Orange you glad? (You don't HAVE to eat an orange)

Since when did an orange become a delicacy?

Like you, I was brought up with fruit readily available, cheap enough it never seemed "forbidden." If anything, it quickly became boring and not properly appreciated. (Except for in-season and local--that never seems to get old.)

For many decades fruit has been commonly freighted or trucked across America. We are way past the times when an apple and an orange in a Christmas stocking elicited a thrill the way Laura Ingalls Wilder described for her pioneer Christmases.

I admire my friend Mary, who (in her seventies) still considers an apple or an orange a treat, and chooses either regularly for her evening snack. You should hear her go on about a "Clementine" orange--you would think she's enjoying a See's candy.

Sadly I admit I would any day of the week choose a See's dark chocolate and a cup of coffee over an orange for a treat. I just believe in quality per calorie and that's QUALITY in the eye of THIS beholder.

To this beholder, most transported veggies fare better than fruits. I would also rather have a nice green salad over fruit most any time and I do, even if quite honestly a lettuce leaf is more (for me) a vehicle with which to transport a creamy dressing than a tasty thing in itself.(My dad used to say that the truth hurts, and it does.)

If I don't properly appreciate fruits, I know that many people do. They don't just eat fruit for the health of it, they love it. Fruit is both a staple and a pleasure in their households, not something they can easily imagine life without.

When not on sale, our local Wisconsin markets have priced oranges lately at 1.79 a pound. (Are prices similar nationwide?). The "huge" chain (at time of this writing) doesn't even sell oranges individually, it's a bag of pre-picked or nothing.

Recently I wanted one sizable one for a cake, and at the dollar I paid for it I was happy the recipe called for the juice AND the rind, and I even threw in a little pulp to feel I was getting that whole dollar's worth. The cake would last for days and serve several times over, but what about when people just want to eat the orange? For people with modest incomes, a couple of pieces of fruit per day per family member starts to look like a real luxury. Especially when half the weight of the thing (rind, skin, pits, seeds) goes into the garbage.

Avocados lately here have also been approaching 2.00, and just for one, not one pound.  Once every few weeks a sale brings them down to .99 ea and that's when they sell. The rest of the time they sit and pucker, sit until they're worthless and have to be thrown out. Then a new batch changes them out, and the whole waste thing starts over again.

It seems crazy, and what is this about? No economist am I, but I have always heard that "prices will reflect what the market will bear." We're not talking organic food consumption here, which is so specialized and regulated at least there is some level of understanding about pricing. (But really? I don't know one family, outside of couples only, who can afford to eat largely organic---and there's something wrong with that picture, too.)

Another thing I've always heard is that pricing is of course related to supply and demand. Whatever a shortage is attributed to, if whatever's there is flying off the shelf at high pricing, that price is justified.

I definitely believe that supplies of produce are often affected by climate, but if people can't afford fruit in a good season, what happens then in a poor season?  More good fruit goes unsold, wasted.

I don't get this kind of marketing. One would think history makes a good teacher, but it rarely does. Human nature always seems willing to push the boundaries. Get the most one can while giving the least one can get away with. Risk the bottom falling out or the bubble bursting up top--and most of the while here call it the "American" way of enterprise.

I remember as a young child walking with my cousins alongside the orange groves that bordered my Grandma Rosa's property in Placentia, California. Distinct signs were plentiful in these orchards--warnings that anyone (aside from employees) caught picking an orange would be subject to prosecution with penalty of a $500.00 fine. We assumed this meant it didn't have to be off the tree, off the ground would apply too.

Even that scary penalty didn't make the fruit exciting and a challenge to partake of. That I know of, we cousins never risked those warnings. Why would we? Any one of us could go into our respective kitchens and always find good fruit. Some of us even had orange trees in our backyards.

