writersnreaders

AN ELOQUENT INSURGENCE

2012-01-15T20:14:00.000-08:00

I read Noah Cicero's fifth novel, The Insurgent, with great interest, as I am a fan of his work. I read his first book, The Human War, while still residing in Youngstown, Ohio, the place that Noah is from and that he writes about with such eloquence, sadness and truth.

He's a young man still, and it's painful to realize in this day of dissappearing bookstores and interest in fine things, such as literature, that Noah still struggles to make a living, given the calibre of his work and his achievements to date. This includes The Insurgent, which is about disenchantment, oppression, and death of many sorts.

Noah's work, written with enormous intensity, is presented usually line by line in his texts, so the reader can feel the full impact of meaning in the language. It's a minimalist style that works. The result is a breathless pace, dialogue that often resonates like the script of some amazing existentialist theatre work, and characters that impale the reader with their suffering and authenticity. Noah's characters are desperate loners who rant about injustices and rarely muster the courage to set themselves free.

As was true with The Human War, which was published in 2003, and recently made into a film, The Insurgent is set in Youngstown, which is, the narrator Vasily notes, "a small third-world country located inside of America." Vasily is a Russian dishwasher, and his best friend Chang, an obsessive compulsive, who can't seem to get rid of the need to wash himself; the two of them drink, pine for women, lust for better lives and, through an accident of fate, wind up with enough money to "get out of Dodge" and head west.

It's not a trip like Kerouac and his pals made, but a desperate escape out of the mire of tedium in poverty-riddled mundanity into the silence of nature and the vast expanses of untamed America, which hold still the power to reawaken hope and dreams. Despite the encounters that turn out to be fiascos on this journey, the dream of hope prevails.

The Insurgent has some of the most gorgeous rants on the nature of death and being that I've read in literature in recent years. The characters and their lives are described in aching detail, and what I find most amazing about this read -- it was also true about The Human War -- is that instead of being depressingly dark, it lifts up, illuminates because it is true.

When The Human War, the film, comes out, see it, if that's what it takes to read Noah's books. But if you are a reader and care about the art of literature and where it purports to take us as human beings, for god's sake pick up his books too. The Insurgent, published in 2010, is available from Blatt Books. You can find out more about Noah Cicero and his writing via his blog, at http://noah-cicero.blogspot.com/

Shameless Self-Promotion and the Art of Blogging

2011-12-23T13:59:00.000-08:00

One of the side effects of joining the blogging culture on the Internet is that it tends to provide you with the illusion that you are heard and seen by minions, when in fact the minions you suppose are attending to your mighty words may be two or three fans that are family members or the equivalent.

I don't have such illusions, but I do enjoy blogging about issues and subjects I care about. Those issues include the literary culture; spiritual events and transformations; the arts. The Internet has provided us with many freedoms, and one particularly delightful (as well as loathesome) one -- depending on whose thoughts you are viewing -- is the freedom to post your ideas in blogs and let others see what you think. In addition, venues like this one, offer (at no cost) decorative options with which to lay out your musings.

It's a gift in a way, a byproduct of a culture that places much value on opinions, while attending to virtually none. Blogging not only provides you with a platform from which to present your thoughts and feelings, but a place to put out information about one's creative work and that of others.

With that in mind, this holiday season, you may want to peruse Allbook Books for unusual and sophisticated literary gifts. The publisher Walter E. Harris III, otherwise known as Mankh, was kind enough to accept for publication and recently put out a chapbook of my poetry, JEWEL FIRE. Mankh is very interested in eclectic material, work from various spiritual or world traditions, and does an excellent job of packaging in the best possible way what he deems valuable. I encourage you to peruse and linger over his Web site, read some of his highly intelligent and timely essays, and buy some of his books.

http://www.allbook-books.com/html/jewel_fire.html

May all of you, my minions, have a healthy, happy and prosperous 2012!

A Tribute to the Beauty and Magic of Silent Films

2011-11-27T05:17:00.000-08:00

If you see no other film this year, see Hugo, Martin Scorsese's homage to the transcendent magic of silent film. Hugo was adapted from Brian Selznick's children's book, The Invention of Hugo Cabaret, and is about a wily, sensitive orphan living inside a Paris train station at the turn of the 20th century whose exchanges with a toy store owner become life transforming.

Hugo is based on an actual filmmaker, Georges Méliès, who was best known for the special effects of his silent films that combined magic and theater at the turn of the 20th century. Méliès became fascinated with the medium after seeing a demonstration by the Lumière Brothers in 1895. Subsequently, he ran his own studio and made hundreds of films, the most famous of which, A Trip to the Moon (1907), is referenced several times in Scorsese's tribute.

Silent film buffs will relish not only the actual snippets of great silent movies, featuring Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton among others, but the many references to famous silent movie moments in imagery in the actual story, and the use of classic techniques, such as slapstick. But, like the machinery discussed with so much fascination in Hugo, everything is finely tuned here, with no extravagance or excess. Hugo is a major work of art about a medium and the magic it captured.

Hugo is in 3D, which only helps to place you in the story (as opposed to freak you out, which sometimes seems the point of 3D), and features 14-year old Asa Butterfield; Cloe Moretz, who looks in the film like a very young Ingrid Bergman; Emily Mortimer; Sir Ben Kingsley as Méliès himself; Jude Law; and a standout performance by Sacha Baron Cohen, the wildly funny and often brilliantly wacky English comedic actor (of Barat fame), who lends quiet ferocity and tenderness to his role of a Clouseau-like inspector with a squeaky metal leg and a rusty heart of gold. Cohen looks a bit like Freddie Mercury, and, as it turns out, is scheduled to play the rock artist in an upcoming film about QUEEN. Supposedly, Executive Producer Johnny Depp -- whose greatest film portrayal in my view, Edward Scissorhands, echoes the human beauty of the artistic automaton in Hugo -- plays the part of a painter who helps the children out on their adventure in the film. But if so, I missed him. Darn!

As a friend and I discussed after Hugo, there are so many occasions where a scene might have gone wrong, resorting to modern tricks or dirty innuendos, but Scorsese's tribute never fails to please and never steps down from its perch of high artistry. There is, for example, the moment when two characters who are attracted to one another introduce their dogs to one another in a cafe, a moment when, being well versed in American modern cinema, one might wince imagining what tackiness might ensue for a laugh. But the scene is played gracefully. There is the moment at the end of the film when, during a close up of the automaton, with its curiously human and moon-like visage, you half expect to see it wink at the audience for a final special effect. Thankfully, this doesn't happen either, for Hugo is a film of classical nuances not cheap tricks; it's about film's hopeful beginnings and its potential, not its tacky reprises.

Let me say one more thing about ambience. It's what silent film focussed on and what has been all but forgotten in modern movies, where pyrotechnics and visual spectacle are all the big deal. Ambience, many filmmakers forget, is what places one in the heart of a story, and makes the experience of it, real and lasting. Hugo has it in spades. You will feel a part of the Parisian milieu at the turn of the century; you will feel like Hugo himself, lost in the conundrum of a clock, in the machinery of time, in movies themselves.

Cheers to Scorsese and all who had anything to do with Hugo. I smell multiple Oscars!

TWO POEMS FOR THE OCCUPY REVOLUTION

2011-11-24T11:55:00.000-08:00

TWO POEMS FOR THE OCCUPY REVOLUTION

1. OPEN UP THE STREETS

Open up the streets

Let them be

For pedestrians again

Protestors with tall signs

Whose yelling can be heard

From one block to the next

Open up the streets

Let the people

March

Dance

Sing

Let the people’s voices

And footsteps be heard

All across the cities

And suburbs of America

Wherever White people and

African Americans, Latinos, Asians,

American Indians, wherever friends

From anywhere across the globe

Convene

The streets are the plains

And they are open to everybody

The streets are the great table

Across which we lay out

The feast of our hopes and

Our anticipation

I say, Come

March with us

Come, eat with us

Come, let us create

A new America together

Open up the streets!

2. GUESS WHAT, AMERICA?

Everywhere is home

The fountains

Are open to everybody

And so are the parks

No exclusions anywhere –

How’s that for a revolution?

- by Arya F. Jenkins

MUSINGS ON THE BOOKSTORE APOCALYPSE (Confessions of a Book Lover)

2011-11-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

I spent more money than I should at Barnes and Noble last night, as I have been doing more and more recently, knowing this bookstore too is going to close shortly.

I feel like weeping, I really do. I will have to get on a highway just to find a bookstore. That place of solace, comfort and refuge I used to thrill taking with a demitasse of espresso will be miles away from where I live.

The other reason I feel like weeping is the realization that books and the art of reading and talking about literature may become defunct in my lifetime.

I'm so glad my mother, whose love of literature and writing inspired my own, didn't live to see this -- although, of course it didn't happen overnight. It's been decades since The New Canaan Book Shop closed its doors. It proudly displayed my mother's books, had a sophisticated selection, and its saleswomen were sharp as university profs. And it's been decades since the pink Remarkable Book Shop in nearby Westport with its slanted wood floors and endless nooks full of literary charms, closed. No, it's been part of the steady decimation of our culture, which, sad to say, will soon bypass language, art and conversation in favor of the most expedient message, the bottom line -- until we are all dots, as in a computer program.

You would think it's because nobody cares about books that B and N is closing, but that's not the case. The cashier at Buns and Noodles informed me that "every single customer has been telling me the same thing you are -- they're all upset."

Maybe all those customers weren't buyers all along as I have been. I've looked at book buying somewhat like supporting my favorite charity, for a few years now. Any time I go into a bookstore, I spend money. I buy espressos and desserts; I sit with magazines that I usually purchase. Inevitably, I buy at least one book.

What do we do with books anyway? It used to be that after reading one, I tossed it aside. After that, it would be open to lending, even getting lost. Once, after I had moved back to Connecticut from Ithaca, I went back to get my storage and found I had way too many books to lug back with me, even with the help of a friend. I got rid of the excess by setting the books in piles, according to category, around the Commons, hoping students and avid readers like me would pick them up eagerly, enjoying the surprise. In one stack were Plato and Nieszche. In another, Millet and Steinem. In yet another, collections of short stories and essays. There grew to be so many piles, I began to wonder if I might be arrested for a new form of littering.

I can't fathom giving away a book now. I am already treating them like collector's items.

Now, I read a book, and if I like it at all, place next to me on my nighttable, where it is likely to get a second read, and be perused at random.

And now I will lend favorite books to no one.

I've read Gabrielle Hamilton's exquisite and inspiring (for a writer) memoir: Blood, Bones and Butter at the Kitchen Table twice. And other books. Patti Smith's remarkable Just Kids is next for the second time around.

It's not as if I imagine that the writers whose works I read will know my private actions, know that I respect, value and appreciate their work. It's that I understand especially now how great literature really does open up spaces of knowing, care and intuition in one's being, and helps one to grow. I appreciate how magical literature is, and I want it always to be a part of my life, in whatever form.

What would we do without words, the art of them on a page? Even letters are beautiful to me, each one a caricature and a unique possibility.

I admired the quills on sale at Barnes and Noble last night, everything on a 30 percent discount. I thought, Wouldn't it be lovely to write with a quill, make calligraphy out of a story or a poem, make it look as precious as it really is? For, as we move forward into the future, it's possible, it really is, that we may forget to take note of who we are, may no longer care to leave traces of ourselves in letter forms to our children. It's possible, just possible that all that may remain of what I once loved, this mammoth, centuries old experience called literature may be symbols and short cuts, texts in a nonverbal and nonliterary age.

A Revolution On Its Way

2011-10-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

Zuccotti Park: A young girl reads alongside a painting. People gather in twos and threes to talk about politics, the priorities of the day. A group begins to drum. It isn't the kind of drumming you dance to. It's the kind that announces something important, demands that you listen, reminds everyone, near and far -- we are here, we are not going, it is time for a change.

Young, old and middle aged from all walks of life and places around the country have converged on Wall Street to speak their mind, turn the page on greed and corruption, make a mark, be heard. A musician stamps t-shirts. An articulate Vermonter who has come all the way here for the day, stamps dollar bills with "99%," 99-percent being the number of Americans who "have not," at least according to the American ethos, which is like no other -- for, where else in the world, would protestors be bestowed 400-plus boxes of food and supplies daily, and upwards of $300,000 in donations? A middle-aged woman who lost her pension tells her story. Some people have been there a day; others, a month.

Andre, 19, from New Jersey, said he arrived four days ago. He is tired of things being the way they are. What things? "Everything. Greedy people are taking too much away." How long will he stay? "As long as this lasts."

Catherine, a retired airforce officer, now a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, the mother of two teenagers, has a pension, a good retirement fund, but wonders how her children will go to college and how they will be able to afford retirement. She said the movement in the park is "organic. One night, when it was time to close down, I watched how people settled, the tarps lifting and falling, one by one, it was like an undulating wave, a sea of flowing movement. That's how it is here."

Those in Zuccotti Park have a sense of purpose and jobs to do. There is a huge chalkboard with "Work Schedule" written on it. Everyone, even those who have never held a job, takes on tasks, contributes. Some serve food. Others take donations. Some work on laptops. Many stand at the periphery of the park with signs that explain why they are here.

Plenty of food has been donated, and money is pouring in. What will be done with the donations? What next?

At five o'clock, a march begins. Some young women start a chant. I ask an elderly bearded marcher, "where are we going?" He doesn't know.

Does it matter?

Just now, the heart of the movement burns strong, and we march undeterred.

(To see a visual journal of Zuccotti Park, see the "Occupy Wall Street" album under the name, Arya-Francesca Jenkins on Facebook).

True Acts of Revolution

2011-10-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

I am a revolutionary at heart and I come from a line of activists on my mother's side, so I am with the protestors on Wall Street. I support their trying to wake up the financial district and those running our lives, or, I should say, bullying the poor around America and the globe. Like many of my closest friends, I've carried signs for peace and social action in many states for many years and spoken out for peace and social justice causes whenever it felt right to do so. I'm glad youth has finally gotten wind of the fact that riches and opportunity of the sort most people cherish are not waiting for them down the pike, and that it's time for a change. It's high time everybody realized this. It's time to wake up and acknowledge the damage of greed and ignorance at home and abroad. But how are we going to do that effectively?

We can plot out new strategies with which to approach the moneyed, as New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has. His video may illuminate and help some. But essentially, we are all going to have to start looking at our half empty glasses in a different way if we expect to distinguish ourselves from our oppressors or find any peace and resolution in the midst of this madness.

I think it's important to be happy, but we have to change our ideas about what success and happiness are, since for most people these are synonymous with having a lot of money and a lot of things. I can't imagine anyone protesting on Wall Street handed a $1 million bucks right now not running to the nearest bank and starting to invest and build a life, much in the same way that most of the rich people in this country have and do. I am not sure that while anger drives the protests about what has happened in this economy and society, there is much of a difference between those protesting who have not and the fat cats on Wall Street -- as both groups are placing ultimate value on the almighty dollar.

A true revolution will involve devaluing what the fat cats value most. It will mean not caring so much about going to universities that charge $40,000 to $60,000 a year; or about having jobs that will allow you and your partner a 10-day cruise on the islands once a year. Basically, it means altering the order of the echelon by which most of us have lived most of our lives, maybe eradicating it altogether in order to embrace just being, instead of doing. Being with ourselves, nature, one another. After all, given the direction in which we are headed, these are the prizes we stand to lose most. At the very least, we are going to have to slow down, become more caring and less competitive, focusing more on people and less on acquisitions.

Those of us who are so sure we are on the right side, the progressives, the democrats, the radicals are also going to have to rethink what it means to be a revolutionary and really change things.

One of the things I detest more than anything is watching how our habit of doing things in a rush for the sake of making money faster tramples over the needs of the most vulnerable among us. I hate watching cashiers rush the elderly because they can't wait to get to the next guy and take his money. If I'm lucky enough to stand behind an elderly person just trying to make a payment with dignity and being ushered away rudely, I'll stand up for my elderly friend. I'll make sure the cashier knows I'm on that person's side who is trying to engage in a little bit of conversation, perhaps the only conversation of the day, while clumsily trying to put away credit cards or money with arthritic fingers. Guess what, that person will be you in a few years -- if you are lucky.

Why not view acquiring patience and tolerance as an act of revolution. Refuse to honk back if somebody honks at you. Support the little, constant injustices in your immediate world that affect the way everybody thinks and acts. Get rid of your own oppressive habits, cultivating virtue instead of avarice, impatience and intolerance, which, after all, grow rampant among those we would call our enemies.

Being a true revolutionary means supporting a quieter, kinder world with every gesture.

Maybe the poorest among us, the homeless, those who don't care whether they obtain a house are the people we should think about emulating. I know the mother of a very famous singer who has gotten rid of all her money and credit cards and is on a three-year mission to survive without any money at all. Now that is brave, truly an act of revolution.

Instead of beating up on the rich, and hollering down institutions whose walls will always stare back at us blankly, we should try a different tack, approaching with kindness and humility those who have nothing at all and ask them how they survive and if they are ever happy. We might be surprised by their lessons and answers.

Food and Killing in American Culture

2011-09-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've said some of this before, but I need to again. I think we're in trouble, deep trouble, and it doesn't have to do with vegetarianism versus carnivorism, and this isn't just a complaint.

Let me start with Anthony Bourdain's cold-blooded "capping" of a pig, two quick shots to the head, on camera during his recent New Orleans episode, an episode that not only featured the brutal killing of this poor pig, but its evisceration, while it was still alive.

Bourdain has said more than once he is proud to be part of The Travel Channel, which also features a couple of other winners. Adam Richman, for example. A big boy getting bigger all the time and there is no need to wonder why, as, on his show, Man v. Food Nation, he goes around the country on an eating spree while diners cheer him on and applaud his gluttony. When I say Richman eats a ton, I am talking pounds and pounds of beef, potatoes, and sometimes ice cream in a single sitting, sometimes within a required time frame of say, 20 minutes to half an hour. The point of the show is that he is competing with food -- Huh? Exactly. Also on this channel is Bizarre Foods, with Andrew Zimmerman, who goes around the world tasting weird creatures and things that generally would make anyone go, "ugh!"

Then there is the new show on the Food Network Channel, Sugar High, which features a bald, pasty-faced chef -- looking blanched no doubt from all the sugar he has consumed -- going around the country 'getting high' off pies, cakes and other rich desserts. The logo for the show is sugar strewn across a road. Who needs sugar after all?

Another new show on this network has a Mexican chef I had previously respected and his buddy going from locale to locale, sampling ridiculously, dangerously hot and spicy foods. I'd like to see their large intestines in about a year. Competing with these shows on this network are similar shows such as Sugar Rush, Glutton for Punishment, and Extreme Chef.

The Travel Channel was launched in 1987 by Trans World Airlines (TWA), in the hope it would boost business. Maybe the best way to stop supporting the network and its really nasty shows is to stop choosing that airline. The Food Network Channel was bought from A.H. Belo Corporation by E. W. Scripps Company in 1997 and has essentially launched into the stratosphere the careers of chefs Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay and Mario Batali, among others, while promoting the idea that chefs can be superstars too.

For much of this blog I've been caught up with the idea of the super chef, how this person in the kitchen can make a world so right and good. But I've also seen travesties of this, and the shows I have just listed are chock full of them. They were launched with the intent of appealing to the most stupid and gullible aspect of ourselves, that aspect that agrees with commercials about what is right and best for us to eat. And in the same breath, shows us ads about how to curtail the consequences.

We never do see ads for tofu, or raspberries, or sprouts, do we? Just meat and cheese, because companies think they have the right to own animals and to eviscerate and shell them out to us, packaged nicely of course, because the habit of eating meat is so rife and profitable.

There's a vegan activist named Gary Yourofsky whose been arrested something like 10 times for protesting for animal rights. He has a compelling argument regarding how we are taught to be cruel to one another and to animals, although we start off being loving and protective as children. And he has a powerful argument for choosing to harm less by not supporting the killing of animals -- who, like us, possess a sense of smell, taste, touch and hearing, have eyes, ears, noses, mouths, arms and legs, and, like us, procreate, have families, mothers and fathers -- and therefore, a very good argument for not eating meat, or its products.

But this isn't just about eating meat, and the process involved in getting to that so-called delicious plate of steak that so many would "die for." It's about sheer waste and hubris. How dare we indulge in tossing even sugar across a road when the world is in the state that it is regarding the issue not only of starvation, but our resources. There are millions of human beings dying in Somalia right now for lack of food and water.

I realize Somalia seems far away, and television isn't bringing images of that devastation to our televisions, even those televisions with 1,000 plus channels. It's too busy advertising for meat and its products, too busy showing us brutal reality shows about trapping and killing animals and feeling good about it.

You know that maxim your mother used to tell you when you were a snotty-nosed kid, "Eat your food, there are hungry people starving in Africa." Well, it's true.

We have so much food compared to the rest of the world. Why can't we respect that, really appreciate it, and start treating food and ourselves and other sentient beings better. We're not even at the point where we can consider having healthy relationships if we are still stuck, dealing properly with the basic ingredients that keep us alive.

FEMINISM AND BUDDHISM -- TOGETHER AT LAST -- ?

2011-08-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

For a long time I've been wanting my dear spiritual friend Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo to meet Gloria Steinem. Jetsunma is a British born Tibetan Buddhist nun, who started the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery Project in northern India for nuns of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage. I met her in 1995, when she was touring the U.S., teaching the Dharma and expressing her wish to build a nunnery for nuns of her lineage. She reflected often on the poor conditions in which a female spiritual seeker in the East must thrive. Nuns are rarely given equal treatment to monks, and are rarely supported in their spiritual development -- although that situation, due largely to cultural norms, is changing now.

Tenzin Palmo traveled to India from England at the age of 20 to find a spiritual teacher, and spent close to 14 years in retreat in the Himalayas. Some time before he died, her teacher, Khamtrul Rinpoche asked her to set up a school for nuns. I met Tenzin Palmo on the occasion of her giving a teaching at the Namgyal Institute of Buddhist Studies in Ithaca, New York, where I was studying at the time. As a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, I was thrilled to meet someone who was not only thoroughly versed in Tibetan Buddhism, but seeped in the cultures of East and West, and, to top it all, a woman who spoke English! Not only is the combination I just spoke of very rare, I can count on one hand the number of individuals who have impressed me profoundly with their level of kindness, sincerity and depth of spiritual knowledge. She is definitely on that list. So anyway, after attending a couple of her teachings, I felt compelled to help her with an east coast tour and had the privilege of traveling around with her for a few months. Subsequent to that, a biography, A Cave in the Snow, by Vicki MacKenzie, and a compilation of teachings, some of which I transcribed, became Reflections on a Mountain Lake, Practical Teachings on Buddhism, by Tenzin Palmo. This year, Jetsunma published her second book, Into the Heart of Life, which I just finished reading. It is available through Snow Lion publications, and is a startlingly lucid and beautifully practical account of what we must all do in order to be happy in this lifetime. One can only ask oneself at this juncture, who wouldn't want to read it? My quick answer is, lazy people who do not wish to be responsible for their own happiness. Hopefully, the individuals reading this article, are of the other variety.

I have kept in touch with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo through the years, maintaining a proper level of astonishment at her remarkable accomplishments while I trudge along in Western samsara. Now and then I have had the wish that she meet Ms. Steinem, someone who clearly has influenced women's development in society in the the West, and particularly, after noting in recent years that Steinem has been plumbing and writing about her own inner life. We are all indebted to Ms. Steinem in the West for her many efforts to help elevate the status of women. I was very pleased therefore when I heard that she and Jetsunma were going to be meeting for a talk at the Rubin Museum in New York this June. The talk, part of Jetsunma's recent tour, went swimmingly, although I was disheartened to hear afterward from Ms. Steinem that "Buddhism has absolutely nothing at all to teach feminism."

On this point, I have to disagree. Feminism has mostly been concerned with freeing women from the shackles of society. Buddhism is concerned with freeing all beings. If feminists had launched out with the latter attitude in mind, we would have come further. Secondly, anger, often part of the activist agenda, and certainly part of the feminist agenda, has done no good whatsoever to advance causes. Buddhism recognizes the devastating consequences of this emotion, and has practical methodology for dealing with it. Feminism does not have such strategies, has not cared to employ them, and therefore, we are, arguably, suffering the 'two steps back' at this time after the big step forward made by feminism in the last century.

What the discussion between Ms. Steinem and Jetsunma proved above all is how two accomplished masters who understand the importance of 'keeping the peace,' can agree to disagree.

There were many interesting points shared, and it was illuminating to attend the discussion between Jetsunma and Ms. Steinem at the Rubin. What it boils down to is this: You can come to the Buddha within, the Christ within, from the outside in, as Ms. Steinem did, or from the inside out, as Jetsunma did. The proof is in the pudding. I'll opt for the latter, and for smaller steps backward.

A Guide to Healthy Eating in Manhattan

2011-06-11T13:35:00.001-07:00

When I think of the best cities in the country in which to dine out, Chicago and Manhattan come immediately to mind. I live near Manhattan, and until recently had never come across a healthy guide to eating out there.

I was fortunate to run into Jared Koch, or rather, happen by his table at the Fort Lee Arts and Crafts Fair a week ago. He has what is dubbed as "the only nutritionist and food critic-approved Manhattan Restaurant Guide" there is, a portable baby blue compendium that is really a must for anyone like me who likes dining out frequently in the Tri-state area.

Before you carnivores panic, know the 'best of' list considers you too. The (long) title of this handy little bible is Clean Plates Manhattan, A Guide to the Healthiest, Tastiest and Most Sustainable Restaurants for Vegetarians and Carnivores. Koch, a nutritionist and health coach, co-wrote the book with critic Alex Van Buren, once a food writer for Time Out New York, although several more critics have since come on board. The book, says Koch, can be used to "find healthy and sustainable restaurants in Manhattan, to learn how to change your eating habits when you dine out -- and in, and to transform your life by seeing how eating healthier can be pleasurable and startlingly simple."

I rarely read a book in straight fashion front to back, so soon as I had Clean Plates in hand, I went immediately to see if some of my favorite haunts are listed. Caravan of Dreams, a vegan hippie-friendly eatery we like to frequent at 405 East 6th Street, is. I have eaten at a few vegan joints in the city, and this one is the best. The worst one can say about it is that sometimes the service, however friendly, is uneven, but the quality of food is the best I've ever encountered in the vegan realm. And that includes desserts and espresso.

Caravan of Dreams features performers of every variety and once even a Tarot reader. I indulged, having once been one of those myself. I realize there isn't much I haven't done in my abundant life, save cater to the Mob and shoeshine. And I am serious about that. The Tarot reader was nice enough, and mysterious with her vibrating blue eyes and shockingly red hair, but she was off the mark and pissed off my mate, who didn't like hearing that I was attracted to three different men and trying to decide which one to go with. A word of caution to fortune tellers, 'Think about what you are saying and to whom you are saying it, and keep it simple and broad.'

I was also gratified to see Candle 79 mentioned, where we dined recently with a friend from Florida. You can't miss with salads of just about any variety at either of these two restaurants, but I personally find the clientele at Caravan of Dreams a little more discrete and easier to take. Something about a six-foot-two father walking in out of the rain with his five-year old sitting on his shoulders and expecting to be seated immediately at Candle 79 made me realize that those who eat there are not only hippy-ish and young, as at Caravan of Dreams, but yuppy-ish, older and entitled too.

What I love about Clean Plates is it has a broad, interesting and eclectic selection, from the "solidly American" Gramercy Tavern to the macrobiotic Mana to the Natural Gourmet Institute, the vegetarian cooking school at 48 West 21st Street. I notice Van Buren has a penchant for chocolate, so I now have a nice selection of new places to go for my favorite desserts as well.

Clean Plates is available for a mere $14.95 on Amazon.com and via www.cleanplates.com, and the esteemed Deepak Chopra has this to say about it: "Jared's nutritional advice in Clean Plates has the power to transform your individual health and our collective well-being." What more could you ask for in a guide for healthy eating?

The Local Spa

2011-05-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

This past Wednesday a deadline at work had me so wound up I actually only gave myself "bathroom breaks" away from my computer, and found myself knoshing on cashews from a nearby bag, only because I had seconds to kill while my pdf files "saved." No lunch for me. At the end of the day, all I could think was, "Get me to a spa!" So, there I went.

