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Today’s breakfast was homemade Pappo’s gnochi (potato pasta) dressed in cream sauce with fresh slivers of basil, fresh ground pepper, specks of crisp bacon, and white truffle oil. Accompanied by a teeny chocolate scone, biscuit, and gingery bread w/ peel-heavy home-done orange marmalade. After my week on the ascetic projectile diet, this is bliss.
Within a week of the food poisoning, I had become little more than a giant walking, talking, empty carb. Porridge in the brain, challah bread in my bones, Kashi crackers in my veins. Word retrieval and memory were fading fast, to say the least of my energy levels.
Ran 3 miles yesterday (So it’s half the usual Sat. run, but hey, I was still running on fumes), spent this morning at yoga with P, and then we joined all the nouveu Alameda yuppies for brunch at Pappo’s and in the Peet’s queque (although my great love of coffee is currently still being restrained by my stomach’s trauma. I’ve not yet subjected my guts to the caffeine acid test. Peet’s was merely a pit stop for Gingerbread). As the slogan goes, "Life is Good." Over the years, there have been more moments than I care to remember where I felt I might never stand up straight or feed myself again, to say the least of feel that post-run high or the lengthing of all my muscles & entire spine after a great dance or yoga class.
Food really is medicinal. Throughout my involuntary purge, peppermint tea, an anti-spasmodic agent, was my best friend. Ginger, an anti-nausea remedy long utilized by Chinese fishermen, was a fave ingredient in my tea and cookies. And aloe vera, like the lovely specimen in our yard, has become my drink of choice. Most of y’all are probably familiar with it as that gel you gunk onto suburn or skin lacerations, but it soothes & aids healing from the inside as well.
Meanwhile, I have been mulling over an odd Thursday that began with the scandal of Mayor Newsom’s affair with his campaign manager’s wife. Tsk. I ponder the wisdom of any man who would risk the wrath of the HR Nazis (not a term I coined) by behaving so lewdly with an employee. Let’s not even get into the sin of hurting his friend. But I find it impossibly lame that this snafu has garnered 2 days of front page headline news status. I think everyone is just secretly happy to gossip smack about someone shiny, powerful, and handsome who turns out to be equally (if not more) stupid as everyone else in matters of love and loins. As they say, those in glass houses should not cast stones…
Then a reporter from Sing Tao calls asking me for advice for her column. Last time she was asking me about how retirees should cope with rising divorce rates, mostly due to disgruntled wives not wanting their newly retired husbands around. This day’s topic? Office love affairs. OK, so I give the usual spiel and point out warning signs etc, etc. Not like I believe a newspaper article is going to deter anyone on the path to ruin, but they can’t say we didn’t warn ‘em. For repressed Chinese people it’s good that at least we are talking about our issues these days rather than pretending that such travails are "white people problems" to which we are mysteriously, wishfully, immune.
The interview with the reporter was followed by a couple in my private practice ending their session awash in tears and accusations. Whew. I was exhausted and felt more like a soccer coach than a therapist that night what with all the "time-outs" that had to be called. If I had had little color coded penalty flags handy I would have thrown them between the couches at them.
In the anthology of the Best American Travel Writing, there is curiously enough, a short article from a gourmet magazine. The authors parents bickered for a lifetime of arranged marriage, but expressed their love and bond in the preparation of exquisite meals and the hosting of gatherings. The author traveled between India to America, where she married for love, which culminated in a humiliating and painful divorce. Who can say wherein lies the greater risk? Arranged by your parents or chosen in a state of blissful insanity-who can say which is more practical? Stay alone or risk as one author put it" "here is my heart & soul, please grind it up in hamburger and enjoy"-type pain, who could say which is the more painful condition?
Bell Hooks wrote a powerful novel about writing & love. She got in her car headed for another state, away from her lover & partner of more than 10 years. He gave her a mango. Said she ought eat it when she got to her destination. And she did. I can relate to that. The textures and scent of a ripe mango could evoke all sorts of senses.
There are countless foodstuffs that immediately elicit memories practically intense enough to qualify as an acid flashback (uh, not that I would know. really.) There are people I have loved who are vanilla ice-blendeds, whiskey, beignets, exotic caramels, "fish sticks frying", angel food cake, "lien-oo" AKA wax apple, fried crickets, Thai food, "condiments", raw oysters, tree-fresh Bing cherries, conch, stinky Taiwan style tofu, Hunan ham, birthday cake(particularly the few home-made cakes I have been graced with)…at this rate everyone I know shall soon bear a foodie code name. (one wonders what I would be…? maybe something pickled. or flammeable.)
In times of both heartbreak, besottedness, bonding, nesting, traveling,parting…for better or for worse, there is food. Sustenance. Art Form. Offering. Erotica. Nutrition. Functional item. Cultural expression. Creative muse. Gift. Home.
I play with my food, and highly recommend it to others…
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