In the marketplace, the penalty for the consumption of good fruit has evolved into a different kind of punishment. If you don't get much of anything out of something you've paid highly for, you feel taken.  The new "temptation" with this kind of "forbidden fruit" is a strange one. You WANT to resist it--pass it by,
don't pay the price. It isn't about the taste of it anymore, it's about making a statement. If bananas, grown out of this country and imported in, can be the generally most affordable fruit in the produce section, why can't other fruits grown here come close in everyday affordability? Is it really the cost of doing business "here" versus the cost of doing business "there"?

A conspiracy seems to be saying "Let them eat cake....." and maybe we should.

"The Tools of the Trade"

The tools of the trade are not what they used to be.

For better or worse, the beauty of this is in the eye of the beholder.

In my growing up years in Southern California, my mother, a renowned "good cook" of our Mexican-American culture, relied on the simple and classic to get her good meals on the table. Except for a cast-iron pan, most of these mainstays have gone by the wayside in favor of "new and improved" tools. Let's discourse a little about that.

Take the simple art of salsa making. For the indescribably best product, a whole lot of green chilies need to get roasted. A melange of personal favorites (experimentation decides this, one cook at a time) snug up in a skillet, but with less intimacy than one might think. You can't crowd them too tightly, and you can't rush the proper blistering of chilies with quick, relentless heat. Try this once and you'll suffer the loss of superb ingredients as well as  deflated anticipation. Skins that will not release take all the good flesh with them--straight into useless, straight into the garbage can.

No, you gotta baby things along. Fire up that seasoned (cast iron) skillet, nice and hot to start--but lower that burner to steady and almost slow, and nurse those blisters into billowy pockets heavy with "just right" blackening. Ideally, the skins (upon cooling) will pull away with most of the flesh intact while retaining just enough blackened peel to embolden your salsa with flecks of char.

Food art, but delicious, flavorful art. I can still see on my mother's counter her "molcajete," the tool of the trade for stripping down roasted chilies and blanched tomatoes. A molcajete (if you are unfamiliar) is a volcanic rock bowl with three tapered legs, the whole thing being one piece. The unit is accompanied by a tejolote, a smaller shaped rock meant to be manipulated as a hand grinder against the peppers and the walls of the molcajete.

Somehow salsa made that way seems "crafted" to me, but in a recent conversation with my mother, she confessed readily that she hasn't made it that way for many years. She even further blasphemed my memory by saying that not too long ago she made some for the family in a blender, the now-accepted (really?) way to do things. (Along with a food processor, I suppose.)

She softened the blow with the qualifier that the blender has to be pulsed "just so," in a "skilled" way so as not to mush the ingredients.

My stabbed heart sheepishly recuperates, because except for salsa that I chop from fresh uncooked ingredients, of course I make mine in a blender too........so much for THAT romancing of the volcanic stone bowl.

(After reminiscing about the beauty of a molcajete I started to browse online for one of my own, but soon decided against it. With my personality and ownership of such a cultural object, I would likely be pressed with the urge to turn my Wisconsin farmhouse into a hacienda, and just don't get me started.)

Another tool gone is the in-counter breadboard that was once included in even the humblest of kitchens, all across America. Young people now are kind of amazed by them; a sturdy, functional board that easily pulls out to provide extra work surface. These days if you want such a helper in your kitchen you have to ask for it and pay dearly for the luxury. (I recently saw a smallish, shabby, actually coming-apart cabinet with a breadboard on an online vintage-specialty site--priced at well over $2000.00, shipping not included.)

In our house my mother didn't make bread, she made tortillas. I can still hear the slap-thunk, slap-thunk of my mother's rolling pin on such a board. She worked up a big mound of dough, and from that tugged off smaller elastic balls. These she whomped and stretched into round discs, then (this time more slightly) charred and blistered them to perfection on her trusty cast iron surface.

The simple, old tools of the trade--they didn't require electricity and most of them were invaluable to most women, regardless of their cultures. No pioneer woman worth her salt tried to cross a prairie without her iron skillet, and I don't know that a pie crust in that age or now can make it across a pie pan without the help of a timeless rolling pin. Whipping cream didn't always result from a motor (see the "Beauty and Purpose" entry on this blog) and certainly not from an aerosol can.