Never, ever, ever threaten to cancel an appointment with the spa lady because the time has come for your "scrub," but no one has arrived, yet. At that stressed out moment, one minute past the hour was too much to wait. I announced I was leaving just as my scrub lady arrived, diva-ready in a black lace bra and panties. Throwing up her hands, she moaned in dismay at the news that I had planned to chuck the appointment with her. I followed her into the "pool" room and she pointed to a table covered with pink plastic on which she doused tepid water while gossiping about me in Korean with the neighboring scrubber, busy at a nearby table. Both of them were going on about my outrageous behavior, repeating to one another, "oh my god, oh my god." It was definite. I was headed for a doosey of a "scrub." She snatched my towel.

The "scrubber," no more than 105 pounds, had hands like the jaws of life, and used them instantly and vigorously upon the tenderest parts of my body, pummeling my peanut-laden stomach, then chest, legs and arms. I mean, pummeling: How-Dare-You-Threaten-To-Break-My-Appointment. I could feel the wrath of Ms. Lee on my limbs, and thought, oh, what the hell, the poor people in concentration camps had it worse, closed my eyes, grabbed the rag that had been placed behind my head, and placed it over my eyes to quell the blinding overhead lights, and keep myself from seeing what would be done to me.

Ms. Lee pummeled and smacked, pummeled and smacked, flipped and bent my legs into unfathomable yogic contortions, then flipped me over onto my stomach. Then came the actual scrub. She scrubbed so hard, I thought my skin was going to sail off my body. I wondered when it would all end. Finally, after what felt like an infinity of time, I was told to aim my body in the opposite direction. Ms. Lee dragged me across the wet plastic so I almost flew off the table. She applied brakes by grabbing hold of my head. "Let go head," she said, then dropped it on what felt like an iron rung at the table's edge -- one last reminder, for good measure, never to betray a scrubber. I had oil applied to my body, and I remembered how in Africa, among certain tribes, that is the procedure before you are branded. Then Ms. Lee pulled me like a doll by the waist to a sit up position and hoisted my arms, further back than I thought they could ever go, breaking something in my upper shoulders and neck. Tension, I think it was. I had warm water tossed all over me. Then she patted my cheeks, like I was a cute child, and slathered my face with the scrub for me to remove at my leisure. Then she came up close to my face, smiling big. It was over.

I proceeded to take my pores that must have been more open than the Grand Canyon over to the Sandstone Sauna, then the Amethyst Sauna, where I gazed up at those beautiful stones and imagined they were all mine, then the 130-degree sauna, where I sat alongside amorphous shapes covered in wet towels and burlap sacks to stave off the intensity of the heat.

After all the beating and broiling, I decided it was time to eat, and had what felt like the finest meal of my life. The first meal after a long captivity. Hard-boiled eggs, Soba noodles, and a variety of other hot and tasty small plates that made eating tastefully impossible. I sipped, slurped and sucked to my heart's delight, wondering what it would be like to spend 24 hours in this place that is indeed open around the clock. There were bodies stretched out everywhere, some snoozing in obscene positions on the incredibly comfortable leather chaise lounges before wide HD screens, where only entertainment such as golf and soccer played. And a Korean version of Idol, where contestants sang incredibly beautifully to songs that sounded like famous pop tunes from America's 60s. I passed a game room with tables for chess, pink and leather lounges; experienced the gold sauna, which oddly, did not make me feel rich, just greedy; dipped into the tea pool and the hot pool; then showered away what remained of my skin and life.

Six-Fingered Discounts

2011-04-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

In the aftermath of the Final Assault at Borders, after the Last Mass pillaging of its items by customers jangling keys with Mercedes Benz emblems, wagging Coach purses, swearing, bullying, talking down and talking over overworked young employees while attempting to finagle cheap goods down to practically nothing -- I realized that we, or at least Donna, came away a big winner. And that is no surprise.

While my cache was a single, modest memento, a paperback of essays, the pint-size Size Queen I live with made out “like bandits.” Donna is after all the one I had to talk down from buying a 64-inch HD screen (fearing it might rob me of my desire to even bother going to the movies), and for whom only Benzes and Audis suffice, as, she claims, other types of cars such as (the recently disposed of) Infinity 35X -- “a poor man’s rich car”-- are not “roomy” enough for all of her five foot two-inch needs.

Certainly Donna had to be one of the most adventurous and successful of those vying for remains at the colossal Borders wake, for, in its aftermath, I found myself stepping into a living room I barely recognized. Five-foot shelves ( filled with bric-a-brac and fresh titles) perched like book ends at either side of the 58-inch HD masterpiece we did settle for. Even the basement changed, as now, before the washer and dryer sits a massive set of metal shelves accommodating not one but several tripods and several cases with video equipment.

Then there are the 20 walkie talkies sitting on the kitchen counter. And the books on film and fine Italian cuisine – each, five pounds or more – that are also now nesting here.

My own particular addiction is – surprise, surprise -- books, especially paperbacks that stack easily or can be easily tucked into the wide pockets of purses or knapsacks. (My Kindle, a Christmas present, goes to work with me every day, as it’s the ultimate easy carry). The night tables in my room are stacked with piles of books, all read, and whose titles I must see, and be free to peruse as easily as the mind of a close friend at a moment’s notice.

My final Borders purchase was a yellow paperback with a six-fingered hand on the cover, Augusten Burrough’s collection of essays, Possible Side Effects, which I tried to savor slowly, story by story, each night for a couple of weeks before going to sleep. Some essays stirred me; a few made me smile and chuckle; others pricked me with their sudden, surprising and unnecessary meanness, a characteristic I find particularly loathsome in literature. I read Burrough’s book with its bitter undercurrent, as if I’d picked out a lemon from a bowl of fruit – Even though I can appreciate the smarts that produced it.

When all was said and done, after Borders’ shelves and bookcases had been ransacked, its spoils taken – for better or worse, when only U-Hauls decorated the parking lot, and there was not a shard left, even of memories of the place, its functions or its people, after I had walked away with my own small treasure and explored it, I thought, what next?

What will replace Borders? -- A gym? Or an office for dentists? Or accountants? -- As if there are already not enough of these.

I had better get into the habit of walking around with a book, finding my own place, wherever it be –a corner seat in a café, a bench in a park, or even a cement stoop. My future will be filled with random acts of reading, snatches of consciousness stolen from the consuming melee.

France in Fort Lee

2011-04-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

A sophisticated, hot spot with a Mediterranean swagger, a lot of cool and culture is just what Fort Lee needs and now has in the way of Khloe Bistrot, a French provincial restaurant newly opened on Main Street. It's in a hopeful location, across the street from where Borders -- the only other thinking person's hangout in the area I can think of -- was once situated, and is now closing. The owner of Khloe's and her co-workers smoke their cigarettes outside the Bistro, staring nervously across the street at the giant-sized posters announcing everything must go, "50-percent off," "75-percent off everything," dangling from the high windows of Borders. It may hardly seem the time to launch anything, but it's spring, and this is a daring and fresh idea, and it's high time French cuisine came to Fort Lee.

To step into Khloe's is to know immediately that you are in a stylish, affluent home, where you may hang out for a while if you are willing to spend some money. Just as you step in, you can see the busy kitchen beyond a counter to your left. A chandelier hangs opposite. The ceiling is high and the walls are painted black. You will not want to get up at all from the comfortable Louis XIV style chaises distributed around sturdy wooden square and round tables. The music, a blend of European rock and Sirius Chill, emanates from a line of giant speakers, and is cool and sexy.

The owner, Nina, who hails from some two locales, one of which is French, was elusive but excited about her new restaurant, which, in a couple of weeks, will stretch its hours until two a.m., and start including bite-size offerings on its menu.

"It's for people that don't want to go home early, that want to stay out and have fun," she said.

A long-time insomniac once addicted to all-night partying and dancing, I can relate.

The menu is delightful but uneven, with possibilities even for vegetarians. While the tri-colored salad was insignificant, although its price -- $11-$12 -- was not, the risotto, cooked al dente to perfection, and combined with shitake and portobello mushrooms and butternut squash, was savory and hot. A dessert shared by three, the Shue Hazelnut creme, an ample puff inside which was a creme to die for, was really superb. The espresso, another must for me, meaning Must-Be-Perfect, was not. Too intense and oily. The fuel oil variety, which I can live without, especially at the price of $4 per single shot. Our meal for three, sans alcoholic beverages, came to about $170, including the tip. You have to BYOB.

Khloe is chock full of possibilities and has the thrill of parties to come hanging in the air. The conversation, ambience and dessert really made it a worthwhile experience. I'm looking forward to checking out what's cooking there -- in the kitchen and elsewhere -- a couple of months from now. Its first weekends, I heard, were packed.

Books and Borders

2011-02-27T10:57:00.000-08:00

Since hearing of the recent closing of our local bookstore and cafe, Borders, I've had little else on my mind but books and the societies they make and how rapidly and radically these are changing. I remember coming upon my first Borders in 1988 in Stamford, Connecticut. For a while I walked around the spacious store, my jaw dropped, unbelieving in the rarity of a cafe bar and books together. The barista actually invited me to pick up a book, grab a cafe and sit and read while drinking. Under a kind of magical spell, I returned over and over again to that nook to write and read to my heart's content. I was an adjunct teaching creative writing at a local university then and had time on my hands to do such wondrous things. Once, while sipping on capuccinos, I sat and read all of Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place. Another time, perhaps inspired by a unique blend of twisted thoughts eeking out of the corners of books and shelves at that Borders, I sat and wrote a 26-page story called "Oliviana," about an affair between a gay man and a transsexual. I loved the characters in that story, which, in my view, pushed boundaries, my own and those of convention.

A good bookstore inspires fresh thoughts no less than good literature and company. But Borders, at least the one in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the town in which I now live, will no longer be working its magic on its residents and neighbors, as it is closing. Book sales have drawn more people to buy up its remains in recent days than perhaps anything else has in a decade. There were the days of course when readings and concerts at Borders drew crowds, but those went up in smoke along with the economy.

The same week I heard the bad news about our Borders closing, I heard that Buffalo Books, formerly known as The Bookery, where I worked part-time for a couple of years while teaching in and around Ithaca, New York, was also closing. The good news is that the community has taken up the cause and will more than likely save the place through some kind of cooperative enterprise. It's good news when people band together when the powers that be try to prevent growth and opportunity. Americans are good like that, and bands of them fighting good causes like that one around the country have inspired me lately. I know Ithaca has the mind and heart and guts it takes to keep a place it wants to thrive, alive. I hope books and literature remain part of its tradition for years to come.

Bookstore cafes have become an American tradition. But the bar of the 90s, where human beings imbibing non-alcoholic drinks mingled in the company of books and each other are now being replaced by virtual cafes and Amazon.com, and perhaps another growing trend -- book clubs. When I expressed my concern to a fellow editor at Pearson Education about the society of books going down the tubes, she was quick to mention book clubs and how fast they are multiplying.

Little societies can have great impact, as long as they keep growing, and as long as they remain open venues for increased participation. Otherwise, they are just perpetrating an elitist cycle, keeping both knowledge and enthusiasm about it away from those who potentially need it most.

In the wake of the bookstore closings I just mentioned, I want not only to launch a book club, but an all-night cafe where insomniac readers, writers and artists of every variety can join in the spirit of non-conformity to talk about their art and experiment with it. While Kelly performs jazz, and Diana paints pictures, and Doug recites his poems, and Donna videotapes it all, I will serve espressos and green tea and Renee's vegan muffins. We will play and grow together. Then, just as the rest of the world comes alive, as the sun shines its full face on our streets and windows, we will close our doors and return once more to the enterprise of dreaming.

Modern Literature's Penchant for Lemons

2011-02-05T17:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a rather acerbic assessment of the art that ran in n + 1 in 2006. It's by Elif Batuman, a young essayist whose own preference is for Russian literature, which became the subject of her book, The Possessed.

Every paragraph of this essay elicited an internal reaction from me, not all of it contrary to Batuman. What I do appreciate is her call to writers to be more revolutionary, unafraid to write drivel, to be different and step out of line. This can never be a bad thing. Is she aspiring to become a teacher of writing?

I am wondering what those of you who write and/or read with some frequency think of this piece. Do you feel her comments about literature are more or less true in 2011?
http://nplusonemag.com/short-story

Getting Inside the Great Chef's World

2011-02-05T12:02:00.000-08:00

This is the second or third time I've picked up The Reach of A Chef, Professional Cooks in the Age of Celebrity by Michael Ruhlman and it's gripped me as much this time as the others, if not more so. I haven't read anyone who matches Ruhlman's insight, sensitivity and intelligence, describing the art of the chef in today's world. His is simply the best book on the subject I have read to date.

The Reach of A Chef explores the lives of such culinary luminaries as Thomas Keller, Melissa Kelly, Grant Aschatz and Masa Takayama, in amazing, often breath-taking detail. The book reads like a top-notch thriller.The reader is left not only wanting to taste great recipes, but meet the chefs, study and work with them. Ruhlman describes -- the innovative Aschatz, concocting recipes that are more like strange experiments at Alinea in Chicago; Kelly plucking fresh produce from her garden in Maine, demanding the best, proving over and over again that a powerful woman in the kitchen who also happens to be petite, cannot be underestimated; the quiet and intense Keller, managing four four-star restaurants on the east and west coasts -- the fourth being Per Se in New York City; and Masa, who is not interested in evolving a brand, but runs the most expensive restaurant in New York, where for $450 (including tip), a customer can expect to dine on food designed, prepared and served entirely as Masa sees fit.

In the end, one has to wonder, where will Masa, Le Bernardin and Per Se be 10 years from now, from the customer's standpoint? Will they still attract moneyed foodies? Or just clientele willing to relive the thrill of days gone by? It is clear that running a successful restaurant requires a specially driven individual, but developing a brand, as superstars Cat Cora, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, and most notably, Emeril and Rachael Ray have done, requires a special kind of personality, not only driven, but infused with magical timing, focus, persistence and endurance.

Emeril was always a maniac in the kitchen, cooking fast and furiously, but not always the nice guy. In the early days, he cursed out employees, until, one night, in the middle of service, a restaurant's owner, passed him a piece of paper on which was written a life-changing message: "You're too damn smart to be so damn stupid." Emeril re-read the note when he got home that night and determined he was going to change his attitude and habits and become as supportive and positive as he could be. The first life changer, he claims, was a book he read called, The Magic of Thinking Big. In Emeril's world, anything is possible, and this is the key message of his brand, and perhaps the reason he attracts so many people. His enthusiasm is highly contagious.

Cora's branding name and theme is also the title of her second book, From the Hip. A Culinary Institute of America (CIA) graduate, she is now a celebrity chef, and a regular on Iron Chef America, where I recently saw her beat out a French chef contestant with her extraordinary focus and versatility, working a menu with cherries as a theme.

According to Ruhlman, a great chef must possess "infinite energy and stamina...and massive ambition." It's not just the massive energy and product of great American chefs Ruhlman brings to the reader, it's also their process and art. And this is where both his narrative and its central figures, as well as Ruhlman's skill at depicting them, transcend being merely compelling, and become sublime.

This, fellow foodies, is what it's all about:

"The enduring image I have from my short time in Masa's kitchen was from watching a lunch service.

"At this particular lunch service, there was a single customer, an older woman, seated centrally at the hinoki bar. Masa stood before her unsmiling but looking comfortable in his loose clothing, his round shaved head glowing in the carefully lighted space. He bowed in plying his trade, in cutting fish on his board with his gorgeous knife. He first served the series of nonsushi dishes, ginkgo nuts, the uni risotto for which he's famous, the lobster-and-foie shabu-shabu for which he should be famous, the elaborate blowfish dish, before moving into the sushi performance that included a dozen carefully prepared bites of toro, mackerel, grouper, shima aji, tai, hirame, ken, ika, tako, kanpachi, anago, ebi, eel. He cuts each piece before the woman, forms a small ball of rice and seasons it with a bit of fresh wasabi or one of a few simple sauces, folds the fish over the pillow of rice, and sets it on a dark stone disk in front of her. The woman lifts it with her hand and, with a small dip of her head, like a bow, eats it in a bite.

"The meal lasted more than two hours. Occasionally, Masa would take a break in the kitchen, talk on his cell phone, to have some tea, who knows -- maybe check in with his bookie or reserve a Sunday tee time, or just relax for a moment. But when his customer, the old woman, had been alone for the right amount of time, he would return and resume his work.

"The entire restaurant was empty but for these two people, with fine spots lighting them both up vividly against the black walls of the restaurant, Masa slicing and serving exotic fish and the woman eating what he placed before her, all of it in perfect silence. I stood and stared transfixed from my hideout in the kitchen. They were beautiful to behold. A monk serving a monk." - From The Reach of A Chef, by Michael Ruhlman

A Story of Fish in Talara

2011-01-29T18:53:00.000-08:00

If you ever have the luxury of traveling to Peru, and it is a luxury -- for it is one of the richest countries in South America, in terms of traditions, folklore and landscape, and also what resides in its waters -- you surely won't find what I knew.

We grew up in Talara, which is alongside the northwest Peruvian coastline, literally across the street from the Pacific Ocean. Talara now has a population of about 104,000, and has a fishing fleet, airport and army base, but when we lived there, in the early 60s, there could not have been more than a couple of hundred people for miles around. There were: the refinery where our fathers worked, the camp for the engineers of Standard Oil and all their families with its rows of similar ranch houses, the pink stucco Staff School at the top of a small hill, and the Staff Club. Sundays we attended a small church in a nearby village. Just beyond the camp, along the same poorly paved road, were one gasoline pump and one Bodega, where our mothers did all their shopping, and, of course, there was the sea, which was a treasure trove of catch.

The sea teemed with marlin. The largest marlin ever, weighing in at 1,560 pounds, was caught the year I was born by an oil magnate who used a rod and reel and five pounds of mackerel as bait. He struggled with it for close to two hours before seeing the size of the thing. My father and his friends were always out for marlin. Fortunately, since the heyday of marlin, the late 50s to the early 60s, the sports fishing industry has been kept in check and the Peruvian government has taken steps toward conservation, by, for example, banning the commercial harvest of billfish.

As a child, I developed a fascination with fish, the object so prized by our fathers and enjoyed so often at our dinner table. I used to watch our gardener Raul strip down a bass or bluefish, readying it for our consumption. The first thing he would do is pop the fish eyes into his mouth. It would gross me out to no end, but he claimed the eyes gave him strength. Our cook took the head for soup that she made for herself and our nanny. We ate the body of the fish, baked or in the form of seviche.

I loved to watch our cook slice up the white raw fish, chop up onions, peppers, tomatoes and soak the mix in a soup of fresh lemon juice in a bowl overnight. Just before she served it, she would toss in salt and pepper and turn the seviche with her hands. I couldn't believe I was eating raw fish, that there was no blood, and that it tasted so good!

Fish, rice and corn pudding was my favorite dinner meal. I liked to pour olive oil over my rice. When our fish was baked, we ate slowly, careful for all the splinter-like bones. I don't recall ever eating better simple meals or better fish than when we lived in Talara. Although I wasn't a vegetarian, being only a child, it was in those years, living in Talara, that I had my first inkling of how sacred that creature was. But it wasn't for the reason you may think.

One day, I was taking a walk alongside the beach and saw a group of naked fishermen spearing something they were dragging in with a net. I approached them, curious, and saw, what appeared to be a giant whale, which, in retrospect, was probably a black marlin or shark. One of the fishermen sliced open the fish belly with his spear and out came a fish-shaped creature about my size, wrapped in a gelatinous, milky substance. I ran up, "What are you doing? You just killed a mother and her baby!" I stood in the middle of them, looking up at the gold tooth of the one who had done the killing, trying to stare him down. They all just laughed at me. "La niña, la niña," he kept saying, as if that explained the whole thing, my being a little girl. After that, I couldn't bring myself to eat fish, remembering as I would, that image of what I imagined was a baby fish, lying dead and abandoned on the beach. I didn't want to be part of that mass uncaring.

That instance marked the first time I realized that fish, that prized possession of so many, was not just an object out there in the universe. It had its own family and was part of a larger family too.

Baseball On My Mind

2011-01-22T11:54:00.000-08:00

You have to realize, up until recently I wasn't sure if the Mets were a baseball or a football team. I'm not much into sports, even though I've enjoyed a Superbowl or two in my day. And due to my wide variety of interests, even within the reading arena, it doesn't seem likely that I would pick up a book about -- of all things -- baseball, but I did. What is even more remarkable is that I enjoyed it.

Carl Furillo, Brooklyn Dodgers All-Star, by Ted Reed, was a Christmas present from a fellow Wesleyan graduate, one, who, undoubtedly remembers the Wesleyan proclivity for getting students to stray from their main focus of interest and learn something new. As a liberal arts student in Middletown a few years ago, I studied English and American Studies, and when the time came to "try something new," in other words, be "liberal," I went for -- of all things -- Symbolic Logic. What a nightmare.

Luckily, learning a bit about baseball and a lot about Furillo, did not turn out to be such a nightmare. Far from it. It is baseball after all and not football that is even to me the quintessential American game. Reed, a transportation reporter for TheStreet.com, who was formerly a Miami Herald business reporter, has done a beautiful job of researching his subject and has written about Furillo engagingly, so that even a novice like myself to the game might be entertained and enriched. The quotes Reed selects give voice to key men that helped shape the sport, their cultures and mindsets and brings to life a vital post-war era, when the country like the sport was growing in leaps and bounds. Most importantly, Reed deconstructs the myths about Furillo, one of which was that he was a racist. Until Reed wrote about him, Furillo was one of the few major members of the Brooklyn Dodgers who had not had a book done on him.

Furillo, for those who know little or nothing about him, was a World War II vet, a great right fielder with a wickedly powerful arm who played in six World Series and, in 1953, led the National League in hitting. More than once, Furillo would wind up in the middle of others' battles, but when his integrity was challenged, he would not back down, even early on, as a rookie:

"When I got the word that I was supposed to go and work out with the Brooklyn ballclub, the waiters and some of the ballplayers that were down there threw a little party. We had altogether about a dozen beers, and I think I had one or half of one. When it was over, they cleaned up the room and they put everything in a wastepaper basket. Well, Hopper was bucking for Durocher's job, and he was sneaking around there, and he figured this would be a good chance to smack Durocher right in the mouth. So he went and turned me into Mr. Ricky, saying that I was drinking and that he had caught me. Young Rickey saw me and I told him all about it and then, when I got to the ballpark, I told Durocher what happened. And Durocher told me, 'Don't worry about it, kid,' and it seemed like it was all over. But then on the following day he came up to me and said, 'Why didn't you tell me the truth?' I said 'I did tell you the truth.' And he said 'That's not the story I heard.' So I said 'I don't care what you heard, I'm telling you the truth.' So he was calling me a liar then, and I think from that day on I lost a little faith in Durocher." - Carl Furillo, Brooklyn Dodgers All-Star

Carl Furillo turned out to be a treasuretrove of rich stories and a fascinating read.

Avocado Bean Bowl

2011-01-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

I just happened on a super delicious combo that I'd like to tell you about. We're heading for another n'oreaster, and I thought, "What a perfect time to put soup on the stove." And so I did, a bean soup mix in a medium pot of boiling water dashed with sea salt. I then proceeded to mince three cloves of garlic and chop up a large carrot, the ends of a few celery stalks and three strips of ABC bacon. Already Been Cooked. At the end of the hour when the buzzer rang, the soup looked hearty, so I popped in the veggies and bacon.

Then I turned and saw a lonely avocado that has been sitting in a basket on my kitchen table for a few days. It was ripe. Perfectly ripe. To eat today, ripe.

Two of us in our household were hungry to the point of salivating, so I sliced the avocado open, got rid of the pit, scooped out the veggie and bean portion of the soup, of which there was plenty, and plopped it on the natural dish formed by the avocado. Then I placed the avocado topped with beans and veggies in a small bowl.

Presto! One scrumptuous avocado soup bowl.

My Broken Relationship with -- Olives

2011-01-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

At a recent holiday party, I realized my passion for olives was over. Gone, gone, gone, and I can't get it back. But I do know why it happened.

Too many olives.

I used to love them. All their shapes, tastes and sizes. I found the most unlikely places to frequent all because of the olive bins. And there were better places than others. Fairway Market, for one. Eataly, for another.

I tasted green olives, olives stuffed with almonds, capers and jalapenos. Black ones, large and small, the Greek kalamata -- brine-cured -- and the Italian gaeta. The small black French nicoise. The unpitted Spanish green manzanilla olive, the Californian sevillano, and even the Italian red. I savored them at all hours, especially late at night, when I longed for what was both sour and salty, varied and rich in taste. Then suddenly, overnight, the taste of olives just didn't excite me. In fact, it repelled me. I tried all of my favorite olives -- green and black, large and small, briney and sweet. Nada. It was over. I couldn't get the love back. You know what I mean.

I am separating from Olives. It's happened before. Years ago, as a runaway, I know for a fact I single handedly emptied out every seven-eleven of its cashews along that island boot off Massachusetts called Cape Cod. And that was long before my passion for cashews ran out.

Now I've played out my love of olives. I've had one too many, too much of a good thing. I'm almost grieving, but not quite because I know there's a world of possibilities out there, of better and more tantalizing taste experiences. I know I will find a substitute, although I will always remember olives with glee.

A Memoir of Delinquent Repasts

2010-12-31T15:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know any family that matches mine when it comes to our relationship to food. There simply was no comparison, no one came even close. As an 11-year old, I would cross the street from St. A's to Breslow's Stationery Store every day and buy my first snacks of the afternoon -- a Slim Jim and a cherry pie. I absolutely had to have the experience of the chewy salty meat, and then the burst of syrupy cherries. The only question was -- which first? Once home, I mixed Cheetos in a large mixing bowl with mayonnaise and strawberry jelly, and downed that concoction as if it was bliss itself.

We were a ravenous household of teens. Ale used to eat cans of tuna, and, disturbingly, leave the empty cans like carcasses, under her bed. After a night of partying, she'd come home and lay her mitts on whatever big dish sat in the fridge. Once it was a pot roast, and you could see her teeth marks and the gnarled missing sections, evidence of her ravaging, the next day. I don't remember what it is my sister Mar used to gorge on -- besides pot. My brothers were known to each down 36 to 40 clams easy at a clambake and could each devour their own Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket. Ale was known to go through an entire Sunday breakfast box of Dunkin' Donuts, and, I heard, after school, used to panhandle in front of the local Baskin and Robbins, and sometimes hold up kids for their change, just to get her daily fix -- a banana split.

Mind you, we were a slender, athletic bunch then, but this is how we ate. Besides consuming alcohol in unholy quantities, my brother John could devour just about anything. There were times we all sat to dinner at the kitchen table, and noticed knives and forks missing from our place sets. I wonder now if my mother wasn't just trying to scrimp on the silverware, knowing it might well dissappear into somebody's gullet for good, or even be used as a weapon. We were like that, and our mother went so far as to lock the kitchen snacks' cabinet. No question about it, without that lock, all the bags of Cheetos and Fritos, the Planters' Peanuts and Nestle's Crunch bars that were meant to be used for lunch snacks and as hors d'oeuvres at the cocktail hour would have been downed in a day.

In college, I found strangely disgusting combinations comforting -- Mateuse wine with saltines and fondue; Vodka and Tang; strawberry ice cream filched from the school cafeteria dipped in fondue. I made sure my mother sent emergency boxes of Slim Jims and cashews. As a runaway on Cape Cod, I am convinced I single-handedly emptied out every Seven Eleven of its bags of cashews. One winter night, I went everywhere and simply could not find a single bag of those nuts. My hors d'oeuvres were Spam and Tavola Red, the cheapest wine there was -- at under five bucks -- then.

After I quit drinking in my early 20s, I spent a whole year consuming about a pound of cheese and a pound of nuts a day, and only nuts and chocolates on the weekends. I believe this was my own version of the Atkins Diet. Then I passed two or three kidney stones and started rethinking my diet. I haven't stopped thinking about it since then and trying to refine it.

When I look back, I can't figure out who or what to blame for not knowing how to eat properly. I remember being an eight-year old in Key Biscayne, when we first arrived in the states, opening up the fridge and kicking back with a box of Velveeta cheese and a fat sausage of liverwurst. Once I'd finished digging into the Velveeta and processed meat, I would step outside in the one-piece bathing suit I wore everywhere but to bed. If it rained, I planted myself under the roof gutters to shower blissfully in nature. I felt so free, alive and lucky to have everything I wanted. Ah yes, I must have thought to myself, thinking of my new friends, Velveeta and liverwurst, I do so love the U.S.A!

