Food Stories (and a recipe!)

I've been watching, slowly but surely, the lectures from Edible Education 103, a class held at UC Berkeley last fall and headed up by Michael Pollan. I love to eat so a class looking at food and our relationship with it seemed like a good place to start looking into what MOOCs are but also, the class has just been fascinating. The one I watched last night was with NPR's The Kitchen Sisters who presented on collecting stories about the "hidden kitchens" in communities all over the country. One of their tenets of storytelling is that "Food is the New Music" - everyone has an opinion, a story, a song they want to share and food, like music, can trigger all sorts of memories.

Food is important in my family. We like to get together and eat. Most of my happiest memories involve food in some way. We have certain meals we eat at certain times of the year, we have certain foods we like to share with people, foods we hope our friends like when we bring them to parties. I've always loved sharing my family's recipes over the years with friends or being asked for them as my friends have scattered all over the world on their own adventures. I know my box and folders of recipes with titles like Grammy's Goulash  Jodi's Pumpkin Bread, Uncle Gary's Meatballs always meant I took a little piece of home with me no matter where I went.

Come summer, I pull out all the recipes for cold salads, dips and grilling. Recently, I made a batch of my Aunt Marcia's spaghetti salad. This was a dish I insisted I wanted for a grad school graduation cook-out to not only have as one of my favorite dishes, but also to share the dish with some of my best friends from school. Word of advice to the singles, this recipe makes a TON of food so halving the recipe means you still have leftovers but just not so much that you're sick of the dish by the time you are done. And hey, if you're invited to a potluck BBQ this summer, this recipe is a unique and delicious one to take along!

Perfect summer meal in my book! Burger and spaghetti salad

Aunt Marcia's Spaghetti Salad

Ingredients:
1 lb. cooked spaghetti
1 large green pepper - chopped fine
1 red onion - chopped fine
8 oz. Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing (1 small bottle or half a larger bottle)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 bottle McCormick Salad Supreme

Directions:

1) Prepare spaghetti as noted on box. Mix together with all ingredients in large bowl.
2) Let chill for 24 hours before serving
3) Still well before serving as the vegetables tend to settle towards the bottle of the bowl over night.

Santa Spoilers

In case you have some true believers still around when you read this - beware! As a character on one of my all time favorite shows is fond of saying, Spoilers!

From article, Santa Spotted by NORAD

So, it was my younger sister who told me that Santa Claus might not be as real as I would like. I'd had inklings of course, I'm not that daft, but I didn't really want to not believe. I loved the magic of Santa and leaving out cookies and milk with sugar for the reindeer. Writing him a note to leave on the table, hoping he and the reindeer were having a good night. There was nothing quite like getting back to my house on Christmas Eve from my grandmother's and rushing off to bed because the next day was going to be the best day of the year. A little magic is lost when I realized that the presents had been moved from my grandmother's during the Christmas Eve festivities, that your dad was the one who ate the cookies and that your mom was the one who left the note, written with her left hand so we wouldn't recognize the writing. 

But, on some level, I made a deal with my eight year old self. OK, so there wasn't a physical being called Santa who came down my chimney but the idea of Santa and everything he stands for? I'll believe in that until the day I die. Because, well, I don't want to live in a world without a Santa Claus, without that possibility of magic and kindness and miracles. In fact, I think the world could all use more believers in things like that. This was long before I read Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus but obviously that is an editorial after my own heart. In fact, I consider it required reading about this time of year.

So, that little piece of my heart that is eight years old forever still gets excited for Christmas Eve and that moment when I get to go to bed. I know Mom and Dad are out in the family room putting out the gifts but I still love going down the hall and seeing it on Christmas morning, the mountains of gifts radiating from the tree and the overflowing stockings sitting in the easy chair because they are too heavy to hang back up. Even now, there is no room more magical than the family room all lit up on Christmas morning with snow out the window. The snow though is becoming more rare (curse you global warming!). 

But one of the best parts of the season is that we still have little ones in the family who truly believe. For years, I was Santa for my cousin. I'd call to get the inside scoop on his school and friends and things he'd done that year and then write up a letter from Santa to send to him. I loved coming up with the picture of the North Pole for him. I usually re-read some of them about this time of year too. It was fun to think up why elves would be putting together an iPod or where a sports jersey might come from if Santa needed one. Today's kids are smart - you have to stay ahead of them!

While my cousin has long outgrown those letters, I still get to hear from my other little second cousins about their excitement, about all the things they found on Christmas morning (paw prints in the yard! half eaten carrots!) and to share for a little while in that absolute certainty that of course Santa exists, how could he not?  