Do I really think that old ways and tools of the trade make for the very best flavors? Do I really think food prepared now on my very modern stove is somehow lacking?

Not when I'm hungry I don't. Sure I love atmosphere and the appeal of timeless things and ways. It is true that old objects and the methods they provided somehow immerse my mind with appreciation for the skills and talents of the many predecessor cooks I never knew. But the food I put on the table now is prepared with enthusiasm (most of the time) and always with a sense of wanting to nurture my loved ones--so what could ever improve on THAT?

Revisiting my mother's own methods wasn't just a warm and fuzzy thing. My witnessing of her simple, priceless talents meant that I could do those things, too. Yes, store-bought tortillas are surely very handy, but the ones I'm planning for our supper tonight.......well, you can imagine.

My fourteen-year-old granddaughter has now witnessed my making of handmade tortillas countless times. Someday, in her own home, I can see her "rolling her own," and it'd better be tortillas!

"Aunt Bea"

I'm now well past the age my Aunt Bea was when I considered her "older."

It was the late sixties and I was fifteen. Aunt Bea was fifty-ish, but Mayberry was not her town. MY Aunt Bea was not pleasantly frumpy or plump. She was beautiful in her own way--attractive, energetic and even somewhat cool. She and I worked side-by-side in the family restaurant her sister and their husbands had established in Placentia, California.

From this setting my work ethic was born. A tad on the shy side, I learned that if you can't blow customers away with wit and charm, you CAN draw them like flames to a moth with good food and service.

The Beatles, Santana, and the Chicago Transit Authority were all musical players in this environment--a surprise to me and at the insistence of Aunt Bea.

"Music for people my age is too dull," she declared, as she prompted me to set the radio dial. "We need music with a beat for people to enjoy their food with and for us to move along to."

Aunt Bea especially like the rhythms of the first-time around Carlos Santana. His music is perfect, she said, for our Mexican restaurant. She considered his brand of Latino-influenced rock a much more natural fit than the Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli tunes she also enjoyed.

Observing Aunt Bea's energetic and fun persona fooled me into regarding her as more youthful than she was, though in this day and age each decade in general seems about "ten years younger" than it used to be. To my sixteen years, fifty-some seemed at the time grandma-ish, for sure.

Aunt Bea was my dad's older sister, and the years don't lie. Whenever she tugged at her elastic-waist slacks, she did herself in. To the untrained eye, she was slender and fashionable enough, but when she yanked on that elastic, her front was foiled.

The trouble with elastic-waist pants, she pointed out, is that they fool you into thinking you're not carrying an extra ten pounds of weight. With subterfuge like that, ten pounds can turn into fifteen, fifteen into twenty, and then smocks become the rule.

These days I know too well what Aunt Bea meant. For the longest time I refused to own anything elastic-waisted, and I still would rather wear gut-wrenching, tourniquet-duty waists than fall victim to the belief that I can afford to gain even one more pound. But sweats and p.j. bottoms are pretty darn comfortable around the house, and shamefaced, I concede they have pretty much become the rule for me at home.

But like Aunt Bea, I'm fighting the good fight. I live in Wisconsin now, and winters present a struggle for me that Aunt Bea didn't know. But she had other struggles in other ways the likes I know for myself I could never overcome. Struggles so hard a niece who loves her as I do will not speak of them widely, in a blog post that can't possibly pay proper tribute to her private travails.

Somehow, to look at Aunt Bea you would not know this. She recently told me how once, in the keeping of a routine doctor's appointment (at well into her nineties) she was in the room with a nurse who begged to be excused because, she said to my aunt, "I need a minute to round up your forms; these here have you mixed up with someone ninety-five years old! I'll be right back."

Aunt Bea stopped her with, "No, that's me. I'm that old."

The nurse did not bother to hide her disbelief or even play it up with falsity. She simply paused, and left the room anyway. When she returned, she had with her other professionals from the office, gawking at my aunt from the doorway. The nurse did not hesitate to say, "See?!! Does this woman look 95 years old TO YOU??!!"