Winter's Yellow Split Pea Soup

2010-12-26T21:41:00.000-08:00

Know that shelling out a recipe is not easy for me. I'd much rather philosophize about food, or relay a culinary read or adventure. But tonight's repast was so right, so perfect for the moment, so apropos, I simply had to pass it on.

Late this afternoon we went out into the blowing snow and frigid temperatures to shoot some pictures and video, and after we returned, in the heels of lightning and thunder-- even as it snowed -- nothing seemed more of a respite, or more perfect to concoct at the stove than old-fashioned pea soup.

Thank god I had some yellow split peas left, which by the way, I prefer to the green variety.

With no time to let the peas soak, I simply tossed what was left of the bag -- about two fistfuls -- in a colander -- and popped them in a quart of sea-salted boiling water. Personally, I prefer a thick soup, so this recipe is about that.

While the split yellow peas in water perked on low, I brought out my trusty cutting board and my big Tramontina chef's cutting knife, what was left of some vegetables in my frig -- the heel of a celery bunch, an organic carrot, a quarter of a sweet onion, a couple of portobello mushrooms and a couple of strips of Fully Cooked frozen Oscar Mayer bacon. I chopped these up and a couple of garlic cloves and threw them into a pan with some olive oil, sauteed the blend, and finally, added a splash of Tamari. I waited until the soup was thick, near ready, then scooped out three or four heaping serving spoons of the sauteed mix and dumped it into the soup, setting the timer for half an hour. I placed the remaining healthy portion of veggies into a container to store after they had cooled -- to add as garnish to scrambled eggs, to a salad, or even to eat solo, rolled into a pita.

The split pea soup served four. You can garnish it with Turkish paprika. It was just what this wickedly cold night called for.

My Failed Fondue

2010-12-25T17:02:00.000-08:00

Very little can make one feel like more of a failure than a foiled recipe. Such was my fate this Christmas day. I failed at making my first fondue. It's not even that complicated. Particular, yes, but not complicated.

On the bright side, I know now what I did wrong. You need real wine. The fake stuff just doesn't do it. You simply can't replace the bright, tart taste of dry white wine with any other ingredients. Not lemon juice, not Fre de-alcoholized white wine. You must use the real thing.

Secondly, not only did I place too much faux wine in the pot; after placing handfuls of shredded Swiss Cheese, Brie and Gouda, I let the mixture boil.

You're not supposed to let the wine with cheese boil.

It was not the cheese I was supposed to use, and because I let it boil, it also clumped. These were my third and fourth mistakes.

I wasn't even sure of the other prescribed touches -- the added nutmeg, pepper and lemon juice. And the two tablespoons of flour. Was it too much nutmeg? Should the flour have been cornstarch?

Fortunately, I have learned a few things. If I can find Ementhaler Cheese, which I never heard of before researching fondue, I must add that to my concoction, along with the Gruyere I also couldn't find at the local A & P during my late night search. Cheese is a delicate substance in its way, as are the best foods, like chocolate, when you start playing with them in extreme temperatures.

I'm simply determined to find this Ementhaler Cheese of which I've never heard.

And determined to include dry white wine. And to find an interesting, yet simple fondue recipe, and try again.

Ƈa va. Such is life. I turn the page on my foiled faux fondue!

Christmas Wishes

2010-12-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

Some of us woke up this morning asking, what happened? Did I drink that much? Did I really say and do that? Oh, I remember the days. And boy, did I sublimate last night at the wickedly fine party I attended. Delicious fun. More of everything that I can recall in years. Not just pastas and dips -- even vegetarian ones, made of guacamole -- and cheeses galore, and olives, all favorites, but choices of pies. A brilliant hostess, Ann, part genius mind, part genius cook and mother, laid out chocolate cream pies, pecan pies, cream puffs, gingerbread cookies and chocolates as if for Santa and his elves. Children unwrapped gigantic gifts and adults unraveled with laughter and drink.

I have very funny friends. They always make me laugh. They can be counted on to make a party. They are really remarkably talented that way. On special occasions, they also drink. All the stuff, the best of the best I used to drink, and some stuff I wish I had tasted when I could. Every time they downed a shot, I had to remind myself of what I might feel like tomorrow if I drank that. Ninety proof Padron Tequila -- where was that in my drinking days? And that bourbon whose mere scent put me over the edge. It's OK to enjoy vicariously what I can't have. I learned long ago I can't have everything. That's what makes me not a child.

My friends drink and party like there's no tomorrow. Like I used to in my 20s. None of us are that age anymore. And one of us is gone this year. We toasted to him. Dear Joe, someone else you could always count on for a laugh and smile. We toasted to him. He too used to eat like the best of them, and he actually drank less. But life took him anyway. Took him so fast, he surely didn't know what happened. He probably went out laughing or smiling over something in memory.

It's great to have friends who, when you think of them, always make you smile or laugh. My friends always make me do that. But some also worry me. I'd love to see them live a long time, full of happiness and love to give and also to receive. Maybe it's a thought I shouldn't dwell on, but it dances in the back of my mind, behind all the merriment every time we get together and dive over the edge into cascades of endless bliss and good times.

Big Christmas Questions

2010-12-15T21:58:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you but I develop strange impulses around the holidays. Suddenly, just as everyone seems to be looking cheerful and happy -- even about eating more than twice their weight in food and gaining many extra pounds -- I get the impulse to fast and join a nunnery. It's really how I often feel about the holidays. The "what do I cook?" dilemma sometimes brings me to the point of imagining serving celery stalks, dip and your basic red Hawaiian Punch instead of all the usual brouhaha. Of course I won't do that, of course I wouldn't, I tell myself. And yet, I am my mother's daughter, and my mother, one holiday, when dad was expecting a big fat turkey and stuffing yet again, my dear mother, a Latin American, who was obviously -- on that occasion anyway -- fed up with the idea of having to serve up yet again another North American traditional meal, wheeled out a silver tray under which was no turkey, no stuffing, no ma'm, but arroz con pollo, chicken and rice, that savory, familiar South American staple. Woah, you should have seen the fallen expression on my daddy's face, on all our faces. Then a few of us laughed, those few who saw the humor. But not daddy.

So, I have my fantasies. I'm sure it will probably be turkey or ham again this Christmas. Maybe fried turkey. A new friend informed me that he fried an 18-pounder this past Thanksgiving in about an hour and a half! Ladies consider. This man did the frying in a big pot in the backyard. He did the cooking!

The trouble with this fried turkey idea for Christmas is primarily that at the moment we are experiencing temperatures the likes of which would probably prune the dick of a polar bear. My friends or neighbors would probably have me committed if they saw me making a fire in the backyard and placing a bald chicken, turkey or capon in the pot, while nordic winds whisked snow all around.

Ain't gonna happen this year.

Maybe next Thanksgiving.

Which brings me back to the Big Question, the one that has me alternately wanting to fast and wanting to flee -- What will I cook this Christmas?

Maybe I should ask myself, what would I feed hungry multitudes who came to my door, starved, really hungry for lack of having had a proper meal all year? What if once again this holiday, we opt to invite those who have nowhere to go over to our place for a meal? What, I should ask myself, would they want to eat, besides a big, traditional feast -- Turkey, potatoes, squash, gravy, string beans, stuffing, pumpkin pie. Who doesn't like this? Who doesn't dream of the best family moments they ever had or those moments and the family they wished they'd had when eating this stuff.

Of course this is what I'll make and serve this holiday, while the carolers sing and the tree twinkles bright. But you can bet in the back of my mind as I pull the turkey out from the oven, I'll be thinking of my mother and smiling big.

A Call to Digital Responsibility

2010-12-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to think that owning a computer is akin to owning a gun. And maybe a license should be required before we're allowed to launch relationships with our PCs. It's what I'm thinking after reading Douglas Rushkoff's thoughtful and thought-provoking Program or be Programmed, subtitled Ten Commands for a Digital Age, a punchy paperback just shy of 150 pages published by O/R Books.

Wiry and high energy, clad in a leather jacket and wire rims, Rushkoff looked like a young Woody Allen dressed as James Dean the evening I heard him read from the Intro to his book in a Manhattan bar. A columnist for The Daily Beast (one of my online staples), Rushkoff has written numerous best-sellers on the subject of media, made documentaries, aired commentaries on NPR, published opeds in The New York Times, and appeared on television's The Colbert Report. This is not somebody whose pages one scans like a Web site or whose words on media one tends to dismiss.

Rushkoff challenges us to think about the way digital technologies affect us and claims that to date "we have very little understanding of what is happening to us and how to cope." We are not dealing at all well with "the digital tsunami" in which we are immersed.

While much of what he states has been said before -- digital technologies depersonalize, for example --Rushkoff goes further and deeper, as he both understands and can explain technology. The reader is left with a quavering sense that we are in the midst of a technological high alert, a crisis only few recognize.

We must challenge ourselves with questions like: Digital technology demands immediate responses, but are we aware of our choices? Rushkoff isn't saying technology and the Internet are bad, but they require us to put our values on the line, and we need to recognize their power over us.

It's true that those addicted to the Internet seem to be in a constant state of stand by and react as if the virtual world in which they participate is somehow real. This isn't so. The Internet can't replace life or relationships, although it can create illusions about both. According to Rushkoff, recent studies involving young people, for example, indicate there's definitely a blurring line between youths' sense of what is real and what is virtual.

Computers are easy to learn. Programming is powerful. Communication is extraordinarily delicate and nuanced, and technology is changing its nature as well as who we are and what we do. We would be wise to better examine our relationship to our digital world.

Rushkoff's book is a wake up call. If we don't look at our digital technologies more closely, if we fail to deal with them more consciously and responsibly, they will own us and determine our futures. We have a choice we must make about who, or what, takes the lead in our evolution.

A note about O/R Books, a progressive book publisher that doesn't (alas) accept unsolicited manuscripts. It publishes about two elegant books a month by writers as diverse as Chris Lehman, Eileen Myles and Gordon Lish, all of whom are names immediately recognizeable if you are tuned in at all to technology, culture or media. Check out the OR Books Web site: http://www.orbooks.com/. Stay tuned.

Eloquence and Beauty

2010-12-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

We attended the New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT) MUSE Awards Luncheon at the Hilton in New York City today only to have our collective breath taken away by the extraordinary loveliness and eloquence of actor/activist/director Marsha Hunt, who received a MUSE Award this year for her courage, dedication and inspiring work on behalf of so many causes, including that of world hunger and poverty. A stunning, vital and unbotoxed beauty at 93, she is the epitome of my idea of true success, a model of integrity, the honoree that shone most boldly and brightly for me.

In her speech, Hunt called women directors to be more compassionate in their vision and to help end the "sclock and shock" trend of current filmmaking. She received a standing ovation and was virtually swamped afterwards by women of all ages in the media and entertainment business.

Hunt, who signed on with Paramount Pictures in 1934 at the age of 18, starred in more than 50 films before being stopped short by McCarthyism in the 1950s. She was among 30 well known Hollywood personalities that included Danny Kaye, John Huston and Lauren Bacall who flew to D.C. to protest Congress and were asked to denounce their activities. Hunt refused -- not in order to support Communism, but to defend her basic rights of speech and freedom. She remains a concerned activist on issues such as poverty, peace and global pollution, serves on numerous Boards, including a board of mental health center in San Fernando Valley and has been aligned with the United Nations helping communities around the world for years. Since 1980, she has been the honorary mayor of Sherman Oaks, California. Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity, a documentary about her life by Zelda Can Dance Productions has just been completed, and we also met director/producer Roger C. Memos, who flew in from Los Angeles for the NYWIFT event.

For more information about Hunt or the documentary about her life and work, see http://www.hollywoodandart.com/zeldacandance.html

The Rewards of Courage and Persistence

2010-11-30T12:45:00.000-08:00

Kara Richardson Whitely has written a bold and riveting memoir that tells about her struggle with food, and her surmounting obstacles as she prepares to walk up Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, while raising money for an AIDS cause for children in Africa. I had the pleasure of meeting Kara at a recent Mediabistro event in New York City, which she attended with her husband Chris, in order to promote her book. Kara credits Mediabistro and its workshops with helping to write this daunting memoir.

Kara, a journalist who lives in New Jersey, has struggled with weight issues all her life. Her descriptions of reaching 350 pounds, then losing weight as she works out and prepares for her trek abroad are uncompromisingly honest and refreshing. She doesn't claim to offer diet prescriptions, but she does share what worked for her. "It took Weight Watchers here, Oprah's Boot Camp there, South Beach bars from time to time, a 4 p.m. ritual of eating Luna Bars, and working out (a lot) to get rid of one hundred pounds. I had to find out what worked for me. Sometimes nothing did."

As if losing lots of weight and working out weren't challenges enough, Kara climbs mountains and determines to walk up Kilimanjaro. Her steadfast preparation for that walk is admirable. She and Chris scale down and up the Grand Canyon and take on Vermont's Mount Mansfield and Camel Hump; but climbing isn't all that's involved. The two must take a slew of shots to ward off diseases and buy prescriptions that may save their lives. Even finding the right clothes to fit her body for that walk is a challenge. Kara, clearly willing to do whatever it takes, even takes a last minute trip to do altitude training in Telluride, Colorado.

The rewards of her efforts are immediate. After raising $12,000 for Global Alliance for Africa, Kara and Chris have the opportunity to see what sorts of help their contribution will give to families in Africa who, for example, must count on rain for their drinking water. When the two ask what is the best way to help, the director informs them, "Tell people about Africa."

By the time, Kara, Chris and friends finally embark on their adventure, the reader knows Kara is as ready as she can be, given the unforeseen. Kara finds she is both resilient and strong. When others encounter altitude sickness, for example, she is fine. When the going gets hard, she reminds herself of why she is making the trek to the top, to help AIDS orphans in Africa. "The meditation of steps, breath and the songs from our porters," carry the team up the mountain. The trekkers battle diseases like diarrhea and the trials of insomnia, and the struggle intensifies as they reach the third summit, Jamaica Rocks, at 5,500 meters above sea level. Slowly, slowly, the group reaches Gilman's Point, at 5,686 meters. Uhuru Peak, the actual summit, is 1,000 meters higher, and when Kara and Chris finally get there, the reader, knowing full well what it took, revels in the many levels of exhilaration Kara experiences having fulfilled her quest.

Fat Woman on the Mountain is an engaging and inspiring read. Far more than about the challenge of losing weight, it's about overcoming external and internal obstacles to fulfill an important and rewarding dream. As a how-to in this department, it's one of a kind, a gem.

For more information about Kara 's adventures or her book, see http://www.fatwomanonthemountain.com/.

Holiday Cheating

2010-11-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

Vegetarians never win on Thanksgiving and Christmas, so those of us who cook might as well "suck it up," as my brother Bill likes to say, and serve the meat -- in this case, poultry. This year it was capon, not turkey, and we kept our celebration small. A capon is a castrated rooster whose castration process sounds like a religious ceremony -- caponization. In any case, the bird is tender, and, I might add, rather expensive. The bird is considered less aggressive. This may be a consideration if you are faced with feeding bilious friends or family members who generally chow down on the kinds of meat that make you more aggressive or tense.

Capón, as I like to call him (with an accent egu over the o), was an 8-pounder, and the French relative of a famous American gangster -- and less aggressive, of course. I could see he also, like his fellow bird, the turkey, had innards that needed to be removed, and I cast them aside. I slathered Capón with maple syrup and tamari, a concoction that gave his crust a warm, toasty look, and a light, lovely taste -- I was told.

Along with the requisite fowl, we had stuffing, and I am proud of mine. It's hearty, lush and moist. As I am trying to keep cholesterol levels down in our household, after chopping up sweet onion, fresh celery, baby portobello mushrooms and apple bits, I sauteed them not in butter, but olive oil. Once the ingredients were made tender in the pan, I added a splash of tamari.

Into the big pot filled with an inch of water went the Pepperidge Farm stuffing. I stirred until the stuffing was slightly moist, then added my sauteed brew and stirred some more. I would have added golden raisins, but certain people with whom I reside don't like raisins in their stuffing, so, in order to please the masses, I withheld the raisins and gnoshed on them instead.

The two major sins one can commit with stuffing are making it dry and/or tossing everything into it but the kitchen sink. Please resist the temptation to do either.

As Capón reached the end of his cooking cycle -- about two and half hours -- I tossed some fresh stuffing from a box into the pan in which he was cooking and let the stuff simmer in juices for a while, then scooped out a couple of serving spoon's worth to add to the stuffing mix on the stove. Capón higher fat content makes him perfect for basting.

The stuffing was moist and to die for. Did I eat it? -- You bet. As for Capón himself, I'm afraid he is almost gone. I did not partake of him, although I did usurp his juices in the stuffing. Although I am a vegetarian, this Thanksgiving, and only in this way, I cheated.

La Fontana Di Trevi Redux

2010-11-18T13:16:00.000-08:00

If you ever have the chance, see Federico Fellini's 1960 film, La Dolce Vita. There's a wonderful scene where Anita Eckberg steps fully clothed into the Fontana di Trevi in Rome and bathes, or rather, luxuriates in its famous waters. Her delight has probably been matched more than once by diners at the Fontana di Trevi Restaurant in Leonia, New Jersey, and certainly it was matched my mine when I dined there two nights ago. The restaurant is named after the famous fountain in Rome and a restaurant of the same name once situated in Manhattan between 6th and 7th avenues that Andrew Calegari used to manage, and which the famous and not so famous often frequented after enjoying theater and concerts at nearby Carnegie Hall. The Fontana in Manhattan closed, but a few years ago, Andrew spotted twin brick storefronts in Leonia, the home of the restaurant's founder Robert Mai, and decided this was the ideal site to reopen La Fontana. The ceiling was raised, the walls painted earthy tones, and antique lamps and mirrors hung. Most of the original staff, including executive chef Hector Fresneros, was brought over. The restaurant, which opened last September, features an Old World menu, with about a dozen pasta dishes, a focus on chicken and veal, and some grand and simple surprises.

La Fontana's Caesar is legendary, and I couldn't wait to try it. It's prepared tableside, and is so fine that, according to Sara, Andrew's wife, the restaurant's diminutive hostess, baker and bread maker, customers literally cross oceans to enjoy it. I don't doubt it. The anchovies, garlic and crumbs are gently crushed by pestle in a wooden bowl, combined with a raw egg yolk, balsamic dressing, mustard and olive oil, tossed with pepper and fresh grated Parmesan over robust Romaine leaves; add a few more croutons, and presto. What a result!

I also enjoyed a simple Portobello mushroom doused in olive oil on a bed of Arugula leaves, but that was all, as I wanted to focus on desserts. We sampled three: a pure chocolate heaven, a soufflé with a rich moist center that was topped with vanilla ice cream that is normally vanilla gelato, but the kitchen was out of the latter; a bread pudding with imported panettone that was simply to die for; and a delightful strawberry crisp that was Sara's gift to us. The homemade dessert menu includes a classic tiramisu, a favorite that I will order next time.

Since it's opening, Fontana Di Trevi has garnered considerable attention, and it is easy to see why. It is now open for lunch, Tuesdays through Fridays, and I hear the lunch menu offers light and hearty options and is incredibly reasonable.

There's a saying that if you toss a coin into the actual Fontana Di Trevi, you will return to Rome. Perhaps if I drop a coin into a glass of water at Leonia's Fontana Di Trevi, I will be sure to come back there again. It's a luxury not to be missed.

Fontana Di Trevi is situated at 248 Fort Lee Road. For reservations, call 201-242-9040.

An Illuminated Past

2010-11-08T18:29:00.000-08:00

Just Kids creates a frame around all the work of Patti Smith, the writer of this elegant memoir about her life with Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer who died of AIDS in 1989, as well as the work of Mapplethorpe himself. Both artists were each other's muses, visionaries whose work, however different it was from one another, challenged established mores and shone with a unique brightness, and darkness. Their work was more than edgy. It was new. Mapplethorpe took leaps no one had taken before him, elevating gay pornography to the rank of art as he chronicled his own relationship to a world that repelled at the same time it forced one to look. Smith is a poet, writer, artist, photographer, rock and roller whose unique web of art was influenced by Mapplethorpe.

Smith's remembrances are tenderly wrought, with attention to detail that sometimes takes the breath away. It's not just Smith and Mapplethorpe who come alive as youths, but the extraordinary times in which they lived and which the two seem to transform with the urgency of their desire to transcend limitations and become artists of the first rank. It's not just the New York of their era we see shifting as they move, breathe and influence others and themselves, but everything in this brilliant retrospective.

The exquisite detail of Smith's remembrances, her trip to Paris in 1973, for example, when she slept in an attic room at L'Hotel des Etrangers, as she waited to visit Rimbaud's grave and Jim Morrison's, seep one in the richest and most delicate pictorial soup into which the reader sinks with Smith, as layer after layer of sacred time and knowledge are peeled away, until there is only art.

Smith reawakened my interest in Mapplethorpe. His work tended to repel me, even as I saw its beauty. There was one occasion in the mid 90s when I worked at a bookstore in Ithaca when I opened a large book of his photographs and chanced upon the series of a penis bound by a cord to the point of bleeding. I'd been listening to jazz, something I love, feeling totally open and in my element. The combination of books and jazz and the quietude of the section of the bookstore in which I worked had placed me in a kind of ecstasy. I was so happy there, and free to explore, and it was in this state that I came upon those photographs of Mapplethorpe which disturbed me to the core. I had no name for what I saw or witnessed. I felt like something sacred had not so much been upturned as been violated. I felt I'd seen a rape, close up, and all I could do was ask, why, for what? There was no answer for me, and so there and then, I closed the book on Mapplethorpe -- not because I couldn't understand the work, but because of how the images made me feel -- I wanted no part of it.

But it was lovely to see in Just Friends how Mapplethorpe was, as a young man in particular, how hungry they both were to be artists and how open they were together, and how brave in their art and explorations. I've often felt that artists and writers should create a frame around their work whenever it's published or shown, that poems should never appear alone in collections without context, a word or two, or even an image of the poet, something that shows how the creation arose, from whence it came. In Just Friends, Smith has created a wildly elegant frame around her friend and muse, around their life together. This is a work of art, not just a gift to Mapplethorpe, but to everyone who reads it.

Chocolate, Good and Bad

2010-10-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

It's hard to imagine there could be bad chocolate, but I just had a disappointing experience I'd like to tell you about. I'm not going to blame it on the brand. I think it was something else.

I've been fond of Lindt Truffles for a long time. I love the prettily wrapped balls of chocolate and the lovely bags in varying shades of blue in which they come. My favorites have been the white chocolate and the dark chocolate Lindor truffles with the smooth creamy filling. We had a perfect experience of the Lindor variety, then went for another two bags at the local Walgreen. Those bags remain open but untouched two weeks after being bought, their goods barely sampled. Those chocolates will probably never get eaten, as they were hard and unappetizing and the cream just wasn't there -- literally.

I'm not blaming this on our taste buds, but on the heat or combination of temperatures to which these particular chocolates were exposed. After being purchased, they sat in the car in heat while we were at a movie -- Fall had not yet spread its cold hands through our car interior. Later that evening, the now semi-melted chocolate went into our refrigerator, hardening into wrinkly, ugly looking things. You could also taste the fat in the chocolate -- This, I will blame on the brand or on the particular batch we bought.

We generally first cool these particular truffles in the fridge. But you can't mess with temperatures with the chocolate too much. We should have bought the two bags after, not before the movie.

I am ever mindful of chocolate. I have a charming little book on the subject sitting alongside my laptop to remind me of what I like whenever I'm bored or distracted. The book, by Sarah Moss and Alexander Badenach, called Chocolate, is part of The Edible Series.

Did you know that cacao beans were used as currency in the 1500s? In 1528, Fernando Cortez returned to Spain with beans from his plantation in Mexico. The Spanish would mix the bitter cocoa liquid with sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, allspice, cloves and cinnamon. In 1828, Conrad Van Heuten invented the cocoa press to squeeze out the cocoa butter, making for a more consistent, smoother beverage. Van Heuten was the first to treat cocoa with alkali. The very first milk chocolate was made by Swiss chocolate maker, Daniel Peter in 1875.

I love chocolate, but as someone who also likes pure foods, I'm a fan these days of Green & Black's Organic chocolate, which even includes a vegan dark chocolate variety. Each of the brand's types of chocolate has varying degrees of fat, which comes from the cocoa butter. Although you find fat in chocolate, it's a rich source of antioxidants, which help purify the system.

The best way to savor chocolate is to start with a clean palate, even though I have enjoyed it with espresso. Just place a small square on your tongue and let it melt slowly. The best chocolates taste silky and smooth. There are many varieties, but it seems to me a double treat when you find one that's not only good for you, purely made, but incredibly tasty too!

Getting Down with Palahniuk

2010-10-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

I picked up a collection of Chuck Palahniuk's essays recently. I didn't know anything about his work, but the buzz in the back of my head was that he's good. Guys like him, I suspected. He wrote Fight Club, which became a movie that became a hit of sorts.

In Stranger Than Fiction, Palahniuk tells the story about the summer he injected himself with anabolic steroids and (for a minute) felt himself to be a super man; the story about his experience on a navy boat where being gay is an invisible elephant; the story about tractors ramming each other mercilessly; and the one about wrestlers all but killing themselves and each other. And that crazy Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival, where people get naked and weird. In one story, disquieting psychic friends see through to crisis moments in Palahniuk's and his friends' pasts, but he dismisses their perceptions. There are portraits too of actor Juliette Lewis and others who think they know who they are, but who remain shadowy, in psychic distress.

Like Palahniuk himself.

Chuck Palahniuk's background is ragingly dark. His grandfather shot his wife and would have killed his son, Chuck's father, if he'd seen him, but he was hiding under the bed. The grandfather shot his wife then himself. Chuck's father married and divorced Chuck's mother only to wind up getting killed years later, along with his girlfriend, by her ex. Palahniuk's memories of his father are like a horror show.

He's a brooding minimalist who skims over the surface of things, scrubbing an appearance fairly well with his words, calling it truth. But he's not interested in the truth of truth, but in being cynical and hard, much in the way Hemingway was, or got. He's interested in being manly too, but not so manly that it betrays something too deep in himself. Even though he gives the impression of daring and curiosity on his adventures, he's actually pretty cautious and doesn't dig so deep, but lingers on the periphery charting the course of a ball or a fist or rickocheting time until (you get the impression) he gets the feeling of a thing being done, and closes with a thoughtful epiphany.

The thing is, I don't care if he's good. I can sniff out a good truth teller and a good liar and he's neither, and for me, you have to be one or the other to be a good storyteller. He sees things only partway, offering up only glimpses of himself, doing the best that he can to avoid what a thing is completely, and perhaps who he is too. Even if a great writer never gives details about himself or herself, you know who they are at heart in their work, well enough to like or despise them. I come away with details but no sense of the man save as a shadow like the Hulk.

Anyway, he revels in these worlds of men. There's the story about the summer he injected himself with anabolic steroids and (for a minute) felt himself to be a super man; the story about his experience on a navy boat where being gay is an invisible elephant; the story about tractors ramming each other mercilessly across a vast field; and the one about wrestlers all but killing themselves and each other. And that crazy Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival, where people get naked and weird. In one story, disquieting psychic friends see through to crisis moments in Palahniuk's and his friends' pasts, but he dismisses their perceptions. There are portraits too, of actor Juliette Lewis and others who think they know who they are, but who remain shadowy, in psychic distress.

Like Palahniuk.

Punk Activism Brings Down the House

2010-10-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

I love Patti Smith's poetry. I wasn't a part of the punk rock scene of the 70s when Smith's music first began blowing away people's minds. I was too busy hiding in the Berkshires. I'd heard of Smith, but didn't start getting into her work until I chanced upon her poetry, which happened to be published alongside mine in The Cafe Review in the late 90s. From that moment on, I couldn't stop digging her music and poems. I believe she's also an artist, multi-dimensional, and that's no surprise.

I had the chance to film her tonight, performing, as part of a special benefit event for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), hosted by the Puffin Foundation at the Museum of the City of New York. She followed the great Pete Seeger and Guy Davis (who is the son of Ruby Dee and Ozzie Davis), a powerful Blues artist and musician.

