Best Food Writing 2013 (61 page)

She tried to shake me off. Edith didn't trust me. She didn't know me. She didn't even know my name. I was a stranger in her home, about to cook her recipe for her family. In her own kitchen.

“What can I do?” I asked. “How can I make this easier?”

She said, “You? You're making everything worse. It's my daughter's birthday. I make the Braised Chicken for her every year. Almost 30 years. Who are you? I don't know what you're doing here!”

But she did. Edith's hands were so deformed from her illness that she could no longer cook. She didn't know what she would lose next.

“I understand,” I said.

She said, “What? You understand? What do you know?”

I knew I was petrified and didn't want to do anything else to upset her, especially not being able to make her dish exactly the way she did.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't know . . . how do you make your Braised Chicken? Can you walk me through it?”

And out of my fear came the fix. Edith sat up and used her twisted hand to gesture me back to the stove. Then she walked me through every step of her recipe until it was simmering and the house smelled delicious. I covered it and sat down with her at the table. She looked completely spent. But she was smiling.

“Can I get you something?” I asked. “Water? Tea?”

“Didn't you bring any wine?”

Edith is confined to a wheelchair now and she rolls herself into her bedroom; I follow, carrying two glasses of Merlot. Tonight we are cooking her Beef Stroganoff and she will walk me through it, as she has for hundreds of meals in the last two years. We clink glasses, then drink.

“So go pick out my clothes,” she says.

I select a lilac dress that matches the table linen and the tulips. Ruthie and her dad will be home soon. Edith does not leave her house anymore.

She lets me undress and then dress her. She lets me comb her hair, apply some lipstick. She tells me where to find her pearl earrings and I put them in her ears while she finishes her wine.

“You look beautiful,” I tell her.

“What do you know?” she says. But she's smiling.

 

 

W
HEN
T
HERE
W
AS
N
OTHING
L
EFT TO
D
O
, I F
ED
H
ER
I
CE
C
REAM

By Sarah DiGregorio

From
GiltTaste.com

In various stints as a food reporter/editor/reviewer–at the
Village Voice, Food Network Magazine,
and now Parade–Sarah Di Gregorio focuses on gourmet trends and the latest developments in the national food scene. But there are some moments in life when all that becomes irrelevant.

C
ape Cod, where I grew up, is practically the ice cream capitol of the world, and my mother took full advantage of her adopted home. Unlike many women, my mother had an uncomplicated relationship with ice cream. She loved it and she ate it often, sometimes as a meal. She never missed an opportunity for soft serve, always chocolate-vanilla swirl. Her favorite summer lunch was a mud pie cone from the Whistle Stop in Monument Beach. That's what growing up on a farm in Kansas will do for you: Food is for growing, cooking and eating, not for worrying about.

The very idea that any woman would feel guilty about food was weird to her. Of course, it was easy for her to say, since she naturally hovered around 100 pounds. She looked at me like I might be adopted when I started hating my inner thighs—she claimed that, as a scrawny teenager, she would have given anything for her thighs to touch at the top. (She was probably the first woman in history to actually wish this.) She found any talk of dieting or aging boring and maybe even morally suspect. As woman after woman wailed about turning 40 or 50, she would quietly ask, “What's the alternative?”

She treated her cancer with the same pragmatism. She swelled with fluid; she shrunk to bone; she shook uncontrollably. If there was nothing that could be done about it, we didn't talk about it. What was the alternative?

We never managed to acknowledge to each other that this was not going to end well. Her silence on the matter was a non-acceptance, a refusal to go gently. It was also her deeply ingrained, farmwoman way of coping—and she was a master of coping. She could cope anyone under the table. If today was a day that demanded the insertion of a permanent catheter into an artery above her heart, the better to mainline chemo, well, that was just what we were doing today. Maybe we could stop for ice cream after. Meanwhile, I became an expert in magical thinking, a maker of deals with the universe.

So at the end, when there was nothing else I could do, I sat by her bedside and fed her Hoodsie Cups, half chocolate, half vanilla. After all her other pleasures—even reading—abandoned her, this one remained. I'd get an armful of the single serving cups from the hospital refrigerator and just keep spooning them into her mouth, stashing the empties under the bed so she wouldn't see how many she'd eaten. The ice cream acquired an imaginary power, like a garland of garlic or a nightlight. I thought it probably wasn't possible to die mid-bite.