And no, they didn't think so! To their inquiry about the secret of her youth, Aunt Bea only said that she had lived troubles beyond their imagination, but that faith and prayer, exercising, eating right, and that her own mother lived to be 100, seemed to be reasons why.

Aunt Bea loved telling that story, even if she tempered it with, "I never felt like such a FREAK in my life."

I've never so much as once ran a marathon, as Aunt Bea did, almost into her eighties. My kinship with her is about family history and about the music--love for the sort that seems "too young" for us, but in fact, keeps us feeling young.

As fate would have it I also had my own restaurant in my forties until my mid-fifties. Whenever I set the radio there, I thought of my Aunt Bea. I would surf the dial to find music that "popped" with liveliness, and sometimes (when I was alone, before turning the "open" sign around) I would even run over to it and PLAY IT LOUD.

When Carlos Santana was enjoying quite the comeback with the hit recording "Smooth," a collaboration with Rob Thomas, I wondered if Aunt Bea was aware of it, and if she ever recalled our days at the family restaurant. She would have been as tickled as I was to see him enjoy another vibrant round of success; a "using it" and not "losing it."

These days my cooking and serving skills are pretty much reserved for my family and a few friends--but I still love to do my work with the dial set to music that helps me "move along." Some of that music is so lively it defies you to not run over to the radio and "PLAY IT LOUD."

At my age, I'm embarrassed to admit I do that now and again--but then I tell myself, "Aunt Bea probably did. It probably is a reason she forgot to mention, that day in the doctor's office."

Aunt Bea is just this side of 100 years old now! Her younger sister, Nina, is devoted to her and committed to maintaining their lifelong closeness. Both have told me that an original copy of my tribute to "Aunt Bea" is something she hopes will be read at her memorial service, "when the time comes."

I am but a speck in the family sphere now, having lived afar from Aunt Bea for many decades, my story with her miniscule. But just knowing she said that once, is honor enough for me.

Update: Rest in peace, beloved Bea.

Note: 1st photo shows Bea on the right, Nina on the left. 2nd photo is Nina on the left, me center, Aunt Bea on the right.

"Randy"

During this (and his) birthday month I've been thinking of my brother Randy, and how next year he will (God willing) meet a milestone birthday--his fiftieth. This is something we once could hardly contemplate.......

Families were larger in the sixties, and ours fell in stride. In 1964 my parents had five daughters, with another baby on the way.

Part of it was a Catholic thing, but surely anyone could understand that a little boy's entry into our realm would "mix it up" a little, and be a very welcome newcomer to our very girly household.

I was eleven years old when my brother was born, and right off I knew how momentous his coming into our world was. He was given the majestic name of "Rudolph Anthony" (after our dad and grandfather) but "Randy" came to our lips more naturally and seemed a better fit.

I wondered about my dad's inner musings about my brother. As if to keep us all equal, Dad didn't overtly express his excitement about now having a son. He was not a man who shared feelings at all. We imagined, though, that Randy's future relationship with Dad would be exclusive. In our house, they were the lone members of their special society; by virtue of our gender we just could not take part.

I think we siblings were all fine with this. We were happy for Dad's sense of completion. Dad's Mexican heritage gifted him with the trait of machismo--some of which played out in in the natural drive to carry on the family's name, and simply for the meanwhile to enjoy the camaraderie of the father and son kinship.

Randy was an "easy " baby, quiet and not problematic. But almost before we could adjust to the idea that his presence would soon "change it all up" for us, he became seriously ill. Things worsened as a few days passed, and then panic set in. At four months of age he was transported by ambulance from our local facility
to the University of California at Los Angeles hospital. There each anxiety-ridden day surged heartbreakingly into the next.

We learned only then that aside from this sudden, blindsiding health emergency, our brother had been born with Down Syndrome. The term was new to us, but we gathered quickly that this was devastation. Randy would never be "normal," and at the time it was very often suggested to parents that institutionalization was  the best course of action. Suddenly we were not just fearing Randy's death, but if he lived, what decisions would we face about his care? Would he even be in our lives?