One can't say enough about Seeger, whose commitment as a musician to peace and social justice causes defies description and belief. He's been around as a professional more than 70 years, and has been singing about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and its struggle to save Spain from Franco for 60 years. As someone said at tonight's event, Seeger is "America's own troubadour." He sings because he loves it and loves America. And he makes everyone sing along with him. It's really beautiful to see all that history skimming across his face when he performs.

But here's the thing, although I was there as a professional to film the event, as a fan, I was really there to see Patti. Afterward, I got to meet her and chat with her a bit about her book, Just Kids, which was just nominated for The National Book Award. The book chronicles her coming of age as an artist with friend Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer who died of AIDS in 1989. The 2009 film, Dream of Life, an intimate portrait of Smith's journey as an artist, was also nominated for an Emmy.

Smith is more than a poet, artist, singer, performer and songwriter. She's humble, calm and graceful and wouldn't allow herself to be classified an activist, but dedicated her performances to activists, starting with Seeger. She read from Auguries of Innocence, her most recent volume of poetry, and sang for protesters, prefacing, "The thing is, with activists, they're not getting out there to win, win, win. They're getting out there, knowing they're going to lose, lose, lose."

Poetic and punk, dramatic and low key, Smith is larger than life, an ageless rebel. I especially like that she hasn't let time or trends, opinion or praise compromise her power and grace.

Birthday Thoughts and Wishes

2010-10-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

Oct. 15 is my birthday, and I share it with Nieszche, P.D. Wodehouse, Barry McGuire, and, well, as my sister Marcela put it in her voice note today, "the list goes downhill from there." So, on this occasion, I'm going to indulge in a highly personal post. It's my privilege, after all.

Today my niece Kerry's second son, Bode, arrived. How can you beat that for the greatest birthday present ever. I went out to a wonderful dinner and received plenty of thoughful calls and cards and highly personalized and lovely Facebook messages, some from friends I haven't seen in way too long. And there's an invitation to a premier on Oct. 25th, extending my birthday well into the future. I'd like to keep celebrating like that.

In return for all the love, I have a smattering of thoughts I'd like to share back. My current biggest concern is how to help youth, and really encourage and support them. Recently, a gay college student jumped off the GWB after being cruelly outed by his roommate on the Internet. His story made headlines around the world, and I wish he knew the care he catalyzed, and hadn't had to die to get people to care. It's a world where too much that is tragic happens to the young, and where it's harder than ever to grow up with hope. It's a world thriving with technology but struggling to communicate, where people often sit across from one another in restaurants texting on their cell phones or emailing other people while ignoring one another.

I ask myself often: What kind of a world are we ushering our kids into? Where is the intimacy, trust and love? We have to show it to them, support their sharing and creativity, demonstrate the humanity that is there and encourage them to have faith that it will be there for them when they need it most.

Two organizations that are doing truly valuable work with teens are worthy of mentioning here. One is The Trevor Project, dedicated to combatting suicide prevention among LGBT teens. It provides an online community, statistics and helpful resources for families and teens. The other, J.K. Livin, started by actor Matthew McConaughey in 1993, helps kids create healthy lifestyles. The Foundation has partnered with Communities in Schools (CIS), the country's largest dropout prevention organization. Celebrity support is helping these organizations grow, but they are looking for help from regular folks too.

Whether you have children or not -- and I don't -- you simply can't deny the importance of passing along a peaceful, kind and helpful legacy to the young, as they ARE our future.

Although I never had kids, I've been blessed as a teacher to know some of the most awesome students, kids I saw flower before my very eyes -- when they were encouraged and supported -- and incredibly loving and blessed nephews and nieces. Their talents aside, they are loving and kind --they think of others; they want to help their neighbors -- even across the globe. They believe in the power of love and hope.

I don't worry about them so much as I do those kids without guidance or hope, turning to drugs or fantasizing about dying as if it's an ultimate high. Big news -- You don't come down or return when you jump off a bridge. These are the kids that worry me, and some are gay and some are not. But they are all burdened with tremendous pressure, more than ever before. We made their world, and we have to help them bear the burden of it in these very challenging times.

I'm convinced I have to help. Those of us who were delinquent youths, or drug or alcohol abusers, those of us who made it through into our adulthood know how challenging growing up can be. It's more challenging now, and it's not terribly complicated: The young need our help, and we can't turn our backs on them or let them grow up alone.

Please, if anyone has suggestions about how to help struggling youth locally, share your ideas with me. I know there's a lot one can do. But your suggestions and experience mean a lot and can add to the pot of caring.

Napa Valley Surprises

2010-10-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

I had just finished saying two days before that you can't find a decent restaurant in a mall. Never say never. We stepped into Napa Valley Grille in the Garden State Plaza, after discovering to our chagrin that a favorite eatery blending the fire of cuisine from south of the border with Japanese dishes had closed. Who would have thought that turning then toward something new would lead to a kind of boon.

Napa Valley's interior suggests California's spaciousness with its vista of wide tables covered with white tablecloths; low lights add warmth and displays of California wines are everywhere, including racks set into the wall overhead. I was delighted to discover a very vegetarian friendly menu, and we approached ordering as if at a Tapas restaurant. Our water had just been poured, and we were promptly served a plate of delicious peppery breads with sides of olive paste and olive oil.

We ordered a few appetizers to sample variety. The grilled Portobello mushrooms served over chic pea fries with goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette were my personal favorite. My partner preferred the dish of sweet roasted garlic with goat cheese and a subtle and sweet tomato chutney and Parmesan chips. Our waiter didn't blink when we asked him to substitute the blue cheese with goat cheese, and he was extremely helpful answering questions throughout our meal. We also ordered a satisfying plate of fresh mozzarella and fresh roasted peppers over baby arugula with balsamic dressing that is pretty much standard fare for me whenever I dine at an Italian place. We closed the meal with creme brule and a pistachio gelato with caramel topping -- both desserts were delicate and extraordinary -- and some very fine espressos.

Napas Valley Grille recently launched a Sunday brunch that runs until three and has been very successful, according to the manager. Sample small plates include waffles and cream, Grand Marnier French toast, and huevos rancheros burrito, to name three, and soon there will be jazz.

Try Napas if you want to enjoy some fine samplings of western and southwestern cuisine along with some good conversation. The menu is tasty, varied and generous.

Napas Valley Grille has a location in Paramus on the east coast, somewhere in the wiles of Minnesota and also in Los Angeles.

What's the Matter with Caesar?

2010-09-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Next time you order an "award-winning" salad at a mall restaurant, no matter how cool the restaurant name may seem or how much of the moment, don't expect award-winning taste. You probably won't get it.

As you've probably gathered by now, I'm particularly hopeful about getting good food when I dine out. And I have my compulsions and likes. Sunday afternoon, we went out to a place called Papa razzi -- because I like the name -- and I felt compelled to order their "award winning "Caesar, over and above some very fine sounding pasta dishes and other combos that might have attracted a vegetarian like me.

I wasn't that hungry. And I wanted the salad, a variety that I particularly like, and to see what made it so special.

I do love Caesars. I get a masochistic thrill out of ordering a pile of Romaine leaves tossed with sprinkles of cheese and crumbs of bread that usually runs me about eight bucks a plate. But here's the real reason I order Caesars. It's one of those supremely simple dishes that really can be exquisitely made. As the story goes with eggs with me, I'm also in search of the perfect Caesar. It's a love thing.

When I lived in Connecticut, I had a girlfriend with whom I used to lunch two or three times a week, and it was always Caesar. Seems like we enjoyed some mighty fine ones up and down Fairfield County, in Greenwich, New Canaan, Westport and Weston in the late 1990s, and maybe that stint with Caesars spoiled me with the dish for good. I didn't eat out as often as my pal did, but whenever we went for our pedis and manis together, we went for our Caesars too.

The best Caesars I've had seemed casual enough, until you pop a leaf of lettuce in your mouth. You can see there's dressing, and its taste is definitive and refreshing -- and the crunch of croutons, satisfying. Afterwards, you feel like you've had a meal.

The Caesar I had at Papa razzi yesterday did not make my top 10 list or even come close. It was pretty forgettable. And that in itself is a sin for a dish so simple.

Although they were crispy, the leaves tasted like water and it was that rather than the flavor of dressing that seeped into my mouth. Secondly, the anchovy dressing didn't taste remotely like anchovies -- more like a thimbleful of lightly peppered mayonaisse. And the salad was topped with thin slivers of oily crackers so painful to bite and so awkward, that with each chew, I felt I was massacring the lining inside my cheeks. The only good part of the salad was the decent parmesan.

The three unforgiveables with salad are: yellowy leaves, watery leaves and an unappetizing appearance. This Caesar looked well enough, but it wasn't savory.

I'm glad I wasn't that hungry.

I'm not going to review the place from which my Caesar came. I loathe reviews. Who the eff is anybody to walk in anywhere and start tearing down what in some cases has taken somebody or a group of people a lifetime to create. But I am going to suggest that any joint that opts to write "award-winning" next to the Caesar on its menu better make sure it not only presents an eye-catching fancy, but a salad that tastes as good as it looks!

But here's what I have to say to the cooks at Papa razzi's. Make a decent dressing for chrissakes -- get water off the leaves and get some croutons or chips that are not only incredibly tasty, but crumble easily. A Caesar should be a work of art with a unique and memorable combination of tastes! Tart, crunchy and delightful.

A Passion for Politics and People

2010-09-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

        James Dette has created a colorful and authentic portrait in Rollmops, A Novel of Local Politics, in the process demonstrating a keen ear for dialogue and the details that make up diverse characters. In Hoboken politician, Johnny Kavanaugh, Dette has created a familiar protagonist whose folly and trials, the reader eagerly follows. Anyone who's ever attended a council meeting or been involved with local politics, will recognize the humor and classic elements of this scene:

       "'Of course,' came a voice from the rear. 'The realtors are going to cash in.' There was a murmur of agreement accompanied by the tapping of the president's pencil.
       'Please,' said Maurice. 'Everyone will have a chance to speak. Mr. Davidson, please get to the point.' He wanted to avoid a long speech supporting the project.
       'Thank you. I will.' Sensing the mood of the audience, Davidson said, 'I just want to object to the Councilman Kavanaugh's characterization of the developers as greedy.'
        Without waiting for Maurice's recognition, Johnny responded, 'As my mother would say, Mr. Davidson, 'Those developers would skin a gnat for its tallow.'"

        Dette is currently at work on a novel titled, The Tree in Calle Sulaco, set in the mid 1960s that will combine politics and love, American oil interests and indigenous rights; its climax "portends events in Latin America for decades to come," Dette has written. According to Dette, his work for the American Institute for Free Labor Development in Ecuador "provided the grist for this novel."

        He resides in Weehawken, New Jersey, and has published travel articles, commentaries and opinion pieces for such venues as The New York Times, Street News and The Record. Rollmops is his first novel and is available through Full Court Press and Amazon.com.

Arya's Double Cheese and Veggie OMelet

2010-09-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

This is of course the perfect meal to enjoy with a cup of steaming espresso on a Saturday or Sunday morning.

As most of you who read my blog know, I've been on a quest to create the perfect omelet. This one is as close as I've come. The ingredients: four scrambled eggs, sauteed portobello mushrooms with a bit of fresh garlic and a dash of tamari sauteed in olive oil; mozzarella cheese, Hungarian paprika --it has a duskier flavor than the usual variety -- fresh spinach leaves, sprinklings of parmesan and pepper.

It works!

Where's That Decent Veggie Burger?

2010-09-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

I was at a diner last night with some friends and felt compelled to order yet again one of those meals I know will leave me feeling empty, despite how it looks on the menu. Veggie burgers always look appetizing, but rarely taste as well as they look.

I know this, and yet I am driven to keep trying.

What is it about a veggie burger? I can't tell you how many kinds I've tried, and how rarely I have actually enjoyed one. I've tasted the cardboard type, the hockey puck variety, the kind that crumbles at the touch, and the kind that tastes like a cross between your cat's dry food and your dog's canned food.

The best veggie burger I ever had was in a little shop in Boardman, Ohio, called The Flaming Ice Cube. The burger was juicy, fat, delicious. It still crumbled, but The Flaming Ice Cube's variety is as close to perfection as they come.

I do know vegetarian burgers are the only kind for me. The last time I had a McDonald's burger, I was 20 and the thing I ate, made of horse meat or something like it, sat in my gut for about three days. I knew then that I simply couldn't do cheap burgers any more. It would be a while before I'd go vegetarian, but I still love burgers and I'm still looking for a vegetarian one that will do.

I looked up a few recipes to see what's going on. Part of the challenge is getting the food binder right. Some binder ingredients -- like brown rice and seitan -- can feel like lead. The answer is to boil or steam the seitan before adding it to the mix. Lighter binders can be made using egg whites, lentils and bread crumbs.

Here are some standard ingredients for those of you who want to try putting together your own veggie burger: brown lentils and brown rice, dried thyme and dry mustard, eggs, garlic, black pepper, parsley, mushrooms, onion, shredded beets, carrots and zucchini and textured veggie protein, tomato paste and soy sauce or Tamari.

Personally, I prefer Tamari. It's like a rich soy sauce, without wheat., and I use it on everything. My favorite salad dressing is a blend of tamari and olive oil. I season stir fry dishes and soups with tamari; I've even used it on eggs. I've used it on everything but drinks, although I can actually fathom adding it like tabasco to some late night wild concoction. I could even add it to Diet Coke, for an extra sweet zing!

The next time I make my own veggie burger at home, I'm going to add Tamari and coke to the mix. If it doesn't work, I'm going to toss chopped garlic, onions, peppers, seitan, lentils, tomato paste, tamari and a splash of coca cola into a pan and get down with some sloppy joes!

A Nightmare Turns to Hope

2010-09-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

Lost No More, A Mother's Spiritual Journey Through Her Son's Addiction, by Marilyn Burns M.S., L.P.C.C. and Christopher Burns is the most compelling memoir on the subject of drug addiction and its effect on loved ones that I've read. It's no-holds barred and gut-wrenching, and the reader won't be spared. But at the end of the grueling feelings and processes, after the last page is turned, the reader also finds she has gained illumination and understanding about the devastation of the disease and the power that hope and faith can have in combatting it. One marvels at the courage it took to write this story, which turns out to be a one-of-a-kind primer on how to survive the unfathomable -- the loss of a child through drug abuse.

Most of the popular memoirs on drug and alcohol abuse such as Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, and Augusten Burroughs's Dry, were written by addicts and alcoholics who survived their periods of insanity and could recount them, looking back with wry humor and wisdom. Chris Burns did not survive his addiction, but it is clear his spirit lives on, and his mother, Marilyn, a mental health counselor, makes a valiant effort channeling it and her attempts to save her son, for the reader. A single mother who raised two sons on her own, she never let up trying to support and understand her son's multiple problems, which included ADD/ADHD and addiction to opiates.

After years of struggling with addiction, Chris succumbed from a heart attack induced by drugs in April 2007 at the age of 23. Anyone who has suffered from addiction or has been impacted by the disease knows that no amount of brilliant effort or consistent love can prevent the addict from using, unless he himself makes that choice. At the same time, it is deeply poignant to realize as one reads excerpts from Chris's letters to his mother, how much he wanted to stop abusing drugs and to become the healthy, happy young man he believed he was meant to be and how aware he was of the perils of his disease. This cautionary tale seems doubly tragic when one realizes how much Chris loved his mother and family and how much he wanted to survive addiction.

According to recent statistics, opiate use is up among youth across the U.S. Last month, the online version of University of Washington News reported that in 2009, 160 out of 253 deaths from drug overdoses in King County were from opiates. By comparison, in 1997, there were only 21 prescription-type opiate deaths in that county. A recent online post by Addiction Recovery Legal Services (ARL), a Web site dedicated to helping to families of addicts, states that "five people in Florida die every day as a direct result of prescription drug overdoses, including from hydrocodone (e.g. vicodin) and oxycodone (e.g. oxycontin)." At one point in his journey with drug abuse, Chris was in Florida, trying, but failing to get his life underway. One of the most powerful moments in the book occurs as Marilyn describes an instinctive search she makes of her son's apartment, a search that confirms her worst fears, leading as it does to the discovery, on her birthday no less, that her son is using heroin.

Lost No More is as much a story of harrowing loss as it is of relentless hope. While there is no longer hope for Chris's recovery from drugs, it is clear his spirit and power of love live on through his mother's words, his memory and the lessons of his experience.

Lost No More is available through http://www.amazon.com/, and additional information on the book can be accessed via http://www.lostnomore.us/.

Paris Ahoy!

2010-09-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

"It's amazing how you can make the right decision for all the wrong reasons," Elizabeth Bard, Lunch in Paris

You can argue the opposite, which is truer to the way I've lived: It's amazing how you can make the wrong decision for all the right reasons. But let's not live with regret. Je ne regret rien! It's nasty, and one has to forgive oneself for making mistakes, gargantuan as they may sometimes feel. We're human after all, just hungry humans browsing the bookstores of life and art and time.

Speaking of which, while perusing the Food & Cooking section at my local Borders today, I realized I've had enough of reading about famous chefs whose faces and names have been played out by the media. I wonder whether these stars still take a slow or mindful approach to cuisine, or if they ever did. Or whether they're dominated by anything besides the need to make a bigger buck. And so, today, I went searching for the new name, an author I did not know that might have something fresh to tell me about the art of cooking and a place I'd like to visit -- in this case, visit once more.

Elizabeth Bard's Lunch in Paris, A Love Story with Recipes is pithy and delightful, immediately engrossing. If you love falling in love, enjoy romantic tales, have visited or wish to see Paris and dine on fabulous, rich, simple food, you'll want to pluck this off the shelf. Bard's adventures launch with her fateful first date, lunch with Gwendal, a Frenchman doing Ph.D. research on how to archive film and video on the Internet. Elizabeth and Gwendal proceed to his apartment to have tea and make love. The rest of the story is about the recipes Bard encounters as her romance with Paris and Gwendal unfold.

Gwendal introduces her to simple, yet provocative dishes: "Student" Charlotte, or Charlotte Aux Abricots (Ladyfingers), Pasta a la Gwendal, with minced vegetables olive oil, garlic and onion. Over the next months and years, Paris unfurls recipes and magic. There are infinite varieties of croissants, yogurt cakes, and of course chocolate desserts like chocolate souffle cake. There are lively descriptions of sidestreet cafes and delicate and insouciant meals. The experience of spending weekends with Gwendal, season after season, leads to the inevitable moment when Bard finds herself standing in her clod-hopper high school sneakers with the man of her dreams on a wintry Parisian street as he affirms simply and unequivically that he loves her and wants to marry her.

Parisian fare plays an important role through Bard's courtship and marriage, but after the melt-in-your mouth meats and fancy desserts, it all comes down to cheese. You can't talk about food in France without mentioning cheese. Among other things, the wedding party gets to relish a peppery Salers, goat cheese, and comte, which is a bit like sweetened Parmesan.

Bard, an ex-pat, awakens the reader to a Paris of dreams, where one encounters not only a variety of intriguing dishes, all of which seems to include, pepper, garlic, olive oil and butter, those staples of fine cuisine, but a unique assortment of friends too -- like the refined Katherine, the devlish Kekla, and the emphatically French, Axelle.

Lunch in Paris reminded me of a simple maxim that has held true for me over the years, that people who pay attention to the kinds of food they prepare and serve at home, who go out of their way to please and to surprise, also pay attention to the art of love. It only stands to reason that in the city of love, there is also extraordinary food.

The Joy of E-Lit

2010-08-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

The Joy of E-Lit

I spend so much of the day in front of a computer, I have to ask myself why I'm so preoccupied with telling you about books, the kind one cradles in one's palms, like an infant, and not the lit to which I'm privy daily on the Internet.

I'm a child of hands-on lit, as opposed to the kind you access on Kindle and other wireless reading devices. But, I realize, I'm always reviewing lit, in a way, posting links on Facebook and Twitter, texting everybody about my latest and best Internet finds. Not a day goes by that I don't post at least a handful of links to something that in the moment feels like the most amazing new discovery. The best E-lit is fresh and timely.

On my fave e-lit list this week is a stunning review by Charles McNulty, the L.A. Times theater critic, of Dream of Life, Steven Sebring's 2008 film about avant garde poet/rocker Patti Smith. McNulty's understanding of Smith, her journey and 1960s New York was so in-depth, astute and sensitive, I simply had to "comment." I'm ashamed to admit that before reading the byline I assumed the writer was a woman.

But hey. On the Internet, it's always more about What I read than Who wrote it.

I read a handful of books a week, and literally dozens of articles a day, and scan dozens a day, and you can bet this wouldn't be without the props of a computer or laptop. Haven't experts already proven the Internet improves reading ability?

It's not just cool articles I pore over, but helpful, inspiring blogs, many on social media. I'm fascinated by the increasingly abbreviated language spawned by social media networking, and equally with the role that youth plays in evolving our language and attraction to things techie. Reading my niece's facebook posts, I note that letters can be used like art, and rarely used keys such as * can carry a host of meanings. You can always count on kids to create fresh values.

Thanks to our Blackberries and computers we can speak economically about just about anything. Or we can go on about it. Who's to stop us? The electronic rant is the new silent song of the masses, the deliverance of the individual from the shackles of nine-to-five, and just about any kind of oppression -- momentary, illusionary or real.

Our language is increasingly abbreviated, symbolic. Beyond math and the alphabet. What do all these conflagrations of meek, rarely used keys combined with ordinary expressions mean to our styles of evolving communication? What do they mean to kids, and to our future? How will they impact how we speak and communicate tomorrow?

I'm a fan of The New Yorker. I love a long read in a chaise lounge under the sun or the dim light of a reading lamp in the wee hours. I cherish stories that have arcs and characters and take a while to read and digest. But I also know that anything as charged as the coils of tweets going out all over the Internet universe have something vital to say about who we are and how we live. Studying them is a revelation about how fast our culture changes, and also about our illusions of change.

New styles of communication seem as easy to learn and enjoy as breakfast cereal for the kids who conjure them as they go along. Yesterday's language is, well, just that. Minimalism plus a jazz twist, a dadaist urge to upturn what came before is what I see happening now -- text novels, tweeting can be performance art in sound bites. They can also be plagiaristic, meta-fiction, forgettable. But they have acquired the power to arouse us, our interests, curiosity, thought and ire -- often for justifiable causes. And for this, if nothing else, we must thank them.

Riding the Meritocracy

2010-08-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

I just read the latest U.S. News university ranking, which places Princeton after Harvard and before Yale. My niece Gabriela turned down Harvard and Princeton for Yale, and her older sister turned down a $38,000 offer from Columbia, also to attend Yale, and just graduated from that institution. Personally, I would have considered disowning my daughter for turning down such a sum of money, and making me pay through the teeth for her education. Hopefully, the Wall Street firm where she is currently ensconced acquiring the tools that greedy people in power use to derail economies, will also provide her with the means to feed back some of the thousands of dollars her parents spent on her education. But, who am I to judge? I'm not the mother. Just the aunt. And I can't brag about my kid going to Yale or any ivy league institution, because I don't have kids, thank god. I'm still trying to recover from my own education.

Perhaps many people are.

Certainly Walter Kirn is. Kirn made the unwise choice (for himself), but wise (for us) decision to attend Princeton in the 1970s, and lived to tell about it. Lost in the Meritocracy paints Princeton as anything but the romantic intellectual brothel for the elite that I imagined it to be, the home of great talents such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wandered its halls briefly, and certainly took away attitude if nothing else from the experience.

I am happy to report that Lost in the Meritocracy is seeped in the author's experiences of drugs, alcohol and lost youth, and is therefore just my kind of read -- even after all these years of no longer being a booze belle or drug freak. I wonder if it's because I never got over the trauma of college too, the first time around at one of the Catholic seven sisters' schools. I might have written a book about how much I hated my descent into alcohol and dope (I didn't), and on my book cover would be the image of a lovely maroon and gray disembodied skirt, or perhaps a cluster of disembodied nuns' headdresses -- Kirn's book features an orange and black Princeton sweatshirt. Only a sophisticated, spoiled guy can publish a rant about how bad school was for him and get paid well for it, heck, have it published in the Atlantic magazine, then a book that made best seller lists. Where did Kirn learn all the sophisticated tricks of the literary trade? -- Minnesota from which he seems embarrassed to have sprung? I doubt it. Perhaps Princeton. Lost in the Meritocracy seems like one smart letter of application to me, "Please accept me even though I'm deriding you. Look how cleverly I'm doing it!" I may be crossing my legs in the opposite direction, but I'm flirting with you!

"Percentile is destiny in America," declares Kirn early on in this dramatic personal testament of scholarly waywardness. He confirms what I have long suspected, that most universities are filled with automatons who don't have the slightest clue about what they are doing or what knowledge is. But is this news?

He goes on to say: "Four years after that bus ride I'm slumped on an old sofa in the library of my Princeton eating club, waiting to feel the effects of a black capsule that someone said would help me finish writing my overdue application for a Rhodes scholarship. At the other end of the sofa sits my good friend Adam (all names in this piece have been changed)—a Jewish science whiz from the New York suburbs who ate magic mushrooms one evening, had a vision, and switched from pre-med to English literature. Adam should be reading Dubliners, which he'll be tested on early tomorrow morning, but he's preoccupied with an experiment. He's smashing Percocet tablets with a hammer and trying to smoke the powder through a water pipe. I have other companions in estrangement, way out here on the bell curve's leading edge, where our talent for multiple-choice tests has landed us without even the sketchiest survival instructions. Our club isn't one of the rich, exclusive outfits, where the pedigreed children of the establishment eat chocolate-dipped strawberries off silver trays carried by black waiters in starched white uniforms, but one that anyone can join, where geeks and misfits line up with plastic plates for veggie burgers and canned fruit salad."

I remember a few years back when I was teaching at Cornell and came upon a computer lab filled with students typing madly. I had a brief hallucinogenic moment of clarity in which I understood as clearly and completely as I know I'm here typing this right now that these kids were at that moment all of one mind in trying to find the fastest way possible to produce something, anything their profs would like, and nothing more and nothing less than that. There was no curiosity in the air, no hint of a search for genuine knowledge, no trace of passionate engagement. And believe it or not, at the time, I was shocked by that. My sense was that most if not all these kids viewed being at Cornell as a small penance to pay before getting to the real business of life -- being loosed upon the world to make fabulous dollars -- the ability to make fabulous dollars of course being the proof of one's serviceability in the world. If one is a true genius, one makes money, lots of it. That's the premier American belief. No doubt about it.

The Great Gatsby, the greatest American novel ever written, said it all. Here's how to take a fast ride to the top even if it means killing somebody along the way: Whom did you kill on your way to make a buck today, dear?

But let's get back to the issue at hand, which is our colleges and universities and their lack of spirit and humanity. It's no mystery or exaggeration that academic pressure can break students -- at all levels of education. Stress at Princeton made Kirn aphasic for a time. He brought himself back by reciting dictionary words and their definitions. A double PhD from Harvard informed me recently that while attending Harvard in the 1960s, there were "many suicides, most of them women who were in the minority anyway and couldn't bear to get a less than perfect grade." There were so many in fact that my friend decided to finish up her degrees outside Harvard. My niece, the one who was accepted at Harvard, said she rejected it because she heard so many admonishing stories from other students who had gotten in, only to find themselves overwhelmed by the "oppressive burden" of being there that seems to hang in the very air.

Unfortunately, the public doesn't hear much about student failures unless they make the news. It's also true that if stress doesn't break you in college, it could later. But not every graduate student turns into a Craig's list killer.

It's interesting how for all of his dramatic posturing and often humorous replay of his angst-ridden years at Princeton, such a bright man as Kirn doesn't care enough to offer solutions or even pose questions about America's poisonous meritocracy. It's like he's smoking his cigar, sipping on his Cointreau, sitting in some club, tossing his story out to whoever will listen. He doesn't really care how it falls. He's got his condo and his paycheck, after all. You out there, you're on your own.

Of course the questions are cliche, but they need to be asked over and over again until somebody, somewhere comes up with solutions: Why do so many students and teachers not care about education? Why do students and teachers alike self-destruct in the system? Where does care begin? What is it we must teach first in school, even before first grade?

