Bunny Boiler

My maternal grandmother and grandfather always told me the best stories, so when they didn't remember some of them in their advanced ages, I did it for them. I began telling them their stories back to them, as a reminder of who they were to me, as they still are, and forever will be. They taught me that having no money wasn't the same as true impoverishment: a soul-deadening condition that only the power of faith can take away. A lot of their rowdiest stories happened during their heady youth that coincided with the Jazz Age of "The Harlem Renaissance", and because my grandfather loved photography (he used to develop his own film and print from his negatives), they had the photos to back it up, which stayed with me, informing me and my work as a publisher to this day. Words are wonderful, but nothing beats the hard evidence photos provide. Period.

Because my grandparents and I liked to cook and were proficient at it, we often talked about food when we were together, happily cooking up something on small stoves in smaller apartments, but always glad to be together. Food was something we shopped for almost every day, for economy's sake and freshness, because anyone who's carried groceries up four flights of stairs knows that over-shopping is a curse in of itself. Besides, when you pass by a store every day, what's the point? There isn't any reason to hoard when there's plenty!

They lived through economic recessions far worse than anything their children went through, and it made them softer for it. Not for me, though, because I kept pace with them intellectually, which was freeing for all of us. There were no excruciating back-and-forths with a table of fat psychos more interested in checking out mentally and/or stressing out intentionally to create friction they could get high from. Ick...go away! We got into the real stuff of life, enjoying it pleasurably in a way that the inept among us would never do be able to do. We respected their illnesses as separate from us and our reality, without giving in to their crazy demands or insane schedules.

Eating for us was part of G-d's inheritance to us, as the good life we deserved as His Most Faithful. We savored the dishes we made excellently without showing off about it, because it was a part of our everyday lives, and because crazies are often deeply insecure and ravenously envious about a prowess and excellence they can never really participate in. Even as we spread our gifts evenly among them, they greedily wanted ever more from us, in response to our daily productivity. Still, the margins can be great places to live in, especially when drama queens display the same drab colors over and over again.

Our disordered family were easy to checkout on mentally-speaking, fast-paced as our real lives were in the very large world that is the greater New York City area. Like me and my brothers, my grandparents lived real lives, working really difficult jobs with a long list of great experiences to show for it. We laughed easily and often, passing the fruits of our labors among our small social group within a group, going over the heads of our sick family and friends. 

One Easter when I was little, my grandmother and I sat at her dining room table listening to her youngest prattle on and on about shopping and bunny rabbits, like the nervously immature girl she is. She lived with them all of her life, until they died. She had a pseudo-lesbian relationship with another sick woman from the old neighborhood she called her "best friend", but really, they were simply two sick women living with their parents long-term, because it was either that or an expensive mental institution. It was sad and tortuous to be around them, because they spoke repetitive nonsense to each other, in the similar way that compulsives do. She called my mom's sister her "Bunny", which made her hoard rabbit statues in response to her gay friend's devotion, relishing trips to the local mall like you and I look forward to riding the surf at the beach in summertime.

Yeah...we ignored them...a lot. For my beneficial and habitual blocking out of their inanity, I was rewarded with actual stories by my grandmother about her wild Depression-Era childhood, when her ability to survive might be the only thing that pulled her through the day. I could relate. My own parents (her daughter) were dangerous like her parents. We understood each other well. Back then, butcher shops were on the street, barking out their wares for your close inspection, because every penny counted. If you made a poor decision with your one purchase, you might not make it through the week with a decent meal, because your parents rode you about that, too.

On the week leading up to Easter, her mother purchased a live rabbit for their Sunday bolognese sauce, and barring an indoor cage for her to keep it in, she stored it in the tub for the few days until the big holiday weekend. My grandmother loved the little creature, rare as pets were for poor immigrant families recently arrived. Tenement living was rough, and space was scarce. Families often shared a bathroom on every floor, and baths meant you lugged buckets of hot water up some flights of stairs. If you've never done it, then you don't know to what lengths you'll go to keep yourself neat and clean. She loved the cute furry thing as a welcome diversion she could entertain herself with, after schoolwork and her chores were done.

On Sunday, she was delighted to eat her mama's handmade macaroni (that she cut on a bed covered with a white sheet, in great lengths) topped with a sumptuous red sauce, because meat (expensive as it is) was a rare treat for them, too. Sometime during the day, though, she went into the bathroom to peek at the bunny rabbit in the bathtub. But...what?! It was gone! Quickly, she ran back to the kitchen to tell her mama that the bunny had escaped. Oh no! "Haha...oh no, no, my dear little one," my great-grandmother Rosa laughed, "she was in the pot!" Slowly but surely my grandmother realized the price of her great Sunday dinner. Ohhh...

"Were you upset?" I asked my own dear Italian grandmama. "Oh, no!" My grandma smiled back at me! "I loved my mother's cooking! It was delicious!" It was as true then as it is for me, today. Nothing beats home cooking. Absolutely nothing. And I still love cooking Italian-American food as much as we still enjoy eating it, because the recipes we make for each other in gladness is the true wealth that we inherit, as a real manifestation of His Love for us all. That's what Easter, rabbits, and family mean to me. "Mangia! Mangia! Mangia!"

Per Angelina , proprietario di Angel di Dio.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag%C3%B9

Vacation (Only If You Want To)

Me and my Grandma kickin' back at my goddaughter's Baptismal luncheon, after a LBI beach vacay with other family. I lived in Denver at the time.