The day came when extended family members came to our home. They came to support us, because our parents had now been told to prepare for the worst--Randy was not expected to make it through the night.
Even my mother and father came home in the late afternoon; the emotional havoc had peaked to unbearable and they chose to take some time of respite with their girls.

With sustenance in mind, the women began the assemblage of a meal. Something was needed from the store and my mother sent me into her room for her purse.

Following her command, my parent's closed bedroom door did not register with me. Usually left open, its closure now just did not sink in, and I burst in to get the purse.

Jolted is the word I think of--the physical, mental sensation of being hit with a hard sight and a hard realization---when I recall the image of our dad, at his bedside, on his knees and in posture of prayer.
I had unwittingly crashed into this most private, solemn moment of appeal to his God, and nothing I could do would take back the moment.

As I was stunned, so was he. He vaulted to his feet, shaken by the invasion to his privacy, but not in the slightest angry. Even in solitude he wore dark sunglasses to hide the wear on him from the many days of angst, and from under their glare I saw that tears had worked their way down his face. His lips trembled, and he said simply, earnestly, "Pray for your brother, honey."

With his uttering of those few words, I knew that my dad wanted my brother to live. He hadn't been on his knees suggesting to God that he (my dad) could accept God's will, come what may. He wasn't leaning toward a "way out" of this. He wasn't secretly, ashamedly harboring thoughts that Randy's death would be "for the best," as some had insinuated might be the better answer.

No--he was praying for my brother to LIVE. Not to recover and then be turned over to an institution, but to recover and COME HOME. To get well, and be a part of this family, come what may.

Somehow I knew this. Even in the sixties, when children with Down Syndrome were still horrifically referred to by a term I can't to this day utter or write, and were most often shunted off to institutions, I knew this. My dad was a prideful man who would have loved nothing better than to mold a son in his own image--but that afternoon I knew he would take Randy as he was, come what may.

The knowledge of this about my dad was golden. Like all fathers, ours was not a perfect man. He had received little molding himself; his own dad had died when he was just five years old. No other man showed up to parent him; he was raised by his mother and sisters. We girls understood this was a big void for him, but it did not always help when we suffered his less than shining moments.

With Randy we saw our dad in a new light. I do not know what promises or conversations our parents made with God or with each other about Randy. I only know that when Randy came home, he was loved and nurtured and in turn was loving and nurturing to all of us. Never rambunctious, he was always gentle and kind, thoughtful and dear. He was funny too, his constancy in good cheer giving him his own style of charisma.

The changes Randy brought to our household were not the ones we expected. They were probably better. As the years went by my parents often heard from relatives and friends about the trials they were experiencing with their growing sons. Some of these trials had life-altering, tragic consequences--and so the strangely converse comfort of knowing Randy was home safe and sound was perhaps not so strange, after all.

There's much more to Randy's story and I hope to tell more on this blog, hopefully after his milestone birthday. And even though my dad has been gone now for many years, I know today as I knew "that day" that Randy's story is in great part a happy one, because of the molding my dad gave him, "come what may."

Grandma's Hoosier Cupboard

                                                                 

Mine, when in my shop

Looks just like mine but I don't have it anymore!

A showroom-new cupboard is flawless, but it could never make me swoon the way my Grandma's Hoosier did.

Now, lest your imagination fancies you with visions of golden-aged oak, roll-top breadbox and classic built-in flour sifter, I must enlighten you to the modesty of Grandma Rosa's Hoosier. Her cupboard, in her California home in the fifties, was made from humble pine, painted creamy white.  Its essential purpose in life was to store food and kitchen items, and this it did for many years, to my never-failing (?) enchanted memory.

It was the imprint of these recollections that induced me to eventually bring such a one home for myself, decades later to our Wisconsin farmhouse.

We came upon our find in a dank shed adjacent to a rural antique store several miles from home. The shed was used for overflow of bigger items the main building could not house, with "weathering" continually seeping in at all sides, underneath and from up above.