What if, from the beginning, we taught kindness and consideration instead of competition, and the value of human life, of life in general over and above the primacy of the dollar. Maybe there would be two or three students sharing a computer in a lab come college time, getting nurturance from accidental body heat instead of suffering isolation, and thus drinking themselves to death, or diving from the Empire State building, or into Ithaca's falls -- as is the style at Cornell -- just because they failed to make a grade.

We have to rethink what it is we value, and stop putting such a high premium on information -- as if it's knowledge, it's not. And on high rankings. Minds aren't computers, and the education system has to genuinely consider the hearts and entire beings of those it purports to nurture.

ODE TO THE LEMON

2010-08-17T13:41:00.000-07:00

"Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat." - Will Holt

The song about the lemon was written by Holt and recorded by the folk group, Peter, Paul and Mary, by Trini Lopez and others in the 1960s. It was also used in a Pledge furniture cleaning commercial.

Imitation is the highest flattery. Like the fruit, the song found many uses.

The lemon is one versatile fruit with an amazing number of culinary and non-culinary uses. If you're a kid or have a kid's heart, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a lemon is lemonade. If you're an adult, you might think of a bad car -- although, I hope not!

Check out some of the myriad uses for that magical little yellow oval: Lemon juice can be used to highlight your hair, remove stains, clear blemishes and blackheads, cure colds, clean kitchen appliances, deodorize and disinfect.

Who knew?

The lemon is said to have originated in India. It's often a garnish for tasty dishes. Have you ever tasted pickled lemons, a Moroccan delicacy?

And what of lemon meringue pie!

I associate lemons with my all-favorite drink, espresso. I love the delicate art of making and drinking espresso, and also enjoy my drink served with a tiny lemon rind sliver. The tartness adds zing to many after-dinner drinks.

One of my favorite lunch spots, Centro, in Fairfield, Connecticut, decorates tables with a water decanter on which sits a wholesome lemon. The sight of it always seems to beckon me to come, sit and enjoy a light, delicious meal.

Sketches of Spain

2010-08-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

Spain, now considered the new France, is renowned for all kinds of delightful foods, many of which I would never dream of approaching with a knife and fork. Spain's cows yield some of the best veal, and the country is also known for wild boar and fish. Last but not least is the fine wine, Albariño being one of the most popular.

The fact that I'm a non-drinking vegetarian in no way diminishes my love for Spain or my desire to go there. It's deep in my roots. My grandmother on my mother's side, a Breton, was from Spain, and her lineage of gifted musicians and writers traces back to that country. I would love to go to Spain and eat there. To see flamenco and jotas, danced by real gypsies -- if there are any left. I was raised dancing jotas and watching my mother -- who was a dancer before she became a writer -- dance flamencos, red heels sending dust into the air, denting the wood platform in her studio. Her handsome head cocked, she raised her arms, fingers snapping fire. She aroused the sleeping world with the rat-a-tat of her castanets. When my parents traveled to Spain years ago, my mother got up on a stage to dance with gypsies and my father, Iowa-born and conservative by nature, was so moved, he even clapped his hands to the music -- perhaps even to the rhythm!

When I go to Spain, I will be sure to dine at Restaurante Solla in Pontevedra. Chef Pepe Solla's signature dish -- a poached egg with black olives on toast -- is one of those items on my dream menu. What does Pontevedra look like? What does it feel like? I dream of strolling in sandals along cobble-stoned streets alongside the sea, a stick of fresh bread under my arm, the waft of peasant food leading me on. I can taste those olive-laced eggs now.

The Nature of -- Sublime

2010-08-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

We're taught to believe life is a Kodak moment, and most of us spend much of our lives trying to hold on to all the good times. It takes maturity to be in the moment and to move on, and maturity is one of those qualities I've discovered I like in Bourdain.

I've been trying to figure out what it is exactly that endears me to the man, and believe me, it's more than just charm and good looks. Despite the fact that he claims to be jaded, he always comes off as an eager host on his series, No Reservations. Even as he's being feted and dined by professional chefs, friends of friends, and indigenous people around the globe, he seems intent upon offering up his experiences to the viewer in the most authentic light, and treating them as what they are -- rarities and treasures.

I'm also drawn to the raconteur, share-all quality, the "tell-it-like-is-Joe" who is happy to be where he is and proud to share it with you. Bourdain tends to search out what's cool or unusual about a place and a cuisine. Despite his facility with words and people, his ability to fit in virtually anywhere, he continually scrutinizes himself, and this I also find appealing:

How did I come to be worthy of this great meal? Who am I to critique it? How can I honor such fanciful cuisine? Why do I, Tony of Leonia, get such a ride? The perennial teen toeing the cliff's edge of an illegal high, Bourdain still challenges himself with the important questions. He is at his most interesting and original when playing the philosophe, analyzing the guts of what really happened, how he really feels about an event, how he "got there," what it all means. The probing, the stripping down, the upturning processes can be unnerving, but the viewer -- and reader -- sense the danger, feel the risk, and want to hop on board and see experiences through with him. Stripping back facades, getting underneath their skin, getting underneath even his audience's skin has become a trademark of Bourdain's, distinguishing him as an author and as host on his series.

In a chapter titled, "It's Not You, It's Me" in Medium Raw B recalls his disappointment with a dining experience at Alinea, a restaurant run by the great Grant Achatz, who once worked with Chef Thomas Keller at The French Laundry, where Bourdain claims to have experienced "the greatest single meal" of his life. He describes the 22-course extravaganza that he cherished so much and its aftermath, in grueling detail:

"Is there something fundamentally, ethically wrong about a meal as Pantagruelian in its ambition and proportion? Other than the people are starving in Africa argument, and the ' 250,000 people lost their jobs in America last month alone' argument, there's the fact that they must necessarily trim off about 80 percent of the fish or bird, to serve that perfectly oblong nugget of deliciousness on the plate. There's the unavoidable observation that it's simply more food and alcohol than the human body is designed to handle. That you will, after even the best of times, the most wonderful of such meals, need to flop onto your bed, stomach roiling with reflux; the beginnings of a truly awful hangover forming in your skull, farting and belching like a medieval friar.

'Is this the appropriate end, the inevitable result of genius? Of an otherwise sublime experience?

'Must it end like this.'"

The question of the hour hits home, bringing the reader to an awareness of what in Buddhist terms is known as samsaric reality -- The realization that no matter how sublime an experience, its flipside lingers just around the bend. Indulge in a great meal, expect indigestion. At the edge of bliss lies suffering. No matter how extraordinary an experience, it disappears like sand between your fingers -- and sometimes, as in the case of a meal, leaves you -- literally!

Beyond Bourdain's spectacular meals, beyond the high at the end of all of our rainbows, inescapable as death, lies emptiness.

Taking Snarky to New Heights

2010-07-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

Anybody who knows me or reads this blog knows I'm a fan of Bourdain's. I fell upon his show, No Reservations and was smitten; then read his books, Kitchen Confidential; A Cook's Tour; The Nasty Bits, and the infatuation grew. As a writer, he's hot. He's made an art of the rant, and is as willing and eager to skewer himself as others. "See, what I've done and do to myself. Don't mind me," he seems to tell us.

But of course we do mind. And of course he wants us to.

Who wouldn't adore his colorful digs into his past and the characters who people it? When he's the extravagant bad boy, flourishing all his feathers, he's hard to beat. The tone of most of his reminiscences, the stuff of his previous books, is a cross between mea culpa and kimo no sabe, meaning, "Me, I'm just a charming asshole, what can I tell you?"

It's a different story altogether, however, when Bourdain is out for someone else's blood. The humor and gusto turn rank and vile. I feel as if I'm being lowered into a Draculean dungeon where there is only one beast trying desperately to have fun. And it's not pretty.

Not that Bourdain is out to please. His writing and charm have never been about that. But what's with the no-holds-barred assaults on sextegarians. Give 'em a break, man.

Medium Raw, A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, Bourdain's latest diatribe of excess, delivers everything you'd expect -- and some. Personally, I can live without the climactic sequence in the first chapter of a time he sat down to eat with some famous names in the biz, and partook of a sizzling ortolan, a finch-like bird that costs upwards of 250-dollars in France -- due to the fact it's a protected species. His vivid description of biting with relish into the bones of that bird and sucking out its guts offends every aspect of my Buddhist vegetarian heart, even though I have to hand it to Bourdain. He can write; he will tell you what that experience was like in vivid MGM detail, like it or not.

In Medium Raw, you get plenty of rants. One, about his drug-soaked past hopping islands with a nutty heiress; mostly, you get riffs on who is and who is not worthy of B's respect -- this man who claims to feel so unworthy himself, such an outsider in this world. Yet he wields his opinion like a ninja with a razor-sharp cleaver.

Bourdain devotes an entire chapter to skewering Alice Waters, the owner of Chez Panisse and promoter of "Edible Schoolyards" and local foods that are sustainable, and aims 15-pages of bile at GQ food writer Alan Richman, who made the mistakes of negatively critiquing Les Halles, the restaurant in which Bourdain worked years ago, and questioning the authenticity of Creole cuisine -- the latter, in 2006.

All of this seems snarky indeed -- snarky being Bourdain's favorite critical word. If there's one thing Bourdain makes clear is that he's a self-proclaimed outsider who doesn't feel worthy to sit at the same table as his peers. At the same time, he expects you to listen to what he knows and to believe him. He's the authority without authority, the everyman who's won the lotto and whose opinion now, on account of his good luck, is worth gold. Even when he turns nasty, and maybe because he turns nasty, he is worth gold. This is a country after all in which a single negative rant can make a person famous.

Which is not to say that Bourdain is not really eloquent. He is. Or not right. He may be. But those nasty repasts are hard to take and I'd much rather partake of the savvy, playful host who invites everyone to his table, savoring differences and taking issue with none.

What Bourdain does best is write well about the food he loves and the cultures and traditions from which those foods come, and in this regard, Medium Raw does not disappoint. It makes you salivate and smile and long to go where the man has traveled and do what he has done.

For example, here's a description in Medium Raw of an early morning jaunt to a Parisian boulangerie for fresh baked baguettes:

"They're too hot to eat but you grab one anyway, tearing it open gingerly, then dropping two fingers full of butter inside. It instantly melts into liquid -- running into the grooves and inner spaces of white interior. You grab it like a sandwich and bite, teeth making a cracking sound as you crunch through the crust. You haven't eaten since yesterday lunch, your palate is asleep and just not ready for so much sensation. The reaction is violent. It hurts. Butter floods your head and you think for a second you are going to pass out."

I find my relationship with Bourdain runs like this. When I like him, it's a love fest. When I don't, I want to toss everything in my kitchen cupboards at him. Why do I think I am not alone?

Good Morning Sunshine!

2010-07-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

July 27, 2010

As a Colombian with an addiction for top shelf espresso, I have the right to post this. As a recovering alcoholic, I don't. Still the idea fascinates me. I am sure those of you who read this will steer clear of this narcotic temptation (thus keeping me from bad karma for passing it along), and just indulge, if you must, on one of those mornings when all you have to do is lolligag in bed with a partner alongside a basket of croissants and one of these drinks while watching The Thin Man -- because that's about all you'll be good for.

Did you know, by the by, that a pinch of salt in your java will cut the bitterness? The Hungarians, Turks and Northern Swedes do it. Try a splash of salt in the filter when prepping an espresso. Then, if you want to skip the alcoholic jolt and go right to bliss, grab a square of fine chocolate to nibble on while sipping your brew. That's jolt enough for me! But, read on java freaks. This one's for you.

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/morning-joe-with-a-jolt/?ref=dining

A Supreme Espresso To Go

2010-06-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

June 30, 2010

Check out this super handy, futuristic beauty. An espresso machine to go. Enjoy the link. Or for quicker access, double click one of the comments to the right for a full view of this blog page from The New York Times.

http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/a-magic-wand-for-espresso/#comments

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)

Edging Toward Grace

2010-06-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

June 7, 2010

"Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost." -- Henry James

The James quote about the writer's task appears in a story by Jay McInerney in How It Ended, New and Collected Stories, published in 2009. I came upon the collection Sunday at a local Borders while running from a brewing storm that never delivered. Thankfully, the stories did.

McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz were part of the literary bratpack of the 80s. Janowitz and McInerney, based in New York, focused on the travails of colorful and jaded characters on their home turf, while Ellis tapped the soul malaise and ennui of white youth on the West coast. I read McInerney's Bright Lights in the 80s in one sitting, and found it fast-paced, real and riveting.

The 26 stories in How It Ended were written over the period of as many years, and take place mostly in New York City. McInerney's characters revel in postmodern angst, and are of all classes and habits. Among them -- the girl with a shaved head and tattooed scalp of "It's Six A.M., Do You Know Where You Are?"; the coke head and prostitute in "The Queen and I"; the cheating husband and pill-popping wife of "I Love You, Honey," a story about lies, faith and deception set in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. These characters dream of leading different lives, of being someone other than who they are, of waking up somewhere other than where they really live, and dabble in their illusions. Sometimes their fantasies come true, as in "The Queen and I." But it's longing for them that seems to matter more. More often than not, dreams are mere remainders of a past that cannot be recaptured.

"You remember another Sunday morning in your old apartment on Cornelia Street when you woke to the smell of bread from the bakery downstairs. There was the smell of bread every morning, but this one you remember. You turned to see your wife sleeping beside you. Her mouth was open and her hair fell down across the pillow to your shoulder. The tanned skin of her shoulder was the color of bread fresh from the oven. Slowly, and with a growing sense of exhilaration, you remembered who you were..." -- from "It's Six A.M., Do You Know Where You Are?"

It's not just who you are, but where you come from that matters. "The Waiter," a subtle and elegant story about class that transpires in a cafe, is largely comprised of a conversation between a young man and two women, one of whom is European, and recalls the work of Ernest Hemingway. McInerney also admires F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose subjects were also class, greed and the human heart.

In the early 80s, after getting fired from his job as "fact-checker" at The New Yorker, McInerney was lucky enough to study under Raymond Carver, a master of the short story form, and Tobias Wolff at Syracuse University. Although McInerney has said he finds the short story form daunting, the stories in How It Ended explore important issues with grace and depth and prove he is at home in the genre.

On the Subject of (god help us ) Mindful Eating

2010-05-31T17:37:00.000-07:00

May 31, 2010

I'm eager to post news of a really delightful and helpful read. It was a present actually, which is the best incentive to read anything. Sally Ling, a master chef who owns and operates Sally Ling's Gourmet Chinese Restaurant in Fort Lee, gave me Savor, Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, written by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung, who is a friend of Sally's and a lecturer on the subject of healthy eating and director of health promotion and communication at the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Nutrition.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a famous Zen Buddhist monk who has authored many books on the subject of creating peace within and in the world, and runs Plum Village in France, dedicated to mindful living.

I'm a Buddhist, and I've read most of Thich Nhat Hanh's works over the years. I once saw a video of him that ran about 20 minutes and focussed entirely on his mindful eating of an orange. The master spoke slowly, peeling the orange with grace, teaching the viewer not only how to savor and appreciate every bite, but how to be aware of how this gift from the earth that feeds us and keeps us alive relates to all other living things and processes. The video and lesson in mindfulness so impressed me that a few years later I tried his experiment with a group of middle school aged students at an afterschool center. Shocked with the way the kids would throw food at one another at snacktime and treat it essentially like garbage, I hoped to shift their attitudes about eating just a little. I had built up a strong relationship with them by then, and I'm sure that helped to create the spirit of respect and quiet in which about 20 children who had selected their own fruit out of a basket, peeled a banana or an orange, appraised and appreciated their snacks as they ate them. It was a lesson unlike any other these kids, who came from largely poor backgrounds, had experienced on the subject, and whatever success I had in teaching it I owe to Zen Master Hanh.

To a large extent, Savor, like many other good books out there on the subject of mindful eating, appeals to common sense. But it goes further. Sometimes you have to back up common sense with science. Research now shows how the body and mind are interrelated, and the book is based on the notion, now scientifically supported, that it's not only what we eat and drink but the way we eat and drink that "profoundly affects our physical and mental well-being." The authors follow a Buddhist-based approach to nutrition, suggesting essentially that individuals take time and put thought into eating, and experience the process with all their senses.

In order to look honestly at what we eat, how much and why, the authors suggest starting a food journal. It's not a bad idea. So many of us become totally unconscious around the process of eating either because we're on the run, watching TV or paying attention to everything but what we're ingesting.

Some of the common sense advice, supported by studies, Cheung and Hanh:

* Eat three to four reasonable meals a day.
* Avoid skipping breakfast.
* Go to bed at a reasonable hour and try to get a good night's rest.
* Eat healthy carbs such as fruits, legumes, vegetables and whole grains as these are full of vitamins, minerals and fiber.
* Practice mindful breathing and meditation to reduce stress in your life and supplement a healthy diet.

An Appendix is chock full of resources, and the numerous notes in back attest to the fact that this is both a richly insightful and well researched book. Timely and important, it presents a model of right thinking and right eating for our age.

Alcoholism and Absolution

2010-05-16T04:41:00.001-07:00

May 17, 2010

It's a testament to how much I think of literature that until just recently I thought Mary Karr's latest memoir, Lit, had to do with the subject, literature, rather than getting drunk. Actually, it has to do with both subjects, as, during the part of her life described here, Karr is a young wife and mother teaching in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her husband Warren, a Ph.D., who both teaches and writes poetry and once studied under the famous master himself Robert Lowell. Certainly, "lit" as in literature, and poetry in particular, and the struggle to find meaning in both language and life run as concurrent themes in the prose.

As one reads this confessional about a young alcoholic mother and poet in Cambridge, one can't help but recall other notable female poets who perched briefly in that locale on their way to fame. Poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, both of whom committed suicide, (after some success), instantly come to mind. I read a marvelous short story once about poets Plath, Sexton and Lowell, the founder of the confessional poetry movement who suffered both from alcoholism and manic depression, and their imagined meetings in bars and cafes, discussing madness and suicide, during the time in the late 50s when they actually studied and wrote poetry in the same adult writing class in Cambridge.

While in that highly academic environment, and living with a scholar herself, Karr aspired to be a good mother and a successful poet and writer, but was impeded by her drinking, a turbulent past, and marriage to a professional who, while being a good father to son Dev, was a distant mate. Frustrations trigger Karr's descent into alcoholism, and she describes the process in vivid and unnerving detail.

There are the episodes of heavy drinking, vomiting, hangovers, lies; the guilt about raising a child in the midst of this; increasing unhappiness with her marriage. After Karr quits drinking, she becomes depressed and suicidal and makes a trip to the loony bin in an effort to save her life and mind.

It's not that Karr's existence was so horrifying, at least not to anyone who has ever "been there" and made it to AA rooms, where one hears every kind of story. But it's relentlessly dark, and would be stultifying were it not for the saving graces of Karr's humor and insight. You have to admire Karr's determination to get at the truth as she wades through her murky past and memory. She's not just telling her AA story, but analyzing key processes too, the level of her misery, lack of self-worth, how she got to become a drunk and came out of it, how she got help and learned to embrace a "higher power," some form of spirituality, which is considered essential in recovery from mental illness, particularly alcoholism.

The search for meaning and the telling take courage, and Karr has plenty of that. Thankfully, Karr's Texan wit runs rampant and can shift a dark mood in a nanosecond, as she would say, or make the reader crack up when she least expects it -- in the midst of a spell of misery or lunacy. While recounting a period in early recovery when she was utterly depressed, not exercising a bit, Karr describes showering and suddenly "feeling something in the back of my legs -- it was my ass."

It takes a special gift to write with humor and perspicacity about a crappy past. Karr has that gift, and her quirky prose infused with Texan sass makes all the difference.

Oil and Illy

2010-04-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

April 24, 2010

Hardly a day goes by that I don't shop (and spend a small fortune) at Whole Foods in Edgewater. It's really not just the lovely walkway alongside the often breathtaking view of the GWB and NYC across the Hudson just outside the store that drives me to this location. It really is often the food inside -- and the wonderful wide aisles and displays -- that make me feel like a kid in a toy store. The diverse food bar, fresh cheeses and organic produce are enough to seduce any vegetarian, and on Saturdays, shopping is made that much more attractive by the sampling tables with all their delectable options.

We stopped by today and had the lovely surprise of sampling Leggio's Olive Oil and talking to owner/inventor Joe Leggio about his concoctions. There are three. Joe himself, who is tall and good-looking, Italian as they come, with the puffy combed back dark blond hair and blue eyes that hail to northern Italy, and large gesturing hands, says he ran a restaurant for 20 years before discovering his calling with olive oil. "My waiters kept coming into the kitchen, replacing butter with olive oil, until finally I decided I had to make some of my own.

"I put in all the spices and condiments I like -- basil, garlic, oregano, pepper, you know? -- until it tasted delicious." Chef Leggio designed and printed out his own label, placed his blend of spices and olive oil in small wine bottles, sent in cases by a friend, asked his wife to put a price tag of $14 on each bottle and set them at the front of his restaurant, and presto. It was virtually that easy.

Joe's wife thought he was a little crazy pricing olive oil so high, but in fact, the olive oil sold so fast, Joe couldn't keep up. He had to hire help. Then, in December of that year, he sold close to 6,000 bottles. "I'll never forget it," he said. Then Whole Foods came to visit, and now he has several outlets calling in orders. In about a year, Leggio's life has changed, thanks to olive oil.

"You can use the olive oil with seafood, chicken, pasta, just about anything," he said. I bought the Sundried Tomato and Basil Leggio's, and to tell you the truth, I'm already making a mental list of all the recipes I plan to use it on, starting with broccoli rabe!

Whole Foods is like a little village with something for everybody, and as we traipsed on through the store, we passed our favorite counters, sampling olives and cheeses. We bought an extraordinary gouda, then happened upon the elegant brand Illy's, which recently began marketing espresso -- in a can! I like the red script of the logo on the small, slender silver can, so I was eager to sample the new drink.

Gone the mess and trouble of making early morning espresso to pour into my thermos, filled with fresh squeezed orange juice and green tea to take to work. I now have Illy's in a can. Sweetened slightly with an organic substance (or so we were informed), it's just right, and not at all bitter, like the variety I usually pick up elsewhere. If it's not my fresh brewed espresso, it usually just won't cut it. But Illy's will do.

I'm an espresso lover, and enjoy a drink of the stuff practically every day. I was sold instantly by the fine quality of the drink I sampled. Today Illy's was on sale, two for $3, but be prepared to spend as much as you would at Starbuck's for this one. The only difference is, Illy's is well worth it.

Hemingway in Cafes and "On the Rocks"

2010-04-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

April 17, 2010

"The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with the pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink." Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

I have to say that writing in cafes, sitting at a table alone with an espresso, a pad and a pen, imagining I have a world of time in which to conjure words and put them down, counts among the top pleasures in my life.

In many ways I have Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to thank for that, as they launched my fascination with writing and literature about drinking and excess when I was in my 20s, when the Minimalists of the day weren't spending much time describing that, or much of anything. I especially have Hemingway to thank, Hemingway, who wrote better than anyone in his time about the pleasures of eating, imbibing and hanging out in bars and cafes.

Before Bourdain, there was Hemingway, and the two have much in common, mainly attitude and bravado -- which made their reputations in life and on the page. It's a tradition Norman Mailer was a part of too, but he just didn't have the charm -- for women anyway. If you want to charm a woman, you have to have at least a tinge of regret before you murder a beast or set out to betray your best friend. Mailer didn't care either way.

But let's get back to Hemingway and what makes him such a great travel writer. He had a penchant for describing his excursions into nature, making love to the elements before making a kill; and he wrote with as much gusto about eating as he did killing, describing drinking and dining in cafes in the 1920s better than anyone.

What makes The Sun Also Rises such a delectable read is it's short and busy, with Hemingway doing all he can to keep his characters drunk and charming. Between debauches, the narrator hangs in cafes, smoking and drinking coffee. "In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the Rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette."

But nights, you can barely make out the feisty reparte of characters over the boom of their raucous partying, which sometimes rings automatic: "We drank three bottles of the champagne and the count left the basket in my kitchen. We dined at a restaurant in the Bois. It was a good dinner. Food had an excellent place in the count's values. So did wine. The count was in fine form during the meal. So was Brett. It was a good party."

A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's collection of essays about living in Paris in the 20s as a young man, has its share of scenes in cafes, even if the memoir, edited by his fourth wife Mary and published in 1964, after his death, is laced with acerbic tales about his so-called friends like the Fitzgeralds.

After completing the draft of a story in a cafe, Hemingway writes about the pleasure of treating himself to a reward: "As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea, and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans."

Ah, what would Hemingway have been without his daily dose of a little alcohol, a rare morsel and a little death? It's hard to say. The man shot himself at 60 with his favorite rifle. He helped to impale the myth of the macho as a character worthy of praise in our culture. The legacy he left was tragic and bitter for those who knew him, and equally disenchanting for those he aspired to move.

Why Do Women Hate Joyce Carol Oates?

2010-03-30T17:40:00.000-07:00

March 30, 2010

Why are so many intelligent women I know so intensely critical of Joyce Carol Oates? It's a good question. Women are notoriously antipathetic toward their kind when it comes to giving professional or political support or due. The latter claim I'll support with just one name: Hillary Clinton.

But this is only one bothersome point concerning Oates, who is one of our best living writers, if not the best. The most pressing question remains -- Why hasn't she yet received the Nobel Prize for Literature?

This incredibly prolific writer has produced more than 50 top-notch novels at the rate of about two a year for the last 25 years. Not only has she brought forth novels, but stories, essays, poetry, children's and young adult fiction, plays, mysteries and more. She is in a realm all her own. In 1995, she won the Pulitzer Prize for What I Lived For. She has won the National Book Circle Award, the National Book Award and the O.Henry Award and many other prizes.

But never the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Why?

Could it be that those that judge writers for these kinds of prizes are mostly men and that Oates challenges or threatens the boys' club? Could it be that, along with this, women who write and women who are in a position of power where writing is concerned simply don't like Oates because they too are threatened by her or don't understand her or don't like her themes or taste?

Sad to say, it's probably due to a combination of all these reasons that she has not received the grand Nobel. But I believe her day will come, and I hope it's within her lifetime. She's 71 now, and she deserves it.

Concerning my first question, I can tell you about two recent experiences regarding the reaction of well-read female friends to JOC. I sent a friend who is recovering from surgery a copy of Wild Nights, a collection of stories published in 2008 about the final days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain and Hemingway among others that is perhaps the most compelling work of the imagination I have read in recent years. The story about Hemingway is simply astonishing, penetrating as it does Hemingway's psyche with such uncanny force and detail, it really takes the reader's breath away.

While appreciative of "the thought behind the gift," my friend made it clear that she is not a fan of JCO -- Oates is too "dark," she "assumes" reality, she is less intuitive than she is presumptious, asserted this friend.

Following this incident, a couple of days ago, Oates again came into the conversation as I discussed her with two other friends. One of them, a woman who works as editor at Pearson Education, (which, by the way, owns Penguin Group, which published Oates' We Were the Mulnaveys), grimaced at the mention of Oates' name, calling her work "too serpentine."

I now have this vision of Oates as a kind of Minerva spinning her tales, consuming delicate sensibilities in the wake of her powerful interest in dark subjects such as rape, violence and death and her "masculine" tastes such as boxing.

Frankly, what I love most about Oates is her long-time dedication to breaking down conventional notions of what a woman who writes is and what a woman who writes likes and what a woman who writes should think.

Oates, who is an avid runner and who married recently for a second time -- her first husband died not long ago -- teaches creative writing at Princeton University. Among her influences, she has listed Kafka and Flannery O'Connor. She claims that Sylvia Plath's sole novel, The Bell Jar, is an almost perfect work of art, and she has said repeatedly in interviews that she is best known for "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?" a story dedicated to singer/songwriter Bob Dylan and published in the 1960s. Oates is said to keep a diary of more than 4,000 single-spaced typed pages to which she now adds emails.

What I admire most about Oates is her uncanny vision, her extraordinary capacity to cut through the crap of myth and get to truths that matter. Favorite examples of this: Black Water, and Wild Nights. She disturbs and outwits, and rethinks the past and the future. What else is a writer supposed to do?

Bourdain, Again

2010-03-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

March 6, 2010

"Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life." Anthony Bourdain

I've had a slip and must now confess. I've been at it again -- reading Bourdain. A Cook's Tour. I can't help it. The guy mesmerizes me. I want to live like he lives -- if, indeed, he does do all he says he does.

Of course he does.

