Are these local? Probably not. It's packaged by a large food chain brand. Could be from anywhere. What else do I have in my fridge?" I had noticed a small pile of iridescent produce. Ohhhh. Baby eggplants! I originally tried to sell the man on these babies when I noticed him hovering at my elbow, too timid or macho to say "Excuse me" which is one of the first language phrases one learns in another country. I chattered happily to myself about their size and color. What a beauty pile! Now I returned my attentions to them. They were on sale and in season and local. Good. Meets all my criteria. Into the basket they go. Back at home, I began looking up recipes for stuffed eggplant because they were the perfect size for that kind of cooking. I don't use eggplant much because the recipe I know and like is Eggplant Parmesan, which requires a salting, sweating, and rinsing process to the peeled eggplant prior to even cooking and assembling the dish. It is so labor-intensive, I very rarely do it. It's one of those things I like to order out. But, here I was and I already had chopped meat, onions, and tomatoes, which form the basis for many Italian-American dishes. I found one that had a Greek spin to it that matched my fridge contents with some changes.
I obviously didn't use chopped lamb, but the chopped beef was an easy subsitution. Mediterranean cooking is my favorite form of cooking: olive oil, onions, olives, fresh cheese, fresh herbs, fresh bread...these are the dishes my ancestors ate for millennium, and it is the reason longevity exists on the Italian side of my family. It also accounts for our resilience and the tough, thick, oily nature of our skin that ages so well. My grandmother has perfectly smooth cheeks at 97, with a robust mind to match the extreme nature of her physical beauty.I noticed when I was in Rome years ago that almost every women I saw of age walking the narrow, ancient, cobblestone streets was a beauty in her own right. I still believe to this day that Italian women are the most beautiful women in the world, though I freely admit my bias in relation to my beloved grandmother. She is charm incarnate, a woman of supreme intellect and grace. Her voice is heavenly, she sings and speaks beautifully, and she was a consummate traveller in her day. Her and my late grandfather have set foot on every continent (or very close to it) after his retirement from Con Edison, and she makes every one around her feel better, like a warm, healing pool from the best bath you've ever had. Her warmth envelops you, surrounds you, pulls you in close and keeps you there, warming you to the core.
Once I designed a cover about good living and longevity that broke down all of the longest living cultures by diet, culture, and lifestyle. A chapter is naturally devoted to Mediterranean people, and in particular, an Italian lady in her 90s who lives by the sea. Every day she climbs a steep set of stairs carved into the cliff to shop in town, there and back, up and down, breathing in the healthy sea air and pulling it into her lungs and she carries the groceries home on her back in a mesh bag.
She makes her own cheese, and she uses olive oil for all her cooking. These are the foods that speak to me of home and hearth. I know I feel at my best when I eat the foods that happily are my favorite, though I am the first to acknowledge that pasta instantly adds about 2 lbs on me overnight. When I was little my grandmother told me her food stories, about her mother making pasta cut into strips that were floured and laid down on the bed over a sheet for drying. One morning she woke up to discover a cute little bunny rabbit in the bathtub that she instantly adopted as a pet, only to be horrified by rabbit stew for dinner.She disavowed her roots as a young girl along with the ancient Bari farm dishes of her mother and father's town near Abruzzi. She had been badly teased and bullied as a girl for having pierced ears which marked her for life as Italian, and to this day she will not speak her dialect to me, nor use her original name. Like so many immigrants, assimilation was mandatory and the past was to be shed quickly, like the tattered peasant garb one came off the boat wearing. Now that it is "hip" to be ethnic, to sell one's history like a cooking show on t.v., I have to laugh bitterly to myself when I think about my grandparents' pain as new Americans.
How ironic it is, and somewhat cruel, to live in a time so desperate for authenticity that real stories are sold with the same or less currency than a mentally ill group of women who get drunk and compete for a fake bachelor's "hand" on a cheaply produced reality show. What the fuck? I am glad she is out of time now, because none of the more dip shit aspects of popular culture would make any sense to her, though I do miss the acerbic, observant tongue that her and my grandfather used in speaking to each other. I miss their shared common sense in my family, and I feel lonely without their point of view. With them around, at least I knew someone in my family "got" me.
These are some of the thoughts that drift through my head as I work in the kitchen, something I can do because the making of food has become second nature to me. When craft acquires a sense of ease, it allows the maker to use other portions of their brain than just those devoted to hand-eye coordination. It allows you to disappear into the making, and savor these connections we have to our culture through our food. I cannot imagine myself without these stories because I wouldn't be me without them. That is why it is so important to pass these traditions onto our children, by doing these activities with them while we talk about who we are. It was the ballast formed early in me that allows me to wander somewhat recklessly and bravely through this world. I know who I am, and no one can change that. These are the seeds that need to be planted in our children from the youngest age possible. I can't wait to see the beauty and strength of my next generation. Can you?