We didn't snatch it up right away. In fact, we passed on it several times. Despite its banishment to a near-dungeon, it was a slightly bigger-ticket item, and our pocketbook was more in line with the smaller dishware in the shop.

After about a year of frequenting this shop, we at last rescued the cupboard from icy winters and sweltering summers. A little worse the wear from the elements, we scrubbed up the warped wood and gave it a fresh coat of paint, then slid it into our farmhouse kitchen.

We backed up the Hoosier against a longish wall and set our aged oak table in front, and went industriously  to work stocking it, filling it generously with jars of flour, sugar, and other staples.

I used a fine, wide drawer for rolling pins and cookie cutters and all manner of old but perfectly useful kitchen utensils. The smaller drawers were prime for dishtowels and cloths, and a deep tin-lined bin was ideal for airy bags of potato chips. Behind its sizable bottom door my bigger stockpots and gangly bake-ware found perfect housing.

I loved the look of that Hoosier in my kitchen. It was homey and functional--and put me back in time to my grandma's kitchen.

My grandma's Hoosier was recessed under overhead built-in cupboards in her narrow but generous kitchen.

It too was painted white, with no fancy adornments. Early each morning Grandma would unwrap a fresh stick of butter from her refrigerator, and set it in a butter dish on the enamel work surface of the Hoosier. Whenever we grandchildren spent the night with her, we could count on sweet butter that cut and spread easily onto our toast, or sliced cleanly to sizzle in a frying pan for our breakfast eggs.

Grandma's cupboard too was full of purpose. It sheltered her everyday dishes up top and always had a loaf of fresh bread in its cubbyhole middle. The work surface was made for putting together sandwiches, or for slathering preserves onto warm tortillas. It was also a good place for holding dishes from the front eating room as they awaited their turn at the sink.

Whenever I used my Hoosier, it never failed to spur me into further musings tied to Grandma.

My own mother would tell you that Grandma was forever stern, fault-finding and hard to know. (Perhaps this was part and parcel of many a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship.) My own personal experience told me otherwise. At Grandma's house there was always a game of Chinese Checkers ready to go, and cousins to meander her small acreage with. For me, her steady presence was unobtrusive but yet warming all at once. 

It really was Grandma's kitchen and her humble Hoosier cupboard that bespoke best the connectedness she felt with you. Her little stocked pantry filled with nurturing foods told you this. Her invitation for you to generously help yourself made her welcoming to you ever so implicit.

In time Grandma would move into a newer house in a nearby town, replete with a good plenty of built-in cupboards. She didn't take the Hoosier with her, and not too long afterward I heard the old house was being razed, as they say, to put in a parking lot. I didn't nurture impractical thoughts of tracking down that cupboard; in fact I hardly remembered it at all then.

It was really only when I saw the neglected Hoosier in the dank shed in Wisconsin that Grandma's kitchen came so alive to me again. Seeing it stirred all the old images, such that I determined images like that should transpire in our farmhouse kitchen for our own children.

And so it did. For myself, I could never go near the thing without wanting to draw up a chair and pour out a cup of fresh coffee. Sometimes I would sit to heavily lace my cup with rich cream and sugar, and slurp just a little noisily, the way Grandmas always did. A new and perfect cupboard would never incite this urge in me!

One year, I decided to move my Hoosier to a soup and sandwich shop I had opened in the small town near our home. My "kids" then had flown the nest, and it was just the thing the place needed to beckon customers over to its side, where they naturally pulled up a chair to cozily sit for a light lunch.

Their explanation as to why this was the corner most often chosen always touched on the very simple and almost universal: it reminded them of their Grandma's kitchen.

After about thirteen years, I closed that shop and made the reluctant move to sell the Hoosier. My home kitchen had been changed up so much there didn't seem a place for it anymore.  I did not resign the piece to another stretch of loneliness, however. Another couple considered it a delightful nostalgic find and told me they would be enjoying it in a little private cabin they have created away from the main house on their rural property.  They go there for peace and seclusion they say, from all the commotion that occurs even in this "quieter" neck of the rush-rush world.