All the meals, travel, drinks, late nights, exotic locales, amazing diversity of people.

But no live cobra hearts, thank you. I appreciate Bourdain's gusto, but don't need or want to savor his experience killing beings or watching them be killed, or even eating them. No thanks, not for me. That part is an ugly stain in an otherwise lovely relationship -- hard drinking without the hangover; gluttony without indigestion; endless travel minus jet lag and nausea. It's a present he gives a lot of people, who, like me, live vicariously through him.

I am loving A Cook's Tour. It was written in 2000, when Bourdain was still fresh off working the grill at Les Halles, a hunk of a cook stepping out into the world, trying on the hat of a traveling food journalist, and getting high off his experiences. That high rubs off on the reader, just like it does those who view his show, No Reservations. The man was at his peak then, enjoying his new life to the utmost.

He was peaking regarding his perceptions too, even his view of humanity, appreciating his amazing strokes of good fortune, primed to notice those not in a place of such luck. In Saigon, after seeing a toothless man with a face burned beyond recognition by napalm, Bourdain retreated to a hotel to stare up at a ceiling, transfixed, in tears, unable to eat "for the next 24 hours."

It was a glimpse of the sensitive guy, as opposed to the macho dude that usually wins out in his narratives.

There have been many other trips, meals and drinks since Bourdain produced A Cook's Tour. By his own account, he'll never work in a kitchen again, in this lifetime anyway. He tried going back. No Reservations captured that painful moment in which you saw Bourdain completely out of sorts in his old mold, barely able to get up off his knees, really struggling. His time was up.

Bourdain need not have regrets. He's found a better life, and one that I'll bet is feeding him a lot better financially than the one in the kitchen did. He has found better stories out in the world and more memorable personalities -- the wild success of his books and his show would seem to attest to that.

But I wonder if Bourdain still remembers that moment in Saigon. I like that sensitive guy. But you can't separate him from the dude who loves to watch a sheep killed and stripped and gets a maudlin thrill out of hearing its carcass thump in the back of a truck. No, you can't take that out of him, much as some of us would like to.

"Something Very Special," a chapter in A Cook's Tour, follows Bourdain's adventures in Morocco, and pretty much sums up his style. The chapter is short and bumpy, and like it or not, you get the good, the bad and the ugly. You'll oooh and aaah at the beauty and grit and wince in disgust, all in the span of a few pages.

There's an angelic Tony that flashes in cartoon form alternately with the Tony with horns at a corner of the screen at the start and in-between commercial breaks on his show. Here's a sample of the "good Tony" in A Cook's Tour:

"From the mosque next door came the nuezzin's call to prayer -- a haunting chant, beginning with 'Allahhh akbarrrrr' (God is great), which occurs five times a day all over the Islamic world. The first time you hear it, it's electrifying -- beautiful, non-melodic, both chilling and strangely comforting. Upon hearing it, you understand -- on a cellular level -- that you are now 'somewhere else.'"

And the "good Tony" vying with the "bad":

"I watched the poor sheep's eyes -- a look I'd see again and again in the dying -- as the animal registered its imminent death, that terrible unforgettable second when, either from exhaustion or disgust, it seemed to finally decide to give up and die. It was a haunting look, a look that says, You were -- all of you -- a terrible disappointment. The eyes closed slowly, as if the animal were going to sleep, almost willfully.

"I had my fresh lamb."

Along with this, you have sublime descriptions of shopping in Fez, a hysterical anecdote about being struck dumb before the camera and his host while high on hashish, all in one chapter about one place.

The man lives precariously on some indefinable edge, satiating himself from table to table, place to place while his eyes roam the horizon, longing for what lies around the next corner. I'd like to be in his flip flops, but with some sense of measure, equally transfixed, struck with awe and wonder, but compassionate too, and accountable.

Confessions

2010-02-13T14:27:00.001-08:00

Feb. 13, 2010

I must confess that, as I prevailed in my reading of The New Yorker compendium edited by David Remnick, I was struck by not much and left about as cold as a vichysoise by the writing. Steve Martin drawing up a couple of imaginary menus -- one from an organic eatery, the other from someplace in Kansas where fat is akin to gold -- What is there to say about that? Or Woody Allen's brief spewing on the subject of fat? Sometimes TNY indulges, and these were indulgent little pieces published for the sake of a name.

But let me tell you what did impress me recently, even more than my reading. Friday night, I cashed in my paycheck and decided to take a friend out for some Japanese fare at a local eatery. We live near the Big Apple and boast some pretty fine restaurants here, despite the fact that we are actually separated from the culinary brain of the world by a bridge -- the GWB -- and a vast expanse of fetid water -- the Hudson River.

Into this notable little restaurant we stepped at about 9 p.m. It was cold inside, and we appeared to be the only non-Asians, so we made ourselves comfortable at a table, and were presented with an assortment of three menus each -- one with photos, for idiots (like us) who can't read Japanese; the other, a sushi menu; the last, containing a standard listing of appetizers, entrees and desserts, such as one finds at any establishment. We have eaten here before on less crowded nights during the week when only one or two other tables were filled. This night, only one or two tables were empty.

The place isn't really big. You know the sort it is -- a handful of rectangular tables under bright lights separated by a row of plants, with a sushi bar set in the corner.

Along came Madam, clunking in her small, strapped black shoes; black tights, black dress, black bun -- taut and hard. Her eyes perpetually squinched and her eyebrows arched and her lips perennially pursed, as if in an inverse question: "Oh? What is this? Who am I? Why do you want to know?"

She approached, and I asked, "Can you please tell me what this vegetable dish is?" The word "vegetable" was written before another indecipherable word, and I was curious, being a vegetarian, whether I might in fact be able to enjoy something here besides the Miso soup and Fried Tempura that I'd ordered on a previous occasion. Madam pursed her lips further, arched backwards and said, "Not for you. Only Japanese eat," and walked away.

It was a curious way to take an order, so we waited some more, and watched as she cleared and cleaned a couple of tables behind us. After she'd wiped them clean of varnish, she passed by again, and my partner said very nicely, "We're ready to order." She pretended not to hear and clunked away to the back of the restaurant, and that was that. We sat for another five minutes in a state of mild stupification, then my friend stepped to the back of the restaurant and broched the subject with the manager, who ignored her as well.

It was a conspiracy of ignoring, and it did not taste good. We stepped out feeling we'd trespassed into an establishment in front of which had been posted a sign we'd failed to notice that read, "You Are Not Allowed."

Was it something cultural we missed? we asked ourselves. Outside the restaurant, my extroverted friend parlayed about the incident with two English-speaking Asian females who had just dined where we were. "Was it some kind of cultural misunderstanding?" we asked again. Did I humiliate the waitress by asking her a question in English that she couldn't understand?

"No, she's just tired. She's probably really tired. She's the only waitress," said the woman, who answered.

In the car, on our way to Roberto's, where we enjoyed a very satisfying meal of stuffed mushrooms, Arugula salad with blood oranges, broccoli rabe and chocolate cake and espresso, I pondered the matter further.

Briefly, I imagined an Asian conspiracy in this city, where approximately half the inhabitants are Korean, and half their establishments bear signs that are unreadable. Often, it's hard to distinguish friendliness on a stiff expression, and fear and not knowing a language often make people seem stiff and removed. But it was not this, I know better. We know many nice, friendly Asian people. Our Korean Bikram teachers; the owner of another restaurant we frequent; a Japanese businessman who started a very worthwhile foundation in honor of his son; many of the members of our rotary. This wasn't about race so much. But what about gender?

What is a woman close to age 70 who speaks virtually no English doing, waiting on so many tables all by herself n an American locale? -- Perhaps she just helps her husband who runs the business, and perhaps she gets no pay. Maybe we just walked in too late.

"Too many tables. Too many orders, even if from my people. These new customers are just women. And my shoes are too tight."

Cheese, Please!

2010-02-07T17:36:00.000-08:00

Feb. 8, 2010

"Cheese is the collective memory of France," a cheesemaker once remarked, according to Burkhard Bilger in his essay about cheese called "Raw Faith," published in 2002 in The New Yorker. It does seem as if all the best cheeses have a French connection or name -- Brie, Camembert, etcetera. But France is not the only producer of great cheese.

Did you know that the U.S. has long produced more cheese than any other country in the world? -- Eight and a half BILLION pounds in 2001, if you can fathom that!

Much of Bilger's essay focuses on Mother Noella Marcellino, "the cheese nun," an American expert on the subject. A PhD. in microbiology, Mother Noella has lived as a cloistered nun for more than 30 years; occasionally, she has been permitted to travel to do research on the subject of cheese.

While studying the history of French cheese caves in the 1990s, Mother Noella decided to focus on one particular mold -- Geotrichum candidum, "the wrinkly white mold that encases some of the greatest French cheeses." She makes cheese in a Benedictine cloister, the Abbey of Regina Laudis, in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

There is something sacred about cheese. Learning to both savor and appreciate it in its various forms has become a kind of quest of mine these past 20 years that I've been a vegetarian. It's the meat in my diet and the centerpiece of my favorite hors d'oeuvres and main meals, although I don't eat it all that often -- Favorite things remain favorite because they are not over experienced.

I first became aware of cheese when we moved to the United States and I encountered Velveeta. I was eight, and loved to rip the thick blue foil of the processed cheese package, and plunge my fingers into the soft, gooey, orange, made-for-kids mass, then suck it off my fingers. It was my favorite snack then. Fortunately, my tastes have evolved.

I've always loved soft cheeses-- therefore, Brie and Champignon. There is very little to say that's not delightful about the taste and sensation of these mushroomy cheeses, which I have enjoyed alone, on celery and carrot sticks, crackers, and best of all, on thin slices of fresh, crusty bread. Brie is synonymous with abundance, romance, parties. I can never get enough.

After Brie and Champignon is the semi-soft, fresh Mozzarella, or "motzarelle," as the folks in Jersey say. Try this for a delectable brunch -- sliced mozzarella and fresh tomatoes in a bowl of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tamari, a dash of pepper, and basil leaves from the backyard, then scoop onto French bread.

Cheese lovers can satisfy their passion on the subject on the Web site, fromages.com. Is there a school for cheese lovers? Yes -- The Cheese School of San Francisco. It's one of a kind!

Some People Will Eat Anything (Redux)

2010-01-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

Jan. 25, 2010

Caution: Some of the following material may cause indigestion.

I just finished a story about a fruit detective, another about harvesting oysters and another about rat eating. I must confess I've never eaten oysters, and don't have a desire to catch up on that missed experience. Ditto on the rats. I have no adventurous streak that would one day have me impulsively ordering rat soup, for example. And fruit in all its varieties is also low on my must-eat list.

So, there you have it, I'm not fond of either rats or fruit. But, if hard pressed to eat one or the other, say, if I was locked up in a basement, being held for ransom with a bunch of other kidnapped people, and in the meantime was being told by my captors, "Bag to the right, or bag to the left for your only meal" -- the bag to the left, with a lot of squirming going on; the damp bag to the right, emitting a sweet stench -- I'd take the bag to the right, thank you, and nosh on those nice white apricots at the top until the money comes.

Some experts claim you should never bite into an oyster, that the way to eat one is to swish it around in your mouth a couple of times before swallowing it, say, with a gulp of beer. Other experts insist you bite firmly at least once into an oyster, or else it will sit live inside your belly.

The guy harvesting the oysters in the article I read, asserted, "When I eat an oyster, I feel I'm connecting to something primordial." I say you're in trouble man if that's what it takes to connect you to the primordial. Gaze at your navel for a while. That'll do it. It's less expensive, cholesterol-ridden or daunting. No shells to pry open.

And no slurping or chewing options to ponder.

I say, don't bite into anything that can duplicate itself or what it contains in your belly.

And as for those rats. Let me say a thing or two about what some cultures can consume without so much as a thought about what they're killing or how they are doing it. I saw a television program once that showed animals in cages at the back of a restaurant in China, and showed customers pointing to what they wanted.

"I want that dog," said the giggling woman. "I want that cat," said her son. And so forth. I also saw a man with a knife in the back of that restaurant peel the coat off a cat while it was still alive. The stripped cat stood quivering and in shock before being placed in boiling water -- still alive. Just to satisfy the appetite of a customer.

(And while we're at it, let's ponder the quandary of a lobster).

What kind of people do this, or care not a whit about what a being feels -- Not even care to wonder, accepting only what's always been done, and believing the myths about how it might serve you. Why bother considering the rat or its pain, it will put more hair on your head. Who cares that that cat doesn't want to die yet, it will endow you with a lively spirit!

What follows then if a child is in pain, but you stand to get a lot of money if it dies. It stands to reason that a people that don't care how beings feel, only about how they might serve you, that focus only on the end not the means, would let a child die too if it brought in some cash -- without thinking twice about it.

I can't fathom the lack of morality or heart, and sheer selfishness that the rabid killing of animals for pleasure represents. And I can't fathom ever going to countries where domestic animals are killed right on the spot for eating pleasure. It's bad enough knowing what's on most menus in this country!

You say the rats only eat fruit from the mountains, they're not city rats. That's fine. I believe you.

I've made my choice. I'll take my fruit, straight up.

Foraging Intellects in a Wintry Wild

2010-01-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

Jan. 21, 2010

I admit I've been bad. But it's winter, and the cold inspires it. You know what I mean -- Eating chocolates, sipping espresso, listening to Miles, Coltrane and Bill Evans on that penultimate jazz album, Kind of Blue. In short, doing what I want to do. And, of course, reading whenever I can.

I'm only halfway through the mammoth compendium, Secret Ingredients, enjoying a diverse sampling of styles and culinary subjects that bring to life the culture of various times, but, so far, only three essays have stood out.

One, describes foodie Joseph Wechsberg's first foray to the famed Restaurant de la Pyramide, once considered the finest restaurant in France, run by the formidable Fernand Point. Wechsberg's piece, published in 1949, is in the style of a short story, with the climax being a grand lunch, the sort that few of us will ever be lucky enough to enjoy, but that clearly has the capacity to illuminate the sensibilities and even transform --like a work of art.

After pates, croute, and foie gras, Wechsberg is informed by M. Point: "'A good meal must be as harmonious as a symphony and as well constructed as a good play. As it progresses, it should gain in intensity, with the wines getting older and more full-bodied.'"

Wechsberg's final take on the experience? -- "Whenever I think back to that lunch, I feel contentedly well fed; the memory of it alone seems almost enough to sustain life."

Next, I fell upon a charming essay about Julia Child. What, concerning Julia Child, does not turn out to be charmante? I really wished I'd watched her cooking shows way back when. I was distracted instead by The Galloping Gourmet's fun-loving, loopy antics as he guzzled wine and cooked.

Child was a determined perfectionist. She took 10 years to complete Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is renowned for its fine detail and precision, and she was known on her television shows for rooting as much for the success of a dish as for her audiences as she taught them how to cook. Whenever she herself failed at a recipe, or ruined a dish, she would do it over -- sometimes more than once -- all the while, instructing her viewers, "Never give up!" Her super involvement in making a recipe work, fascinated and won over fans. But it wasn't only her personality that worked for viewers, Child had character and aplomb.

Lastly, I had no idea how fascinating Euell Gibbons was, or how valuable his obsession with wild food. Writer John McPhee describes a days' long trek he took with Gibbons with intimate, almost tender detail. While accommodating to chilly temperatures and inclement weather, McPhee learns how to forage and prepare a few of nature's edibles -- such as dandelions, walnuts, and various teas -- many of which turn out to be tasty and satisfying!

McPhee's description of Gibbons is unique and masterful: "His head is a high and narrow one, with a long stretch from chin to forehead but a short distance from ear to ear, as if he had somehow successfully grown up in the space between two city buildings."

Gibbons, a Quaker, was wise, complicated and ahead of his time. His ruminations on nature became pearls on the subject: "The product I gather out here means something different to me than food from a store, but I don't feel that I have made nature stand and pay tribute. I know that when I disturb the earth to get these plants I will almost always cause more of them to grow. I don't like to eat Indian cucumbers, because I have to destroy the plants to get them. I don't want to destroy; I want to play the part I am supposed to play in relation to plants. I come to a persimmon tree and the tree is growing something sweet, so I'll eat it and scatter the seed. When I do that, I'm carrying out the role I'm supposed to be carrying out. Nature has many, many balances, and we have to find a balance that includes man. If man accepts that he has to be a part of the balance, he must reject the idea of the conquest of nature Whenever I read that phrase, 'conquest of nature,' I feel a little depressed. Man is part of the total ecology. He has a role to play, and he can't play it if he doesn't know what it is -- or if he thinks that he is conquering something."

Sad to say, McPhee's interview with Gibbons took place more than 40 years ago, and some folks have yet to realize the truth in Gibbons' words!

Food and Memory at The New Yorker

2010-01-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

Jan. 10, 2010

Between watching Bourdain and reading about recipes, I've learned the best food is often found in the most surprising places -- not necessarily a restaurant, but a warm, intimate hearth, where people comfortably gather to drink, eat and laugh. So too, the best recipes are not necessarily found in the hands of the pros, but of ordinary people -- Aunt June's legumes, Uncle Frost's turkey, neighbor Betsy's apple pie. Cookbooks comprised of such recipes may rank among the best. M.F.K. Fisher writes about this in her wonderful, The Secret Ingredient.

Having a penchant these days for books that surpass 500 pages, I'm now into Secret Ingredients, The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, edited by David Remnick. Let me tell you, launching on a read like this feels a bit like hiking up the Himalayas -- You really want to get to the finish, but can't imagine how you are going to get there!

I like Remnick for a couple of very good reasons, aside from the fact that he is the current editor of The New Yorker. He had the good grace to apologize for the way his magazine went along with other media, initially failing to challenge the Bush II regime for its decision to invade Iraq. Remnick was eloquent and humble, addressing a full house on this subject at Fairleigh Dickinson University a few years ago, when I met him.

Remnick is also just a B.A., like I am. He got his at Princeton. I got mine at Wesleyan (the one in Middletown). I am fully prepared to list him as a model, if, during any of my work searches for the position of magazine editor, someone challenges my level of education -- "If it's good enough for David, it's good enough for me," I will tell them.

He's also the only writer I've ever asked for an autograph. I'm not quite sure why, as I don't do that sort of thing. I guess I was just overwhelmed with a sense of awe and respect for the man at the time.

The whole autograph thing seems silly -- even though I know people make money off it -- Ann Margret for example, and her husband Roger, who, despite outward appearances, does still live. They collect money from poor schmucks who have a lot less than they do every year at venues like Chiller Theater in New Jersey, where people who will never have their 15-minutes of fame come to almost claim it, rubbing shoulders with those that have been there. There's a whole list of celebrities who show up for this. Once in a while, they'll claim to be passing along your meager fortunes to some cause, but I find the whole thing rather cheap and disgusting -- and I don't use those words easily, or lightly.

But on to more urbane and sophisticated subjects, such as The New Yorker and its writers and reads. In Secret Ingredients, I'm venturing into the one department I never spent a minute on, all the years I faithfully scanned The New Yorker, "cover to cover."

Reading TNY usually meant for me, glancing at all the cartoons, reading the fiction -- which has remained exceptional through a slew of diverse editors, including Remnick -- and the delightfully detailed portraits of people and places that are the magazine's trademark.

In his intro to Secret Ingredients, Remnick notes that Harold Ross, TNY's founding editor (who had a very bad stomach) had the idea to put together "a recipe compendium for the gastrointestinally challenged" called "Good Food for Bad Stomachs." William Shawn (who had a very good stomach and long life, and succeeded Ross as editor) wasn't as interested in food. When gathering to dine with the famous writers of the Algonquin Hotel, he would order an insipid bowl of cereal and leave it virtually untouched, favoring to dialogue instead with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Wolcott and a few brilliant others.

One can understand.

What I love and have always loved about TNY is that you can't get through an issue without reading an essay so chock full of detail, you really feel you've ingested a fine meal or book at the end. Even after Tina Brown's modern tweaking of TNY, all I have to do is glance at a cover to recall Paris of the 20s or The Algonquin Round Table or any of the grand drunks that happened to be great writers who were a part of those scenes and became constants at the magazine.

I often wish I'd lived in Paris of the 20s or New York's East Village in the 30s, or 50s, when so much that was vibrant and real in the way of art was happening -- all the best conversations, best ideas and great works. I'm always looking for a thread to these times in TNY criticisms and commentaries. And I like that TNY treats and has always treated both the past and memory, at least upper class past and memory, as national treasures.

Once a TNY writer always a TNY writer. The list is endless, and urbane. Hemingway, Updike, Ann Beattie and Frederick Barthelme in the fiction department.

The aspiration to write at TNY until you drop runs true for the food writers too. A.J. Liebling began his food writing tenure at TNY in 1935 and continued until his death in 1963. Calvin Trillin took over in 1963 and still writes for TNY.

In one piece, Liebling had one of his characters observe to Adam and Eve: "First parents of the human race... you lost all for an apple, what would you not have done for a truffled turkey?"

Sounds like the one-liner of a TNY cartoon.

As Remnick wryly observed, TNY's editors "understood ...that a magazine travels not only with its mind, but also... on its stomach. Food is a subject of subsistence, manners, pleasure, and diversion."

Remember the discovery scientists made a few years back that humans possess a second brain in the stomach? Was it really a surprise? All things are interrelated -- the stomach to the mind, the meal to the read.

Now back to my long winter's feast.

New Year's Medley

2010-01-03T20:52:00.000-08:00

Jan. 4, 2010

I'm gingerly working back to food reading, since that's what keeps my interest piqued. Last week, I read Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl's delectable memoir of "growing up at the table." She is the editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, and, as you may recall, I blogged recently about her memoir about her eccentric mother.

Of the two books, I prefer Tender at the Bone. It's like the difference between a smorgasbord and a plate of scrambled eggs with everything tossed in -- I'll take the buffet. The smorgasbord includes portraits of the charming and wise Mrs. Peavey, a great cook from Reichl's early childhood days; the beautiful and proud Serafina, Reichl's college roommate and best friend who learns as an adult that she is both Black and adopted; Doug, the sculptor Reichl marries who turns out to be much like her father; and the indelible charm, Milton, who is the quintessential tour guide. You will find recipes in this book relating to each period of Reichl's life, and you will enjoy the read, appreciating the delectable characters as much as the recipes.

In case you think I'm limited to reading just one book a week, I'm going to confess that I read more than that. And would read still more, if I could. I'm also halfway through the 500-page Practicing the Path, A Commentary on the Lamrim Chenmo, by Yangsi Rinpoche, to which, you, reader, may now be responding --Huh? What? And, to which I will reply -- Exactly. You have to be there when it comes to this one. Still, I urge you to explore it and any other Buddhist texts you are moved to read. You don't have to be Buddhist to read about the religion or agree or disagree with its tenets. And thankfully, Buddhists don't sell their religion.

Segueying further, I also read Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, and pretty much annihilated a section of a jazz encyclopedia, reading about jazz pianists. If you don't know by now -- and why would you, you haven't been listening to what I hear as I type -- jazz of the 40s and 50s, bebop and hard bop, is a kind of obsession.

Evans was a hard bopper, the first "modal" pianist, an American Chopin. Jersey-born, he was known for his classical touch and his ability to make the piano "sing." He explored modal language with trumpeter Miles Davis, whom he joined in 1958. Evans had the gift of being able to communicate his feelings on musical instruments -- and was able to create a singing vernacular with his left hand on the piano. Downbeat magazine ranked him second only to Thelonius Monk, that great spontaneous jazz pianist. Evans was a member of a few trios and quintets and was well-respected internationally, particularly in France. He worked with the talented bassist Scott LaFaro, whose death in a car accident in 1961 not only ended the trio that included Evans, but devastated Evans so much, he didn't play for months. Evans himself died in 1980 from bronchial pneumonia and a hemorraghing ulcer, but really from drug abuse that had plagued him for two decades, resulting in bouts of malnutrition and hepatitis. A friend of Evans' once observed that his "was the longest suicide in history."

As is true with so many of my jazz faves, once you read about them, you have to set down the stories and return to the music, which, thankfully, continues to "sing."

And, while you're listening to the likes of Fats Waller, Art Tatum or Monk, grab yourself a piece of fine chocolate. It's the new year, after all, and resolutions were meant to be broken. I was just perusing the bookshelves at Barnes & Noble and came upon the most delectable image of a chocolate dessert...

Reading is like eating. One good thing leads to another, and another. And another.

The Risks of Unraveling

2009-12-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

Dec. 26, 2009

A few years ago, journalist Norah Vincent went underground as a gender spy, dressing and living as a man in order to write, Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back. Her book garnered accolades and became a New York Times best-seller. But the emotional price of her 18-month experiment was a nervous breakdown. The experience led to her next book, Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin.

Vincent launched her loony bin experiment getting off the meds her psychiatrist had prescribed -- Prozac, or Vitamin P, as she called it-- and voluntarily committing herself, first to a city public hospital, then a small private hospital, and finally, a holistic recovery facility.

Early on in her experiment, Vincent writes, "Being put away does a number on you very quickly, and very thoroughly, no matter who you are in the outside world." She also recognizes fairly soon that the brain -- unlike the kidney or other types of the body -- requires more than medicine in order to be treated. It requires empathy.

You have to marvel at Vincent's brazenness and willingness to go the distance. She informs her insurance company that she (not they) should foot the bill for her institutional stays, as she is a journalist doing research, and shells out $14,700 not once, but twice -- to the public institution, then to the private facility, both of which put her in a state of roiling anxiety about all the freedoms she's turned over. Vincent doubts whether she can recover in these places, where patients are over-medicated, and conditions, often inadequate.

Vincent becomes fascinated by the habits and prognoses of the patients she encounters in wards, but their colorful stories would be old news to anyone who's ever been in rehab or made the rounds of recovery rooms for group therapy.

Vincent writes with confidence and her quirky observations can be inspired -- as she depicts day-to-day life among the addicted and mentally ill, and particularly as she questions her own mind, her surroundings and the system into whose hands she's entrusted herself.

She asks, for example, "How does one exist as a self, as a discrete person in the world, and yet not inhabit one's own self?" While at a private hospital, where she finds herself spending too much time curled up alone on the tiles of her bathroom in order to avoid having to deal with the overwhelming pain of those surrounding her, she realizes this is how many sensitive people feel out in the world and how the homeless mentally ill and addicted especially feel, as they are forced to live without a break on the streets, bombarded by chaos, noise, pollution and fear.

Vincent also ponders, "What might happen if we as a culture took even the most minor responsibility for the lost among us, rather than consigning them, and quite possibly ourselves, to the ravages of the system? The indifferent system."

At St. Luke's, the name she gives to a private hospital, she is touched by the kindness and simplicity of Sister Pete, who prompts her to muse: Maybe "true goodness... in this fucked-up creation" is a "form of retardation. Not an avoidance of vice but an ignorance of it, a lack of acquaintance with it that cannot be willed after the fall, no matter how strong the intention."

By the time Vincent leaves St. Luke's, she is beginning to emerge from her depression, a depression complicated by the power struggles she encounters in the institutions in which she places herself. At St. Luke's, she realizes how much a private room can mean, providing as it does, healing space, even room for exercise.

By the time Vincent commits herself to Mobius, a place she determines is easily "within the reach of the middle class," she is back on Vitamin P, taking 20 milligrams a day, and holding. Unlike the previous two institutions, Mobius aims to heal mind, spirit and body. It's a place where Vincent is able to explore past traumas and experience deeper healing. She finds therapists there to whom she can relate as they freely share their own humanity. They inform her that she is not mentally ill after all.

Summarizing, Vincent laments the overcrowding, lack of fresh air, cleanliness and nutrition that she has experienced in institutions, noting significantly, that among all the patients she encountered during her hospital stays, she found very few willing to take responsibility for their own health and lives. The resistance of patients to change stymies many in the system who want to help and often turns them cynical.

At one point, a therapist at Mobius asks Vincent to consider the word 'compassion" as a means to heal. Unable to stomach the word, she opts for the idea of help instead. Vincent realizes, "I am not bound by my diagnosis. I can help myself, and I will," a perception that, once seized, could make all the difference to anyone suffering mentally, physically or spiritually.

Death and Laughter

2009-12-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

Dec. 18, 2009

We're getting close to Christmas and the farthest thing from most people's minds is death, or so I'm assuming. But it's pressing on my mind this year. My father died last Wednesday, and today we are going to the funeral of a friend's brother, who died suddenly this past Tuesday.