As I head home for the holidays, I wish all of you and your families the very best and magical moments the season has to offer. Happy Christmas Everyone!

My Name is Asher Lev

From Goodreads

I have never heard of this book until a colleague mentioned it to me. It's a book that is often read by college freshmen. Since I missed that cue, I decided to read it to see what I missed. It makes sense to hand this to college freshmen though, the book explores parent-child relationships, the pain and fear of leaving home and learning that maybe your parents' way of life isn't going to work for you exactly.

Asher Lev is growing up in Brooklyn as an Hasidic Jew. His father is an important member of the synagogue who travels extensively for the Rebbe and his mother seems content to wait at the window for him to come home. Asher's art though gets him through even as it causes many of his family's problems over the years. His father does not understand his art and seems to see it as an affliction sent by God to try him. His mother spends their lives trying to be a bridge between the father and son, usually failing which leads to Asher's masterpiece, Brooklyn Crucifixion.

I liked this book a lot and appreciated what it was trying to accomplish. I can't say I much cared for any of the characters but that's because I feel like I didn't get to know them very well. So much of them is never explained, even Asher who is telling you the story. I also found them hard to relate to because honestly, I never had these sorts of problems. Asher's story of growing up was completely foreign to me, even when generalizing it.

I loved the art aspects to the story though. I always wanted to have the sort of talent Asher is born with - his eye is supposedly spectacular when it comes to painting. I did like the author's choice in not giving many details about his work until the last masterpiece which is the final crisis in Asher's life with his parents. I learned early to appreciate art since I couldn't seem to create it. Asher's story is about the joy and pain in being able to create and what it does to his very traditional, very religious family.

This was the part of the story that I just couldn't seem to care much about - the religious aspect. I don't come from a religious family and though my friends were always willing to share their religions with me, which was fun to explore lots of different religions, I was always vaguely uncomfortable with religion in general. Watching how much Asher struggles with it, I again realized I don't feel a sense of loss for not having that growing up. Religion always seems to complicate things, make you question what you feel is right for you. It can also have the opposite effect but Asher's story just seems to show the pain of having that tradition weighing on you as you try to grow into the person you need to be.

Lastly, and where it seemed to be a good book for college freshmen, was the parent-child relationship explored with Asher and his parents. Asher is a disappointment to his father, a strict traditionalist who doesn't comprehend his son's artistic talents. His mother is caught between two needy men in her life who expect her to choose their side. Again, I could understand these issues but I've never experienced them; in fact, this book made me want to call up my parents and thank them. They always let me be exactly who I was, even when they weren't sure where I came from. My whole family did. They sat through chorus concerts and high school musicals and tried to act interested when they asked what I was reading. I always appreciated that even if I didn't say it. This book make me grateful that they always asked even more.

Overall, I liked this book; it made me think even if it was kind of a depressing book on many levels but it made me dive into all my art museum books this past week so it's been lovely to have an excuse to revisit them.

trip down memory lane for the next few weeks

In looking for an old wicker desk I knew was in my room somewhere, I stumbled upon an old journal I got years ago as a Christmas present. I went through my phase of journaling as most of my friends did. This journal, as all my other ones, remains unfinished. However, the cool thing about this journal is that it gave prompts for the writer to respond to. Reading through them, I am astonished by how much I have changed....and how much I haven't. The next few weeks, before I head South for the summer, I thought I would share a few. My first one is from April 1999 - I was fourteen years old. The prompt was "What are the things that MATTER most to you in your life right now?"

The things that matter most to me now are school, my family and my friends. Seems pretty self-centered I know but when you're a 14 year old growing up in a small town in Central New York, what else is there to matter? Good grades are your ticket out of here so school is top most. Your family is there 24 hours a day and you love them so of course they matter a lot. My friends are there all the time my family isn't there so they also matter because almost as much as your family, they shape what you will be when you're older.

On reading this over today, I was struck with a few things. One, my briefness. I don't think I have written anything that short since then, or something with so few commas. Sadly, it sounds like an essay for a Regents exam. I hope my writing has improved. Secondly, my discontent on being in a small town. It was an attitude I carried until the minute I left for college. Then all of the sudden, where I came from was an integral part of who I was and my missing pride when I was growing up came in droves. The importance of school has shifted over the years - in grad school they tell me grades don't count - yet, my insistence on the importance of my education has only grown stronger as I get older. One thing that has not changed is my emphasis on family and friends. They were a major shaping force in who I am today and I thank heavens every night for who I was blessed with to help me this far. Overall, I was almost mad at my fourteen year old self for being moody it seemed. I vaguely remember writing in this journal, lamenting my boring, safe, privileged life. It's laughable now but I guess that's how you're supposed to sound at fourteen.