An object is just an object, but is it? If the use of it traverses the generations and its very presence is evocative of the most pleasant remembrances a person could ever hope to recreate, it IS something more, isn't it? 

"You Can't Give 'em Away"

I know very well the windfall plenty of an overflowing garden.

For a few fleet days or weeks, everything is crisp, sun-kissed and sumptuous, far surpassing any store-bought produce on the planet.

After awhile it's just THERE. Nagging you, prodding you, spurring you to your feet when all you really want to do is snooze in the hammock.

But no...........zucchini and cucumbers are greening by the minute, growing an impenetrable hide on the outside while turning mealy and seedy inside. It doesn't take long for vegetables to pass their prime, even when they've taken all summer to be ready.

The first blushing tomato is a thrill. The first few after are still wonderful, but too soon they seem to come as ill-considered brutes in their timing. Either you're dogging the vines hourly to pounce on the earliest crimson, or you're overwrought with blighting and blackening fruit teeming outward from all your kitchen surfaces onto your back porch.

Waste not, want not. It all boils down to work, work, WORK. And boiling your are, not just from the steaming kettles of preservation on near 100 degree days. You are also boiling mad at yourself for insisting upon planting a dozen plants of this and a dozen plants of that, when half a dozen of each was really more than you ever needed.

And so in due time you become the generous, thoughtful neighbor and friend. You pack bags and baskets of the surplus, and go rapping on doors here and there. There is a mix of dread and relief in doing this; you are joyous to unload the excess but equally fearful to hear, "Thanks, but I can't possibly take these--I have more of everything than I know what to do with myself!"

Thus, you never wait to be invited in for a cup of coffee. You rap and RUN, hopeful you can escape before the bounty is deemed yours again. When you get back home and discover even MORE veggies have ripened, you wearily pack them into bags and set out a "free produce" sign at the end of your driveway.

How conflicting is the feast and famine of growing things in their season. You toil and depend mightily on the good graces of the sky. You wait patiently for exceedingly long days for that first fabulous fruit. The anticipation is akin to that first phone call from the man of your dreams, long desired, tremulous with the thrill of the chase.

Once you've snared the man (or the tomato) you wish he (or it) would leave you alone for awhile. You'd rather have supper with a girlfriend or open an easy can of spaghetti sauce.

For the past few summers, I've concertedly bought a three-pack of tomato plants, set them in pots on the porch to be nurtured to their harvest. Doing it this way has usually been a bust. There's something about hoping for large returns on hardly any investment that rarely flies for me--it's simply not my lot in life.

These days I resort to more hardy gardeners than I. I look for their roadside stands, or I wait comfortably at home. It's my turn to hear that rap on the door, and be assured--I'll answer the door cheerfully, with a surprised but gracious appreciation.

I think I'll put the coffeepot on now.

"Let them eat cake"

I believe it was Marie Antoinette who said, "Let them eat cake."

I say let them BAKE cake. And roast meats, throw together sumptuous salads, pasta entrees, and create all manner of awesome food. Let THEM be trendy with classic dishes and be daringly inventive with that which is already unfamiliar.

Who is "them"? Anyone but me.

I've been there and done that. I like to think I gave as good as I got in the arena of chic little eateries, and as with any worthwhile venture its peaks and valleys ran their course. For me, there is no turning back.

But looking back is another matter, because the way all people sustain themselves intrigues me. It's not my business (literally, anymore) but it still intrigues.

Flavor, beauty, and wholesomeness should all be part and parcel of the eating experience. I understand there are people out there who eat for nourishment only, and any hoopla in partaking of anything is a mystery to them. Eating is out of necessity only for these sorts, and THAT viewpoint is mystifying to me.

Enjoyment of eating isn't the only pleasure in life, and it certainly isn't the most important "thing,"  as is love of family, general health and welfare, justice and equity for all. 