One thing I've learned for sure is, try as you may, you can't plan death. The world is full of surprises, and death, even in the midst of a holiday that rains so much color and joy. Like holidays, life with all its color and vibrancy ends too. Throughout it all, you try to keep laughing. That's why, even in the midst of my father's passing, I wanted to read David Sedaris. I wanted to laugh.

I loved Naked, published a few years ago, and expected great things from When You Are Engulfed in Flames, which I picked up a few days before we heard the news that dad was in the process of dying. I wasn't altogether disappointed, although the dark humor and pointed quips struck almost too close to home.

The cover of Sedaris' book has a skeleton on it that appears to have a cigarette between its teeth. The cover is meant to be the death mask of Sedaris himself, who was, until fairly recently, a habitual smoker, and whose final essay, "The Smoking Section," refers to his process of quitting. There's also an essay in this collection about a skeleton that Sedaris once bought for his partner Hugh, who decided to hang it in the bedroom. Sedaris found himself looking at this dangling skeleton, which seemed to say to him, "You are going to die."

I can't say this struck me as particularly funny, just true, having recently stared at death straight in the face and recognized, sure as I'm sitting here right now, that this life, solid and real as it seems, is indeed ephemeral as a dream and quick as smoke to disappear.

My father was a strong, indomitable soul, full of enthusiasm for life, with a vitality so palpable it was intimidating to some. He lived a year and a half longer than he was expected to live, and no one, least of all the doctors who predicted his demise, could believe he could carry on so long, his heart being in the shape it was. He humored us, mugging till the very end, reminding us of his amazing resilience and also of his capacity for laughter and the importance of it. It has always been a balm and savior for our family.

Taking my dad's cue, the night after his passing, my siblings and I drank, smoked pot, and drove fast and furiously around Hilton Head, where my dad lived. I turned around to my two sisters and brother once and said, "How does it feel to be 15 again?" No doubt, each of us was filled with the intractable knowledge somewhere deep within that we are no longer 15 and will never again be, and are in fact now ourselves on death's list, however far into the future each of us may live.

Still, the laughter helps, and for us, for me, provided a much needed respite from our vigil with death, reminding us that good times can be there, sometimes even in the midst of heartbreak.

Brilliant Madness

2009-11-28T20:44:00.000-08:00

Nov. 30, 2009

A psychotherapist once informed me that it took a certain talent to develop schizophrenia and that I didn't possess it, as I had a solid mind. Honestly, I was a little disappointed. But it got me thinking about how one might learn to actually blow one's own mind, expand it out of its accustomed boxes, bust out of what one perceives as real and imaginary. Learning to do this might be the door that opened to madness or brilliance.

I've always been fascinated by how the mind works, and how it fails us. The best book I ever read on mania was Kay Redfield Jamison's soul-searching, gripping memoir, An Unquiet Mind, which captivated me so much I literally did not put it down from the moment I got it home until I turned the the final page. It took all of one bitterly cold night under the covers under a small, dim lamp in my room with a slanted floor in Ithaca to devour it.

Jamison's story is particularly remarkable because she wrote it both from the standpoint of a professional -- she's a clinical psychologist -- and as a sufferer of mania, doing what no psychologist or psychiatrist before her had done, coming out of the closet as a sufferer of bipolar disease. Jamison, an expert on the subject, is currently a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, and her autobiography set a standard that I don't think has been matched since An Unquiet Mind was published in 1995.

Jamison's ability to detail with uncanny precision the workings of her manic mind and to pose questions and logic concerning her experiences with equal precision captivated me. There would be no question at the end of this reading about the profound effect of mental illness on the sufferer as well as others in her life. Like alcoholism, the disease affects everyone who comes in touch with it.

This fact is made stunningly clear in the opening pages of Hurry Down Sunshine, A Father's Story of Love and Madness by Michael Greenberg. A columnist for The Times Literary Supplement, Greenberg was forced to come to grips with his 15-year old daughter's psychotic break in the summer of 1996 -- Sally unraveled while walking down a street in Greenwich Village and continued unraveling in a psychiatric ward -- an event that deeply shook up Sally's mother and step-mother, among others, and transformed Greenberg's life and Sally's.

While it's Jamison's ability to see herself that mesmerizes the reader in her autobiography, it's the combination of Greenberg's desire to love his daughter back to normal and his ability to embrace both the ways he is united to and separated from Sally by her madness that gives this book its unique beauty and power. It's as if Greenberg believes his own ability to perceive Sally exactly as she is might be the magic wand that reels her in from madness.

Madness isn't beautiful. It causes pain and hardship. Jamison's account of ruining relationships with her outbursts, and Greenberg's description of Sally on a rampage in his apartment, set loose by her instability like an automated alien, are chilling and disturbing.

Jamison found a route out of madness through medication, therapy and self-knowledge, and Greenberg found a way to cope by charting his daughter's descent and return with raw accuracy and honesty. Both journeys took extraordinary courage and both stories acquire a kind of luminosity in the telling.

Like journalists in a no man's land, these writers pass along their insights as they toe the edge. It may be the very danger they encounter in the act of telling that endows their perceptions with such rare and heart-wrenching brilliance.

The Rare Gifts of Our Mothers

2009-11-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

Nov. 6, 2009

Ruth Reichl's memoir, Not Becoming My Mother(2009) is above all an ode to defiance, that much maligned virtue, especially when it is attributed to women. Reichl, an award-winning journalist, food critic and author of several critically acclaimed memoirs, has written a beautiful and heart-wrenching elegy, taking the reader through the diary notes and letters left behind by her mother. These messages left in a box and uncovered at what would have been Miriam Brudno's 100th birthday, it turns out, hold the woman's true self and legacy.

Not Becoming My Mother opens on an upbeat note with Reichl recounting zany "Mim tales" out of her childhood, stories about her mother's culinary mishaps and failed attempts to be a typical mother. Miriam was a disastrous cook and totally uninterested in housekeeping, something that constantly frazzled her own mother who expected her to excel at these.

Like many women of the generation of the 1940s in which she grew up, Miriam was stymied by convention -- marriage and motherhood. An intellectual, she aspired to become a doctor, but relinquished her dream, giving in to her mother's expectations to marry, settle down and have children. She did taste independence in her early 20s, when she ventured into the business of opening a bookstore, an opportunity that allowed her to befriend important writers and intellectuals of her day. But, as a wife and mother, Miriam felt burdened, with no outlets for creativity, and became overwhelmed first with boredom, then depression.

Mary Gordon's Circling My Mother: A Memoir (2007), includes portraits of many family members besides Gordon's mother, and many of these are dark and unflattering. Her primary focus is her mother's religious life and her friendship with a few Catholic priests. In younger years, despite polio, Gordon's mother, Anna Gagliano, a deeply devout Catholic and also an alcoholic, managed to be the family breadwinner making a living as a legal secretary, but at 90, in a nursing home, her mind gone, she is the epitome of decrepit old age, with its stench and embarrassment. Gordon compares the scene in a nursing home to a Bonnard painting, but it is evident that she is repulsed by what her mother has become. Gordon, who teaches at Barnard College, has written nonfiction, but is perhaps best known for her first novel, Final Payments (1979), and her best-seller, Men and Angels (1985).

Reichl's account, which focuses almost exclusively on her mother, is rare as it is about a woman who finds herself in old age, that time of life so often associated with waste and decay and so often discounted by our culture. Miriam endured a bad first marriage that ended quickly with divorce; suffered through years in her relationship to a harsh, demanding yet charismatic and talented mother; bore two children whom she taught to be self-sufficient despite her own feelings of insecurity and failure; and finally, survived the loss of her faithful husband of many years. But it is only after finding herself alone, at the end of her life, that Miriam saw who she was and felt free enough to become herself, embracing her independence.

Miriam's gift to her children was defiance -- that surge of the instinct rebelling against obstacles it deems unnecessary -- and a profound belief in the importance of a strong work ethic. She encouraged her children by negative example -- "This is what I don't want you to become," she seemed to say over and over.

Miriam's story is sad and not so uncommon, but it is ultimately hopeful. It's final message -- that one can transform at any age -- is refreshing and important, particularly in our youth-driven culture.

On Visiting and Becoming the Poor

2009-10-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

Oct. 29, 2009

Nickel and Dimed, award-winning journalist Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating nonfiction account of living as a member of the poor working class,(published in 2001), and Clarice Lispector's novella, The Hour of the Star, (translated by Giovanni Pontiero, and originally published in 1977), about a pathetically poor, mistreated worker in the Brazilian slums, have in common the little people, and the writers' compassion for them which inform the reader and illumine the texts. As I read both books this past week, I was struck by their similarity -- primarily, both writers aim to raise the consciousness of readers about those that have not.

You don't need to be a social activist or a follower of Michael Moore's movies to become mesmerized by Nickel and Dimed. If you have any heart or curiosity at all, you will not be able to put the book down. It's particularly interesting to revisit it in these days when the economy is in even worse shape than when Ehrenreich started her project, testing herself at various service jobs around the country about a decade ago. According to the American Community Surveys (ACS) 2008 data, an estimated 13.2 percent of the U.S. population had income below the poverty threshold in 2007. America's poor don't just live in Kentucky and Louisiana, they are everywhere.

Ehrenreich embarked on her experiment, working service jobs, in Key West in 1998. Early in her text, she explains, she took on the challenge "just to see whether I could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do." A very smart woman, an accomplished professional writer and Ph.D. in biology, Ehrenreich failed time and again.

Service professionals sometimes form a weird subculture that allows waitresses in a cheap restaurant, for example, to simultaneously experience camaraderie, animosity and competitiveness with one another as they share the same toil and aggravation. But too often it's a dead end. Support just isn't there, and a worker needs two, maybe three jobs just to make ends meet, and that doesn't even allow for health care emergencies.

Much of Ehrenreich's story is not so much about the poor working class, but about poor working class girls and women and their drudge. While working as a maid, Ehrenreich encountered a particularly uppity woman who demanded a picayune cleaning, inspiring Ehrenreich to muse -- "That's not your marble bleeding. I want to tell her, it's the world-wide working class -- the people who quarried the marble, wove your Persian rug until they went blind, harvested the lovely apples in your fall-themed dining room centerpiece, smelted the steel for the rails, drove the trucks, put up the building, and now bend and squat and sweat to clean it."

By Latin American standards, North Americans, even those in Appalachia, hardly know about poverty. In Colombia and Brazil, for example, poverty devastates masses, and hordes of children become street criminals; only the wiliest survive. On the street, the poorest of the poor cheat and mistreat and are cheated and mistreated, even by their own. Hunger is constant, with never the hope of a soup kitchen or shelter to ease wanting -- even for a day.

Lispector's fictional character Macabea, may be the most pitiful poor woman I have encountered in fiction. Homely and unloved, she makes a meager living as a typist in Rio. The reader perceives her through the eyes of the self-serving narrator, Rodrigo S.M., who attempts to make her his own, to become her by a willful act of literary transmutation: "It's my obsession to become the other man. In this case, the other woman. Pale and feeling weak, I tremble just like her."

The aim of Lispector's stirring, elegant, wholly original tale is to move the reader to experience the arrogance of the narrator and the anguish of the poor. A hint of the aim is unveiled in this telling line of the narrator's -- "I know that it is very frightening to step out of oneself, but then everything which is unfamiliar can be frightening."

Both Lispector and Ehrenreich dare the reader to step out of comfortable zones into the shoes of the poor, and further, beneath their skin. Each writer succeeds brilliantly, exposing not only the artifice and arrogance of those more fortunate along with the brutality of external circumstances, but the layers of internal suffering the working class and poor constantly endure.

Sedaris and My Brother Bill

2009-10-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

Oct. 26, 2009

Before I get to Clarice, not the Jodie Foster character in the Silence of the Lamb movie, but the inimitable great Brazilian writer, I am going to take a seguey into humor, specifically that of David Sedaris, who, I hear, is a favorite of my younger brother Bill's.

I wouldn't know this directly, you see, as my dear brother Bill, the youngest in our family, is many miles away, west of here, and we in our family tend not to communicate much -- with each other anyway. I heard Billy likes Sedaris through a sister of mine who calls him more often than anybody. I'm glad somebody calls him. I wish we talked more often. Heck, it would be nice to see one another.

I haven't seen him in 12 years, since our mother's funeral.

Be that as it may -- and mind you, we both love one another and said so during our last phone conversation, which was, oh, perhaps a year or so ago, when I called him -- I have to go by way of Sedaris to learn about my brother.

I chose Naked, Sedaris' collection of essays about his family to start, and let me tell you, I can totally see why Bill likes Sedaris. There are a lot of similarities.

Like David, my brother Bill was surrounded by females growing up -- three sisters to be precise, and a doting mother. Like David, Bill was a bit neurotic, and funny as hell as a child. He probably still is. And like David, Bill is a bicultural. David is part Greek and American, and we are part Colombian, and Iowan, if there is such a thing. David's mother was a strong personality, and needless to say, ours was too --strong and volatile, always saying what she thought, however outrageous or inappropriate, never making any bones whatsoever about her feelings, and being unabashedly hysterical.

Bill has some of those qualities, but practices directness with charm and aplomb. Rather than daring you into battle, as most individuals in our family do, he invites you to consider and even question an opinion or a stance. This from a guy who was beaten regularly by an older, bigger brother -- for just being. As the youngest in a mad brood of aggressive and opinionated individuals, Billy learned early to be diplomatic. Now he is so diplomatic, he is unreachable!

It must be that he has a lot to do.

As far as I know, ever since Billy picked up a racket, he hasn't done much else but play tennis, and play it well. After winning championships, he decided to teach tennis, and apparently, he does that well too. He taught Olympic hopefuls, and now he heads a sports program at a Midwestern university.

All members of my family are trademarked by some form of obsession, as happens to be the case in Sedaris' family too. And as is true in Sedaris' family, we are irreverent as heck about those things that most people consider sacred -- like death.

Witness Sedaris hearing about his Greek grandmother Ya-Ya's death by phone: "My roommate was listening in, and because I wanted to impress him as a sensitive and complex individual, I threw myself onto the bed and made the most of my grief. 'It can't be true,' I cried. 'It can't be true-hu-hu-hu-hu.'"

And here are David's mother's comments regarding her own death in the future, as the family gazes upon Ya-Ya's casket: "'When I get like that, I want you to shoot me, no questions asked,' my mother whispered. 'disconnect the feeding tubes and shut off the monitors, but under no circumstances do I want you to move me into your basement.'"

There are so many hysterical moments in this collection, dear reader, I can't begin to tell you. You must read David Sedaris, if you haven't already. He's been around a while. Hundreds of thousands watch him on YouTube. He's even done the most audacious thing -- Taken time to read an entire essay, five minutes long, on David Letterman. And had people listen, appreciate and applaud.

Imagine that. Now, let me tell you, that's some accomplishment for a writer.

So, go read Sedaris. Read Naked, or any one of his other books. He's got plenty of outrageous and insightful remarks to make about his family. A lot of what he has to say will probably resonate with you, as I know families are a lot weirder than Cheaper By the Dozen or The Brady Bunch would have you believe. Some of the members of Sedaris' family may even remind you of members of your own family. In the long run, that's one of the best things you can say about a writer -- that he or she is familiar.

Hey David, you remind me of my brother Bill. Take that as a compliment.

With Apologies to Clarice

2009-10-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

October 18, 2009

You know you are way too much a part of "the culture," when you cannot read or say Clarice without thinking of Jodie Foster's character in Silence of the Lambs. I know it's awful to admit, but it's true, even though I am faced with this reminder as I read about the great, the important, the inimitable Clarice Lispector in Benjamin Moser's biography, Why This World, recently published by Oxford Press.

Short story writer. Novelist. Journalist. Translator. Russian but Brazilian. Jewish yet not. Feminist yet traditional. Groundbreaking in her writing yet reticent in person. Shy yet a diva. Alluring yet dismissive. A star who only wanted to be seen as her true self, she was known to shrug off interviewers with one word replies, once even suggesting to a journalist that he turn to one of her books to glean answers about her life.

Translator Gregory Rabasa once wrote that Clarice "looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf." She was, like Madonna, on a first name basis with the world, made famous by her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart, written in the style of an internal monologue, at the tender age of 23. Among her other famous works are Family Ties and The Passion According to G.H.

Moser, recently named the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine, is a young translator and expatriate who lives in the Netherlands. Why This World is a careful, but daunting biography, and it's not hard to read between the lines that he is a diehard fan.

I have to admit that something this long -- close to 400 pages -- could only be a question of fits and starts. I had my first fit on page 15, upon discovering that a friend of Clarice's once wrote that her eyes "had the dull dazzle of the mystic." I wonder how this matters in any way, save perhaps to set the stage for the scale of Clarice's mythic importance. But this biographer takes chapters to set the stage. Ah well, I now know it's a dull dazzle in the eye I must look for when next I search for a mystic. A bit further along, Moser mentions that Clarice resembled the Jewish saints of her homeland, and at this point, I closed the book -- for the first time anyway.

It all starts with quotations from the grand dame of letters herself, who claims, "I am so mysterious that I don't even understand myself."

It's tough enough to handle an egoist, but to add to that, a biographer who swirls with vagaries around Clarice's own swirling self-conceptions -- This is a bit much. Moser claims, for example, that she possessed "the soul of a single woman, but within it one finds the full range of human experience." Is it me, or does this sound antiquated, sexist and trite? I'd like to suggest to Mr. Moser that he hop a plane back to the U.S. fast and learn a thing or two about the modern single woman and her full range.

Vanity (the subject's) and subtle and not-so-subtle praise (the author's) fuel this literary mise. The first, vanity, is a defect I myself was intimate with for years. And so I know that it's often utilized to cover up the flaws in one's own person and one's past, things one wishes to obscure. One substitutes the deeper search with a deeper affection for the superficial -- The curve of one's eyebrow, the shape of one's mouth, the angle of one's cheek and the slope of the neck can hold one in thrall until, alas, time passes, these droop and one must search elsewhere -- within? -- if one is to remain friendly with the self at all. Knowing the self is inevitable, one could argue -- if you stick around long enough.

Dear reader of this reader, I forced myself to open the book again, and read about the tragic rape of Clarice's mother Mania by a gang of Russian soldiers, a rape which led to her mother contracting syphilis and to Mania's early death. Clarice was born to a syphilitic mother in 1920 in the Ukraine, and shortly after that, her poor family was forced to wander, leaving the country and settling eventually in Maceió, Brazil. Her father was a peddler and raised three girls on his own, one of whom was Chaya Kinkhasovna Lispector, who became Clarice in the new land. Her name means "Life" in Hebrew.

Clarice led a fascinating life that included literary success, marriage, a child, travels in Europe, adulation and renown. An accident led to years of pain and a premature death at 57. Outsider and insider; popular, yet removed; spontaneous, yet affected; it's hard to know who Clarice really was and what she really thought about herself, but you can have a great deal of fun speculating along with Moser, if you read Why This World.

With apologies to the dear sister who inspired this read, I didn't wade through nearly 400 pages of awe-inspired revelations about the ever so elusive Clarice to determine what I already knew: The reader will have to let the unnameable remain unnamed, to respect Clarice's mystery, to search for answers in her oeuvre, as the writer herself suggested.

Unfortunately, as I learned during a search at a local Barnes & Noble, Clarice's oeuvre is difficult and expensive to procure.

Perhaps this latest tome about her life will help to lift veils not only of obscurity but of exclusivity, kindle fresh interest in her work and inspire a reduction in prices of her books!

Sayonara Blood Sports

2009-10-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Oct. 13, 2009

I'm wondering if some a mad coked up, emotionally challenged wrestler runs the Travel Network. Don't expect to find any real food shows there, or anything that remotely resembles a civilized experience in which you, civilized reader, would like to partake. What you get is Man Vs. Food, Mad Adventures, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman, and yes, No Reservations, featuring the handsome, charming, talented, ever predictable Anthony Bourdain.

I had to see these shows to believe them. Now I do. I really, really do.

In case you thought otherwise, none of the shows I just mentioned is about eating. They are all about the blood sport that used to be civilized dining. They're about grossing people out, about primitive man against the elements, about animalistic contests in the arena.

Last time I switched on 788, I happened on Mad Adventures, just as some guy was cutting off a live snake's head and pouring its blood into a glass. Then the heart was excised, left to quiver in a basin. I switched channels at that point.

I was really anticipating not just travel, but watching cooks respect something foreign, but not that foreign. But what you get on Channel 788 is a killing field, guys closing in on prey, as if the world itself and everything in it -- live, quivering and vulnerable -- is theirs for the taking.

The last Bourdain episode I saw -- and, I hope, it is the last -- was on the Philippines, and once again, its emphasis wasn't so much good or rare cuisine as it was the gross-out -- "See big, fat pig roasting on a spit." "See goat we are about to kill, whose entrails we are about to eat." "See what a big brave macho man I am going down on this."

I would love for time to roll forward about 10 years so Travel TV watchers could glimpse what becomes of the hosts of these shows -- if they are even here then. I wonder what X-rays of their stomachs and colons look like. How much money does it take to buy a blown out gut or an overextended colon? How much are these guys getting paid so they can commit suicide on air?

Maybe someone can ask Bourdain or Zimmerman or that poor oaf who's always belching and gagging over giant pizzas, omelets and unwieldy stacks of pancakes. Really, how much money does it take to not care about yourself at all and launch on the suicidal journey that hosting one of these shows is?

Someone somewhere must think that all women want to see on television is Oprah. I wonder where the really cool food shows are, where a camera slowly, thoughtfully pans a happy cook stirring something healthful and delightful, brought out of the earth with respect for what it yields -- rather than out of a poor animal's gut -- something that will be properly cooked, served, eaten and appreciated. Where is the show starring the gourmand who respects what she eats and expresses curiosity rather than bravado over the elements that constitute a good meal?

Indulge me this mental stream: Outside of thinking, that most precious activity that distinguishes us as humans, the most important things we do are breathe and eat -- in that order. Wouldn't you imagine then that we would strive to do both as well as possible in order to live as happily and as long as possible? Wouldn't you imagine then that breathing right and eating well, in the best sense of what the latter means, would matter to most people?

You would think....

I don't think most people have the slightest idea of how to eat properly anymore. Most of the time, even though I know better, I forget too -- the way we live keeps us from being our better selves. We're wound up, speed addicts and our culture demands we go on to the next thing before we even know what we're experiencing in the moment. Maybe we binge just so we can capture the moment whole. But it's really too bad, cause we'll killing ourselves that way.

Years ago, aware of my own predilection for hastiness, I took time out to study yoga at an ashram in Lenox, Mass. and took part in a workshop there that directed us to spend 40 minutes eating a bowl of rice, properly chewing and appreciating the process at hand. I can tell you I learned a few things-- mainly, how much better it feels to eat something mindfully than without having the slightest regard for what passes through my mouth.

Vietnamese monk and peacemaker Thich Nhat Hanh spent an entire 20-minutes eating an orange mindfully in a video he put out in the 90s. Some people have been enlightened on this subject for years.

In the late 90s, as an educational coordinator, I once spent an entire afternoon showing kids in an afterschool program how to eat a piece of fruit -- quietly and with respect for the thing being eaten that was providing life and nourishment. Believe it or not, the kids, middle schoolers, participated, amazed at their own powers of attention, their own ability to do this. Maybe too, they were trying to outdo one another with the new challenge of mindfulness-- but they put aside rowdiness and got into it. These kids who used to spend snack time tossing food at one another, got into it. And maybe, sometime in the future, when they get sick enough and bored enough with bad habits and the unhealthy routines propagated by the culture, mostly through TV, they'll remember eating properly and how it felt better.

So, it's time to switch off all the visual tripe of the Travel Channel. Time to put to rest the culinary adventures I took up to read -- mostly Bourdain's -- in the wake of that experiment.

Michael Ruhlman introduced me to great chefs, and got me yearning to eat at some of the finest eateries around the country; and Bill Buford's writing demonstrated how demanding the cooking passion can be. But it's time to put the big boys and their adventures to bed.

I'm going to break out a biography of Genet -- the journalist Janet Flanner-- and another of Clarice Lispector, the Brazilian writer.

No apologies. I'm going back to my roots, my way.

For Love of Small Things French

2009-10-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

October 9, 2009

"Respect for food is a respect for life, for who we are and what we do." - Thomas Keller

So says the artistic chef of chefs, Thomas Keller, who has so dominated French-influenced American cuisine for decades. As his birthday is coming up on Oct. 14, it seems appropriate to write about him now.

Keller grew up in California, apprenticed as a cook in many locations around the country, then hopped to France in the 1980s.

The French Laundry, which he started in 1994 in the Napa Valley, launched his extraordinary reputation. Subsequently, he opened Per Se in New York City, which immediately garnered four stars from food critic Frank Bruni of The New York Times. There is also Bouchon in Yountville, New York.

Time Magazine dubbed Keller, Best Chef in 2001, and he's received several Best Chef Awards from the James Beard Foundation.

Keller believes a great meal is an emotional experience, a journey, and so he tries to create this via ambiance as well as the attention to detail for which he is renowned. He's called Per Se -- which opened on Feb. 16, 2004, then after a fire, reopened May 1 of the same year in Manhattan -- an urban interpretation of The French Laundry; the two are connected by symbols such as the blue door, a garden and fireplace.

He has helped to make famous the sous-vide (under vacuum) style of cooking that is known to preserve the integrity of ingredients by allowing them to cook at lower temperatures for a longer time. Georges Pralus developed the method in France in the 1970s, and it's also been utilized by Ferran Adria and Charlie Trotter, among others.

Since bacteria tends to grow in the absence of oxygen, sous-vide style cooking requires close monitoring in order to avoid botulism poisoning, but also because the difference of even a degree can radically affect the final product.

A classic Keller recipe employing this method is his slow cooking cassoulet, a dish of white beans and pork parts, with white wine and tomato paste.

Keller's books are The French Laundry Cookbook, Under Pressure: Cooking Sous-Vide. His latest, Bouchon, is an homage to simple French bistro fare.

Those Darn Sweet Little Things

2009-10-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

Oct. 2, 2009

This is dedicated to my mother.

There are a few things I could just about die for -- any time. One is chocolate, and the other, espresso. As I sit here writing at Barnes & Noble in Paramus, nouveau flamenco sounds from the speakers, and I'm reminded of my mother, my great friend, fellow foodie and raconteur who is no longer with us. I am reminded of her because, as her passion was literature, she loved to be surrounded by books (as I now am), and because after that, there was food and sharing it with those she loved. Right now, I am enjoying something she would have liked very much -- my own espresso concoction -- one part espresso, one part hot chocolate, and a splash of soy (to mellow the color).

My mother loved food and also liked to sneak it. She was addicted to Marshmallow Fluff. You could be searching high and low in a cupboard for a favorite long lost cup and find there behind the woodwork, her secret stash, that Marshmallow stuff. One time I caught her, jar in hand, spoonful in mouth, and she explained, "This is exquisite -- I cannot help myself."

She was a gourmand, like me, but she could enjoy food like nobody. Watching her savor something delectable such as a piece of chocolate, a section of Key Lime pie, yes, even Marshmallow Fluff was an experience royale. Her lips pursed and you felt she was kissing the food inside her mouth. A part of you wanted to be there too. Then her fine long-fingered hands would fly up to her face, clench and fly free in a flamenco gesture of complete gratification.

You have to know how passionate she was and how much she loved the idea that she could savor something so delicious and sinful and have it disappear inside her -- never to be seen again -- as if swallowing, she might never be found out, even by her own body.

There was no richer experience than being asked to partake of a morsel of something delicious with my mother at the kitchen counter. When she was in a good frame of mind, happy and not plagued by worry or a bout of depression, from which she was prone to suffer, there was nothing she could do that did not captivate anyone I ever knew -- child or adult. She told stories like no one, making you live in her words and actions, leaving you breathless for more.

I can see her now, unraveling a small package, a dessert surprise, which she would treat like a filched prize that she had gotten just for you, and so absolutely had to be partaken. She enjoyed deep dark, bitter chocolate while I preferred sweet chocolate, and we both reveled in desserts and espresso, which provided the kick that catapulted us into some of our finest gossip and conversations.