My grandparents famously told all of their children and heirs apparent that they would get no money from them after they died, because they were going to spend it all, and I (for one) laughed the loudest at that. Shit, man, they gave their childhoods to work in the city, so that their dependent immigrant families wouldn't starve during The Great Depression, forestalling their own dreams about education and travel to send their four children to college. Of course, I had serious doubts about the logic behind funding four spoiled kids who were (and still are) almost completely inept at times, but I admired their effort.

My Grandpa humped underground for ConEd for more friggin' years than he cared to count, so when he and my Grandma told everyone at family get-togethers they inherited a condo out in Cali that they wanted to sell to spend on trips, I loved the idea behind it. I can't think of two more self-sacrificing people in the world who deserved a really good party away from the crazy kids and grandkids than my two maternal grandparents. They were the glue that kept their dysfunctional brood together, having almost no respite from birth to elder status, except for their senior escapes with the local Senior Citizens Club that my Grandpa was so avid about.

So they sold some condo that they'd never seen to go on some real trips. It was fun getting swept up in their excitement. They got awesome AARP discounts that my Grandpa liked to brag about, which was well-earned several times over, for their more than 60+ years of paying into the system. And they want everywhere: Morocco, Alaska, Hawaii, South America...if they could cruise to it or fly to it, they'd go. They both had iron seaworthy constitutions, never getting seasick even under threat of capsizing in the middle of some great ocean. 

Then, they'd come back to show us their fun photos, like dining at the Captain's table, or ballroom dancing the night away, and the huge buffet that was there whenever they wanted. I loved it all; the excitement in my grandmother's eyes when she shopped for her glamorous evening dress, so deserved for a woman who had worked at a factory as a very young woman so that her family could eat. I couldn't think of a better reward for all their years of loyal familial service than dancing the night away and eating whatever they wanted to, whenever they wanted, without having hungry mouths to feed, or someone whining about that evening's meal.

Compared to all the hard times and heartache they had had in their long lives together, the right to live out loud and without prejudice seemed like justice had finally come into my grandparent's lives for the first time in their lives, and at just the right time, when they had the time, health, and money to do it. They taught me how to not be some typical ugly American tourist, but to learn something about the country I was visiting beforehand, like those cultures shown in the bright glossy brochures we would pour over happily with them, along with the audio tape or language book my Grandpa bought, so he could at least order dinner at the table for them both in the lingua franca, and do native people the courtesy of saying "hello", "goodbye" and "thank you" to them in their own language.

They taught me how to live, and how to live well. I'm so grateful that I saw them make themselves happy for once, instead of it always being the other way around. We so rarely had those times together on our own. Happy travels this summer, and don't just "go away" someplace to spend time and money because of your own personal boredom, but have a ball. I know my grandparent's did. Live well.

Bargain Apple Turnovers

My broke ass has been shopping on the cheap ever since I can remember. Hunting through a store for the best deal is something I learned at my grandparents' knees. A Great Depression isn't something one is apt to forget, and I learned those lessons well from their stories about how far a dollar can stretch if one is savvy enough to do it well.

It almost goes without saying that we love food in this town. We have an incredible abundance practically on our doorsteps, prepared by the finest cooks the world has to offer. But that doesn't mean I pay through the nose for it. Oh, I love going out occasionally to savor the slowness of an osso bucco that's been simmering on a back burner for days, made by someone else because I don't have time to prep a meal like that, but I learned how to find food and cook it a long time ago, whether times are lean or fat.

And so I do. When my local store had their brand name biscuits on sale, I bought them in bulk. After my autumn apple adventures began (as detailed here: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-doctor-is-in.html ), I hit that bag hard. Combining apples with pastry for dessert or breakfast is as easy as pie. Buy that tin of biscuits, you know the ones you carefully pop open along the line on the cardboard tube that's been vacuum-sealed like a friggin' MacGyver bomb that explodes scarily and randomly on contact with the edge of the spoon? Yeah, those.

Fill them with a mixture of apples cooked with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, like the topping we've already covered here on this blog (see link above). Got it? Good. Fold 'em over and crimp them, poke some air holes on the tops so they don't explode like said MacGyver bomb, melt some butter and baste the tops to get golden brown tops. Part of the charm of homemade tarts like these is that they don't look perfect and choosing them based on their shapes is part of the fun. "I'll eat the fucked up looking one first and save the best-looking one for last!" That's how I do it, savoring the sweetness.

When I'm not in training for the sport of MMA, I revert back to my more typical feast or famine mode, like the beastie I am. I can go hours without thinking about food when I'm working on my art, stopping to eat only when my appetite is triggered by someone else's cooking smells, like those from an open window of the apartment next door or the wafting aromas as I climb the stairs past a neighbor's apartment, as it so often happens in the tight city quarters that comprise our communal living style. Or I'll go so long as to actually hear my stomach angrily rumble—then I have to stop working and feed.

We've touched on my Italian-American heritage here on this blog before, as it breaks down mathematically into one very simple easy equation: food=love. I do not understand the sicknesses behind eating disorders, though I do get that it is comprised of certain key factors like a feeling of helplessness that needs to assuaged by a sense of control, but as empathetic as I am, I do not turn away from succulent abundances when I am starving. I do not understand the human creature who cannot or will not eat my grandmother's recipes for meatballs and sauce and macaroni. To this human computer, it does not compute.

So it is with an utter lack of shame that I can relate to all of you now, that on a certain day captured here in photos, somewhere between the hours of 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., I ate an entire batch of apple turnovers that I made, siting down to my repast in white karate pants and black plastic dojo sandals, eating them pleasurably one by one. I ate them all, dear readers. I ate them all.