But nature runs its course when these all-important things cannot be fully enjoyed without the certainty of physical nourishment. All are intertwined; a great lack or abuse in any one of these areas compromises life and diminishes quality within, for sure.


We know that "the body is the temple" and "we are are what we eat." Food does matter, it is crucial to our overall well-being, so why wouldn't a modicum of hoopla about it be just fine?


What I love lately about good food is not wasting it. As a matter of routine in my cafe, I nurtured quality ingredients into creative fare, always in sufficient amounts to serve the number of guests I hoped to have.


This guesstimation always proved to be a crap-shoot. Some days our customers were lucky to be offered the one chicken salad "fold-over" we had left; other days we could not scare up a single taker for food I was fit to burst with pride over. (Maybe that was the problem--PRIDE.)


It may be in the cost of doing business that some product has to be thrown out, but it's a hard thing to do. You consider the beauty of it, the cost and all the other expenses you've incurred to put food out there that isn't same-old, same-old, and in the end you kind of suspect same-old is really what people want, despite choruses to the otherwise.


I always found good homes for good leftovers, and that took some of the sting out of things. It's more than fine to share surplus, but most business advisers do tell us we need to sell at least a little more than we give away.


I love that at home this angst is gone. I don't know that it was so much a "wide audience" I needed about my cooking (so much as a way to earn while enjoying a loved pastime), but I do puzzle at the lengths I went to over food.


Maybe (as a new line of groceries is named) it is because "food should taste good."  I wanted to share that belief, one I mightily hold. But the business of food opened my eyes to many struggles regarding sustenance in the world, and I come away enlightened.


Far and away from those trying to sustain themselves with the business of selling food, there are many others more concerned with simply and essentially just having enough food in the cupboards at home. Their mindset hardly dwells on costly meals out.


I have a new understanding and admiration for the timeless piece of art ("Grace" by Enstrom, I believe) where an old man prays intently over his bowl of soup and loaf of humble bread. It is evident that the fellow sincerely appreciates his daily bread, but more than that I can picture that image going into motion with relish and gusto after his prayer is done. I can see the man dipping that hearty bread into his broth to sop up every bit of flavor, until it is "all gone." I can't speak for that man and don't know if he ever yearned or enjoyed much more, but I am convinced there are many people even now very happy, fully contented with simple food.  


Can a person trying to sell food (especially away from hugely populated metropolises) really get frustrated with that? And what about people who can eat out with no big hardship but choose not to, at least very often?


That's me for some time now: meals out are too often a disappointment at any price, and no place is as comfortable (or comforting) as home. I have found that after years of trying to keep up with food inventiveness, I truly exalt in a less (choices in food) being plenty for me thinking. Diversity in food is all well and good, but I am blessed with a cultural foods background that in its own vein is extremely rich and almost completely enough for me. Add in an occasional cheeseburger or a wonderful salad, I'm good.


It's a luxury not to be excessive with food, because more, as we know, does not mean better. In a conversation recently with my 86-year-old mother, I was held a willing captive to her discussion of  chile verde, something she has prepared spectacularly for our family for many decades. Really good chile verde doesn't require very many different ingredients, but it is exciting and delicious every time you taste it.


One always makes a generous amount of it, because the base goodness of it stretches into many meals, none of which are same-old, same-old. A first night of chile verde is usually the stewed meat with traditional beans, rice and tortillas. Nights after can emerge with tostadas, tacos, burritos, tacquitos, posole, quesadillas and the list goes on. Each does not feel like a variation on the same theme because accompaniments and garnishes do a good job of changing things up.


"Use it up" is easier and much more delightful at home. In the business of food-service, I was a hostage to the pressure of performance, which always involved excess and thereby waste. From the beginning of time excess and waste have come hand-in-hand, so I don't know why it took a smart person (me?!?) so long to figure this out.


Or to realize how much it would bother me, as well it should. I see the light now: luxury is in the eye of the beholder, and where food is concerned "less is plenty" will serve as a beacon for me.