About two weeks before she died, an occupational therapist came to her room. “I see you were a children's librarian,” she chirped, consulting the chart. “I
am
a children's librarian,” replied my mother. “Well,” said the therapist, flustered, “I see your daughter has been feeding you. Do you want to work on eating on your own?” “I like her to feed me,” said my mother. “But I can actually do it myself.” To my surprise, she then demonstrated that she could.

Even after I knew she could do it herself, I couldn't stop dishing out those Hoodsie Cups, like they were some kind of sweet miracle drug, and she never stopped me. I loved the reassuring
schliiiick
of the cardboard lid lifted from the plush ice cream underneath, the miniature wooden spoon that came with each cup.

I don't know if it made my mother think of the big, creaky wooden ice cream maker she grew up with, packed with rock salt and chunks of ice. I don't know if it made her remember taking turns
cranking the iron handle in the sticky heat of a Kansas summer, afternoons heavy with the hum of cicadas. I don't know if it made her remember that barely frozen sweet cream, of licking it directly from the paddle. It's one of the many questions I never asked her, one of the many things I'll never know. But I hope it did.

R
ECIPE
I
NDEX

Marinara Sauce and Putting It Up in Jars
(from “Yes, We Can: Supporting Our Farmers, Preserving the Harvest,” 137.

New England Clam Chowder
(from “How to Make Real New England Clam Chowder”), 221.

Monkey Lovin' Mocha Mouthfuls
(from “Cooking with Friends”), 234.

Mimi Miller's Long-Lost Gingerbread Cookies
(from “The Gingerbread Cookie Reclamation Project”), 243.

Hortotiropita or, in American English, Greens and Cheese Phyllo Pies
(from “Hortotiropita and The Five Stages of Restaurant Grief”), 248.

Pork Cooked in Milk
(from “Lobster Lessons”), 257.

Poached Eggs with Canadian Bacon on Toast
(from “In Susan's Kitchen”), 366.

P
ERMISSIONS
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to all those who gave permission for written material to appear in this book. Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders. If an error or omission is brought to our notice, we will be pleased to remedy the situation in subsequent editions of this book. For further information, please contact the publisher.

Martin, Brett. “Good Food Everywhere.” Copyright © 2012 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Originally published in
GQ.
Reprinted by permission.

Clement, Bethany Jean. “The End of Anonymity.”
A&P: Seattle Art and Performance Quarterly.
Copyright © 2012 by Index Newspapers LLC. Used by permission of Index Newspapers LLC (dba: The Stranger),
thestranger.com
.

Kummer, Corby. “Tyranny: It's What's For Dinner.” © 2013 The Atlantic Media Co., as first published in
The Atlantic.
All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services.

Wheelock, Katherine. “Is Seasonal Eating Overrated?” Copyright © 2013 by Katherine Wheelock. Originally appeared in
Food & Wine.
Used by permission of the author.

Strauss, Erica. “The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater.” Copyright © 2012 by Erica Strauss. Used by permission of the author.

Behr, Edward. “Slow Cooking, Slow Eating.” Copyright © 2013 by Edward Behr. Originally appeared in
The Art of Eating.
Used by permission of the author.

McMillan, Tracie. “Cooking Isn't Fun.” From Slate, August 27, 2012, © 2012 The Slate Group. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.

Kliman, Todd. “The Meaning of Local.” Copyright © 2013 by
Washingtonian Magazine.
Used by permission of the publisher.

Goulding, Matt. “Confronting a Masterpiece.” Copyright © 2012 by Roads & Kingdoms. Used by permission of the author.

Wells, Pete. “The View from West 12
^th
.” From
The New York Times,
May 22, 2013, © 2013
The New York Times.
All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copyng, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.

Froeb, Ian. “Takaya or Leave Ya: Didn't New Asian Get Old, Like, Ten Years Ago?” Copyright © 2013 by
Riverfront Times.
Used by permission of the publisher.

Shilcutt, Katharine. “I Ate My First McRib, and I Regret It.” Copyright © 2012 by
Houston Press.
Used by permission of the publisher.

Barry, Dan. “Back When a Chocolate Puck Tasted, Guiltily, Like America.” From
The New York Times,
November 17, 2012, © 2012
The New York Times.
All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copyng, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.