Chocolate and espresso are both part of our Colombian culture and heritage. Colombians love to talk and laugh and eat. At three o'clock, afternoons when we were visiting relatives in Bogotá, we would drink hot chocolate, dipping sharp cheese into it, and nibble from an assortment of fruits and cheeses laid out across the long dining table. And we exchanged stories.

My mother usually presided, imitating relatives and friends, being outrageous and hysterical, so hysterical my uncle and aunt often doubled over, blushing so that one worried how much redder they could get without bursting. My uncle laughed so hard, he cried. It always endeared me to him to watch him, a suave and dapper man in a fine business suit, so moved by my mother, he had to wipe tears from his eyes.

Later, after we had moved to the U.S., and I was an adult, the experience of sharing a rare dessert with my mother -- say, a mousse pie or mocha tart or ice cream extravaganza -- would be the catalyst that would put her over the edge, causing her to slip into that most precarious pasttime -- revealing family secrets.

There were plenty of secrets to tell. She made me promise never to repeat them -- yet afterward, proceeded to write nearly all of them into her stories and novels!

She wrote about her crazy Uncle Saul, who claimed to carry the secrets of the universe on a slip of paper in his breast pocket. And beautiful but simple-minded Aunt Adelaida who was the butt of her demented brother, who would, for example, get her to rest her head sideways on a bed of grass, so he could set rocks against it. My mother wrote about her great grandparents, the man, so jealous of his wife's voice that he imprisoned her in an attic, where she went mad and died young. One relative attached a rope to a church chandelier and leapt from the balcony landing buck naked at the foot of the altar during a Sunday Mass. As far as I know, my mother never wrote about him.

While it's alcohol that gets most people going, it was lovely desserts and the perico, espresso, that cup of black heaven, that would launch my mother into realms of the forbidden, into declaring those things that were, for her, daring to reveal. Growing up in a repressive environment, my mother was forced to stuff much of what she wanted to say.

She grew up in Bogotá, Colombia during the beginning of a period called The Violence, when anyone critical of the government could be assassinated in broad daylight on the streets. Her father, a prestigious judge, dared to defend peasants in his courtroom and criticized the oligarchy. As a result of this, he and his family were forced into exile many times. Once, when my mother was around five, as she and her father and a few of his friends descended the steps of a capital building, a car came to a screeching halt below, a door flew open and someone began shooting. One of my mother's father's friends, an official, grabbed my mother, ferreting her to safety in a taxi, and fortunately no one was killed or injured that day.

Experiences like that must have percolated inside her for years, begging to be told. When my mother finally gave herself permission to write, she gave herself wholeheartedly to the task. She did not begin writing until after leaving her own country, after marrying my American dad and moving to the U.S. Even then, she chose to write in a language not her own, perhaps believing that this would distance her just enough so that she could revisit her past with clarity and objectivity.

For whatever reason, perhaps having to do with the culture and time in which she was born and raised, my mother associated indulging in special foods with being naughty, even sacreligious, which she loved to be. Being sacreligious must have been the complete antithesis of what she had been expected to be as a child -- silent, proper and obedient, always fearing that an inappropriate word or gesture from her could lead to a fiasco -- someone's imprisonment, even death.

My mother and I liked being naughty together. After Saturday shopping sprees at Bloomies, we would settle at a lunch counter somewhere and order a wicked dessert. She would eye the white cream curling up out of the cup of a white chocolate mousse with Cointreau that beckoned her.

"This is soo good," she would say, closing her eyes as if in prayer. "Too good. May God forgive me."

The desserts didn't have to be elegant or complicated. Just plain ice cream could do it. Each spoonful was a deeply felt experience, utter delight.

"Should we have another? No, no, I cannot," she would ask and answer herself, her eyes roaming the room, sad for something lost that someone somewhere had deprived her of and that had somehow abandoned her in its wake.

Her relationship to her treats and desserts was varied too. She might gaze at the truffle cream between two cookies fondly as if it was a cute child, or cruelly, as if the thing had the capacity to persecute her, until she somehow convinced herself that what she longed for was indeed benign.

Little treats bedeviled her -- candy by her bedside, truffles, and especially Marshmallow Fluff, which she hid and ate in a kind of ecstasy, her pleasure beholding to nobody.

"This, this is mine," her secret indulgence seemed to say. "I am owned by everyone -- my husband and five children, by my writing even, but this, this is all mine."

Second to discussing literature or her sinful affection for things sweet with her daughters, my mother loved cajoling her friends into divulging their best recipes, their secrets. Her best friends -- Fran Decker, Charlotte Sabo -- were superb cooks. My mother loved to envy them the talent she did not possess and ravished their treasures guiltlessly, listening spellbound to each step of their concoctions. It was the way she loved them back for having fed her habit. My mother would take a bite of something delicious from their kitchens and beg to know how it was made.

"I place the little buggers in the oven, say at 450," Fran would say.

"And they look like this! Unbeleefable! Dees, dees is true ecstasy!"

Culinary Music and Magic

2009-09-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

September 25, 2009

"Jazz is like bananas -- it must be consumed on the spot." Jean-Paul Sartre, "Jazz in America"

There's a story involving Bird, a woman, Miles Davis and fried chicken that is too bawdy even for me to tell, although you can read it, if you like, in a section on Bird in Miles Davis' autobiography. But I'll say this, the tale would surely squash anyone's notion that the experience of delicious food, great musicians, and raunchy sex guarantee a fabulous experience, or always turns out, like a great recipe.

Everything is timing; everything is consideration; everything is taste, and the best artists would tell you so.

There is food and there is music and they can be partners too, just as art and food are -- in the best kitchens. And sometimes, cooks just like cooking to a beat, as if music might be the magical ingredient.

On coastalbeat.com you can find a story about Blues man Sauce Boss, who "plays the guitar and sings the blues and mixes up a 10-gallon pot of Gumbo at the same time." Try that, you dexterous kitchen wonders!

Sauce man's been playing gigs for 20 years in order to sell his own brand of hot sauce. Audiences not only get the Blues, but a bowl of Gumbo loaded with the Sauce Boss' Liquid Summer Hot Sauce -- handed out at the end of the show!

What's the secret of the Sauce Boss' invention? -- Datil peppers, he says, which are in the habanero family and provide a slow burn.

Brilliant food evokes great music, connects to all the arts. Grant Achatz, the young Midwestern culinary genius, who, together with Nick Kokonas, opened Alinea in 2005, says that "a menu should read like sheet music." Grant, an inventor, in the tradition of the Spaniard Ferran Adria (who in fact inspired Achatz' journey into culinary scientific invention), won the Rising Star Chef Award from the James Beard Foundation in 2003, and in 2004, received four stars from the Chicago Tribune, when he was executive chef at Trio, in Evanston, Illinois. He is only 34.

Kokonas, a philosopher/techie/entrepreneur, explained recently in a blog that he and Achatz created Alinea to "touch all the senses —not only taste. The menu is composed like a symphony or a play, provoking diners, challenging them, and making sure they feel... happy, sad, nostalgia, humor... the full range of human emotion." A masterful dish should look like a work of art and evoke it.

(Coincidentally, The New Yorker just published a profile of Achatz in its Sept. 25 issue, available online).

What of the actual music of kitchens, the cooking noise that includes the metallic drumming of pots and pans and chefs' calling and shouting voices? Did composer John Cage ever dream that up for a recording?

I watched impressive footage of a bevy of meticulous cooks in Alinea's kitchen preparing food with the quiet mindfulness of monks creating a sand mandala -- Awe-inspiring, and nothing whatsoever like the Hard Rock insanity described by Bourdain in the typically loud and bawdy kitchens of his experience. If Alinea represents the new kitchen and cuisine of the future, then there is hope for humankind.

Music and art can inspire great food. But so can mindfulness and silence. Frankly, as a foodie, I'll opt for the latter. It's better for your soul and your digestion.

In those typical, rowdy kitchens, each with their own sense of dysfunctionally functional mayhem or order, there are certain chefs that insist on particular music, something to concoct by, and perhaps, keep them from losing their minds.

Bourdain -- who is more than a chef, someone who has traveled the great kitchen of the world trying to gain mastery of the sensual -- lists his own preferences on a Web site. They include hard pumping cuts from Snap -- "The Power"; The Cult -- "She Sells Sanctuary"; The Stooges' "Down On the Street (Take 15)," and slower, sexier numbers for sultry pot stirring, like Ralph Rebel's "Rumble," Bill Wither's "Use Me," and The Stones, "Gimme Shelter."

My personal favorite for cooking -- Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" -- as I think happiness is the best ingredient, perhaps the only guarantee to producing good food.

The Kitchen Heart

2009-09-16T13:14:00.001-07:00

September 17, 2009

"I've always suspected that for me, the act of cooking and the act of writing are linked, that the desire to cook and the compulsion to write arise out of the same spot in my unconscious, as two different manifestations of the same innate urge." Michael Ruhlman, The Reach of A Chef.

Cooking, sex, writing, art. Cooking, sex, writing, art. It's a mantra, and there's a rhythm and rush when you imagine each of these rituals, connected as they are by heat at the root.

There are certain things I like to do and certain things I feel compelled to do. Cooking mostly falls into the like category, but writing is a passion. There have been stages in my life when I felt so overwrought, so riddled with emotion that I was driven to create art even when I didn't know how to do it, to assemble collages, for example, that included photos I had taken, or to paint with acrylics. Years ago, during a divorce, I did nothing but paint for months. I didn't really know how to paint, but I had to do it. I became riveted by the rituals, the feel and smell of paint, the struggle to make something coherent happen on the canvas. I had to try to be creative in a big way, to make sense out of the craziness within, seeping out of me like questions into the dark. I felt if I didn't, I might go nuts.

Some people create because they must, others just because they are driven. I'm reading The Reach of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman, who knows the culinary trade inside out, having worked in the kitchen and become expert writing about what happens there and around those who are transforming American cuisine. He writes about Tim Ryan, for example, a culinary success story whose accomplishments include opening up the American Bounty Restaurant (one of the first eateries to focus on regional cooking), becoming the youngest president of the American Culinary Federation, acquiring an M.B.A., and a Ph.D. in education. Ruhlman calls him a true chef "at the core."

What exactly does this mean, besides, one suspects, possessing a certain ferocity of character, and determination?

According to Ryan, there are four characteristics that determine greatness in an artist: 1) excellent craftsmanship, 2) innovation, 3) work that is both trendy and valuable, 4) and the capacity to influence others. Who are the great modern chefs that fall into this category? Ruhlman's list includes Paul Prudhomme (of Louisiana fame), America's first celebrity chef; Wolfgang Puck (Spago); Larry Forione, (An American Place); Charlie Trotter of Chicago; Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill); Jean-Georges Vongerichten, whose forte was innovation; Nobu Matsuhisa, the Japanese artist in Manhattan; and Thomas Keller, known for his unique altering of French styles and techniques. Add to this list, Paul Bocuse, dubbed by Ryan "the Elvis Presley of the culinary world."

The American food revolution really began in the 1980s, and it has been greatly aided by television, which has provided an array of stages to help evolve the myth of the chef. What is "a chef," this creature whose reputation, once monk-like, is now anything but, synonymous in some cases with the worst kind of excess. And why are people obsessed with the chef culture?

One reason may be because we all have to eat and most of us do have to cook. And so, when we see someone perform culinary magic, we have enough reference points that we can recognize that this is something we have not only not ever done, but in many cases not even dreamed of doing, and so we determine we must have this thing -- both the ability and object just out of our reach. The chef takes us out of our world, expands the envelope, blows out the horizon. A chef is a leader says Ryan, head of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA).

The kitchen takes you down, down into the ravenous underbelly, into the realms of the unexpected, into the layers of desire. You are encouraged to excavate there for what you want, to wander, to ravage ingredients like treasures, to appease and to please.

I know what I am searching for in all this. It's not the chefs -- their badness, perfection or originality. It's the heart of care I never knew navigating the great kitchens of the world, passing from master hand to master hand, conjuring the current of art, the mysterious magic smoke that drives the writer's hand too.

It isn't that I've gone batty over chefs or even the idea of them. It's just that Bourdain so reminds me of my brother John, the one I lost. He lives like John did, drinking and eating the best, traveling and writing, constantly charming. A companion to all, Bourdain reminds me of him even in the intimate public persona he has evolved.

My brother died in 2000 in Chile of respiratory and pancreatic complications due to alcoholism. He left the U.S. for Chile during the first Gulf War, running from U.S. imperialism, but also toward something purer, better. I believe he was trying to find that part of himself too. He set up a fishing lodge in Patagonia, and took fishermen who came from all over the world, on fresh water trout expeditions, and wrote about his adventures like a modern-day Hemingway. He cooked like a top chef and was a genuine connoisseur of fine wines. He was an adventurer in the truest sense, who would risk his life to help an amigo, and, according to letters received after his death, did, in fact, do this more than once in the wilderness. After his death, the woman he'd lived with, the mother of his two children -- a girl and boy, who were seven and five, respectively, when he died--managed to develop The Heart of Patagonia into a premier resort, one of the best in the country today.

But, and here is a bit BUT, while my brother -- even with his cloak of superman abroad -- tried to be something more than the measure of a man he was raised to be, struggled to be tender with things and to forge real connections to the people and the land he had adopted, what prevails in the chef culture now and has for some time is the "kill, take and feast" macho attitude. It's a world in which primitive man beats out his maleness in the wilds of the kitchen -- "Eat me and my shit, baby!" -- nothing less than that, despite the fact that a few women have succeeded here and there and have stories to tell of matching wits or side-stepping brutalization brilliantly, oh yes, and cooking well.

Bourdain, who epitomizes the celebrity chef-that-no-longer-cooks-just-eats-out-all-over-the-globe, is all about raising his glass to man's dominance in the wild, the uninterrupted conquest, the macho ideal that is the reason people are drawn to this sport (as opposed to culture) of being a chef. It's the blood and guts lure, more killing and bloat than nurturance and tenderness, order and sensitivity -- rest assured. The chef culture, like wrestling, represents primitive man in all his gory glory.

What will happen when the fire in the dimming arena dies and a new, gentler order emerges in the kitchens of the world? I suspect it's starting to happen in the most modern kitchens -- fresh stories, new myths, a kinder direction. It's been a long time comin'.

Deconstructivist Digressions

2009-09-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

September 7, 2009

The September 12 Issue, a documentary about the quirky behind the scenes dramas at Vogue magazine, recently inspired me to contemplate not eating for a while and going into old age not wearing make up. Fashion isn't dominated by the young and beautiful, as you might think, but by two canny women, both over 60 -- Anna Wintaur, the elfin Vogue editor that wields such power in the industry (and wears make up), and Grace Covington, a former model who has been Vogue's creative director for years (who does not). Surrounding this mighty, if discordant duo, are a bevy of rakishly thin, high-cheekboned women in their 40s and 50s who, at work at least, sport no make up at all.

When she wears make up, Covington, who is not so thin and in her late 60s, applies only a thin brushstroke of lipstick. She struts about, an unflappable authority herself, her wild red mane somehow reminiscent of a peacock's feathers in full bloom.

Imagine a film focusing on the accomplishments of two women past 60 in their professional prime whose work isn't remotely domestic. Now that is rare, and delicious!

In the world of couture, fashion is food. There are the same obsessions with color, texture and display. You wear what you love instead of eat it.

The Vogue film was very conceptual, very un-sensual. There is a lot of thinness to like here, but sorry, no food. There is one moment in the Vogue film, after a long shoot in Paris involving a tight corseting, when a coquettish model plucks up and ravages a cherry tart that has been sitting in a box; there is a quick pan of an insipid-looking salad on Covington's desk; there are Wintaur's Starbuck's runs -- Wintaur appears to subsist only on coffee. But otherwise, food is malaprop, the forbidden fruit here.

Imagine being a fashionista and a foodie, obsessed by food, but also thinness!

Speaking of those who can make remarkable objects of art, unexpected and delightful -- but in the culinary realm -- let us turn now to the inventive Spaniard Ferrán Adrià, the chef at El Bulli, one of the great eating establishments in the world. Once you have seen an array of his concoctions, anything else will seem ordinary.

Adrià, who is, alas, not thin, but nevertheless great, has expanded the dimensions of culinary possibilities, challenging standard notions of what an edible should look, taste and feel like. For example, he makes espresso foam and meat foam; he makes caviar out of apples. Looks and feels like, but surprise! An artist can create conceptually-- as Adrià does -- or simply let instinct and the senses guide.

As I am now exploring the culinary arts intellectually, I'd like to think that I am becoming more of a conceptualist, but I myself am instinctual at heart. I work best hands-on, just as I think best talking out ideas.

I am fixed still on the idea of making the perfect egg -- as if to learn to make one thing well might open the door to all culinary possibilities. I've been experimenting with folding my scrambled eggs just so, cooking them slowly, perfecting my recipe, Scrambled Eggs Parmesan al Pesto -- scrambled eggs with Parmesan flakes on which at the final moment, you douse a teaspoon of pesto (at room temperature, of course) and sprinkle Spanish paprika.

So much of life is all about food -- whether you are celebrating it or trying to pretend it doesn't exist. Beneath the trappings of style and couture, beneath the flesh, we are all the same, hungry beings trying to stave off the inevitable. We can't. But, in the meantime, let's toast to life, let's live -- a little!

Espresso Breaks

2009-09-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

September 3, 2009

At this rapturous time of unemployment, my life is one long blissful espresso break. I have been ravaged by books, and literature is once again seeping into my bones like milk into toast. I am indescribably happy doing virtually nothing but what I want to do. Why doesn't the rest of the world look at not "working" this way? It is best we set down travail, and we will be rid of travails -- we hope!

As my reader or readers know, I have read much Bourdain. His glowing one-liners grace the cover of almost every book related to the culinary arts in the bookstores I frequent. He lauds a waiter's rant, another chef's expose. He is a generous man, there is no question about that. He is also getting tired of his gig, and soon -- although one hopes not -- he will be getting sick from it. "Notes from the Road" in The Nasty Bits details this very well. He is going to have to find some tricks to keep up the pace. Fasting on planes is one. Just drinking water between fetes will certainly help. Dang if the cliche doesn't apply here as well -- There is such a thing as getting too much of a good thing!

I've been balancing the onslaught of my mental palate with some other reading as well that I'd like to pass along. The Devil's Cup - The History of the World According to Coffee by Stewart Lee Allen (also endorsed by The Big B), is a little acerbic for my taste, but has some interesting references and asides, and if you love coffee -- or espresso, as I do -- it's a must read. Did you know, for example, that historian Jules Michelet attributes the birth of civilization in the West to espresso? Drink enough of the brew and you may also long to travel to Jiga-Jiga on the Ethiopian-Somali border to drink Kati (or Kotea), a potent concoction made of roasted coffee leaves.

Body of Work -- Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab by Christine Montross is an illuminating, truly poetic account of a soon-to-be doctor's relationship to the human body, the patients on whom she operates and the corpses she dissects. The book is full of important questions and provocative insights, some of which are not without humor or irony. The following is an example: "I tell her two things, both truths, the first comfortably removed and political. I tell her that I learned that hysterectomies remove most or all the lubricating capacities of the vagina and that some result in vaginal shortening. I tell her that the hysterectomy is the most commonly performed surgical procedure in America, and we lurch into a long lighthearted discussion about how if the most common surgical procedure was one that resulted in erectile dysfunction and penile shortening, there would certainly be a great bloom of innovation to find alternatives."

Another fabulous read, melding art and science, favorite interests, is Proust Was A Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, who writes for The New Yorker and is an editor for Seed magazine. Among the subjects Lehrer explores are Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne and Virginia Woolf. He examines Proust's moments bienheurreux (fortunate moments), which are described as epiphanies experienced when recollection seems like an apparition. Cezanne investigated how the "moment is more than its light." And Woolf, at the age of 40, wrote in her journal that she was "beginning to learn the mechanism of my own brain." Lucky woman, she, if that was indeed true.

I read both to escape and be inspired. The best literature helps me find ways to leave my body and my mind so that I can return to them refreshed and renewed. And so I navigate from the mental/sensual to the metaphysical, knowing as I do that the mind (just like the body) can suffer from ingesting "too much of a good thing!"

Dreaming Big and Little

2009-08-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

September 1, 2009

I'd like to be flying, but it's just time doing that these days. I'd like to hop a plane or even a boat -- even though I always get sick on the latter -- and just take off somewhere. Just sunlight in my hair and dreams weaving through my brain. No cares. Heck, I'd even consider hopping a freight, dressed like a hobo, eating toss outs from restaurants, just to realize once again what it means to be free. Or a certain kinda free. This is how reading Bourdain makes me feel, like life's a sin, and you've gotta grab a hunk of it and eat well and get happy real quick.

It's a swell, but dangerous recipe that begs a big question -- What does it mean to be free? For one, it would mean not having credit card bills to worry about, or any bills for that matter. Or having someone take care of them altogether. Gosh, if that worry were to be relieved, what else would there be?

I'm sure life would come up with something.

Now I'm enjoying The Nasty Bits, curled up, barefoot on my couch, reading about how The Big B loves to eat barefoot, his toes snuggling in sand -- just like I do -- and how he cooked and gorged while traveling first class on a cruise ship for the very rich. Nobody eats like he seems to -- all the time. How does he do it? And stay thin? Pleasure monger. Boozer. But the fact is, cut the alcohol, cut the beef, and I'm all that too.

Plus, the dude can write. Any time I pick up his books, I get mesmerized. What with the food and alcohol descriptions, what is there not to like ? Although, the way Bourdain paints it, all life is one big party. Last time I thought like that, I was still in high school. Still, he can carry a sentence and hook even a bad reader with his earthy "I'm just an every day kinda Joe" prose.

Of course, Bourdain is an every day kinda Joe who makes millions and is therefore no every day Joe -- much as he would like to think he is. He's not still in the kitchen, and he's not chef-ing anymore.

Apparently, Jackie O used to have the same fantasy -- that she was just ordinary and could blend in with the masses. Near the end of her days, she used to visit Canyon Ranch, a posh rehab in Lenox, Mass., where I lived. She used to like hanging out at a coffee shop, around people who didn't have a clue about who she was. It made her happy to hear people chatting about everyday things, and most especially to imagine they didn't know a thing about her.

It makes perfect sense to me that the very famous, the over-exposed, would like nothing more than to live with a cloak of invisibility, to do ordinary things, play ball, travel, shop, eat out -- unnoticed and unseen. I'll bet that's how Leonardo Di Caprio feels, how Michael Jackson often felt, how even Brad and Angelina feel -- sometimes. Heck, Michael Jackson distorted his face, wore gloves and practically slept with sunglasses on in order to hide who he was and, perhaps, just hide. Jackie O would stroll in Lenox, wearing a gabardine, her head covered -- probably to hide the effects of chemo-- and always her sunglasses.

Riches are in the mind, and heart. I'd hang my beret on that, even if I were ever to win millions! And the rich, dear Fitzgerald -- except for this greed thing, this compulsion to be seen and heard that boomerangs in the end -- are not so different from you and I.

When I lived in Lenox, Mass., I used to cater for a blonde divorcee with eight kids who ran a catering business with the help of her brood. She was ambitious, tough and hard-working, and we used to serve up meals for parties at Tanglewood and Jacob's Pillow, for weddings and in luxury homes that were usually the second homes of the fortunate few, most of whom were New Yorkers. Sue called me often to go out on gigs because I was reliable, and, as she put it, "you never say 'no.'"

I needed the money, as I was neck deep in bills, living in a studio apartment I had no business renting, as it was too expensive -- just so I could feel inspired within its four walls. One of Chet Baker's exes, the one who was a jazz singer, had lived there, and I was in a jazzy kinda phase. When I wasn't working hard waitressing at the Town House across the street, or catering for Sue, or teaching at a local college, I was reading and writing poetry, typing it on a portable typewriter as I listened to Miles and Coltrane. Those were my existentialist days.

I liked working for Sue, seeing how much I could handle all on my own. Setting up for parties, passing around hors d'oeuvres trays, smiling and returning witty banalities to the (often mysteriously deep) questions people tossed at me, and even cleaning up. I liked the challenges, and I liked making people happy. Lenox is beautiful in the summer, and the places and events I worked were gorgeous, which meant I made decent tips too. Once, while hunkering over a sink, washing a pile of dishes after a brief, but intense gig, I felt the drunk host of a party slip a bill into my pocket. After it was all over, when I had a minute to breathe, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a crisp $100 bill.

My favorite gigs were those that of course involved minimal service and maximum cheese (PR or professional charm), which I liked to think I was chock full of. Voila, a rich chocolatey dessert and a demitasse of espresso. What is there to say but oo la la to that.

I like to dream big, but it's the little things that please me. I still dream of owning a special dive that serves up divine treats-- jazz on a live stage and small but unforgettable gems to take home on your palate.

The Art of Gorging

2009-08-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

September 28, 2009

At the end of Heat, you finally get to find out why Buford wrote the book. But it's a perplexing explanation. "...I didn't want this knowledge to be a professional; just to be more human."

How has the butchering of pigs and cows, attempted "respectfully" by the author, necessarily made him more human? How does one kill respectfully? Respectful to whom or to what -- One's own fingers, limbs and belly that could be gouged in the process? What does "respectful" mean here? And what does "human" mean?

Let's get back to excess, that being the real art these dudes wish to perfect. Heat begins and ends with a baccanal with Batali, the great chef and mentor that guides the book and Buford's efforts. At first, Buford is taken aback by Batali's excesses. Batali is, after all, a guy who has been known -- in the company of just one -- to polish off a case of wine, and whose idea of contributing "a little something" to a party at Buford's is bringing a slab of pig's lard to share. His "bigness" is in everything he does and he shocks at every turn. He's made a name in part due to his reputation for excess. Just like Bourdain, just like most of the guys on the food programs on the Travel Channel. At the end of Buford's adventure, the two, Buford and Batali, dine again, this time polishing off 15 bottles of wine and a meal that kicks off with 35 dishes as starters.

Wow, what a couple of real men, and hasn't Buford come a long way!

I feel gorged in more ways than one at the end of this book. I expect gorging and excess from the foodies on the food programs on the Travel Channel, but you know the trends aren't just low brow when a guy from The New Yorker hops on the train. Batali suggests that Buford start a little restaurant in New York, to put to the test what he has learned of Italian cooking, but Buford demures. He has more to learn. French cooking is next.

It's not just food, foodies and their opinions that fascinate me. I'm interested in how our relationship to food can make us better, richer, more alive, not just gorged, and big-headed cause we got to eat the best stuff. The world that Buford, Batali and Bourdain (the latter too, more often than not) inhabit, is one reserved for the elite, those who not only can never get enough, but can afford to keep on trying.

I resent that the baccanal is associated with the heart of good cooking. I resent the fact that while more than half the world goes hungry, people who can afford to help, spend all their time hanging out in Italy, elbows deep in slimy guts so they can learn the bucolic trade of ages. Sure it's an engaging story, but where's it taking us? Where's it taking poor Shmo who doesn't have such privileges, who reads well but doesn't have a lot. It's elite stuff, unabashed about being elite. Sorry, I can't afford even the time to read it.

I admit, I knew I was indulging myself -- a little -- what with the Bourdain crush and all, which is now over. I've seen enough of his shows to get what the fun is all about. I don't like watching crusty geezers or even virile young men slaughtering and vivisecting animals just to eat them, talking about "making love" and eating the way they do, like it's the same thing, like the reason they are here at all is just to pillage and take.

I don't have two weeks to spend neck deep in this shit. I have better things to do.

Where are the cooks interested in cooking for and feeding people who don't have didley squat? I'd like to read about what they do and how they do it.

When I write about those who write about food, and crave it -- as most of us do -- I am prone to examining too, erotic morality and the history of my own craving. What do I want? Why do I want it? Why not indulge? How do I deal with my insatiability? Food, excess, pleasure -- all in moderation.

Can one be moderate with one's own excessive tastes?

I'm not talking about being perfect, just responsible. I've run the gamut -- junk food junkie, faster, vegetarian, espresso addict. At 12, I got so thin from fasting, I had to see a doctor, who told me I was "skinny as a reed." His noticing me was enough to recall me to the importance of eating. Conversely, when I stopped drinking at 24, I weighed 180, and it was all booze, I swear, because in the first month of not drinking, while eating whatever I wanted (just not drinking), I dropped 40 pounds. I should note that the funny farm where I dried out served only vegetarian fare, so it wasn't just due to not drinking alcohol, but also to not eating meat or fish, that I dropped the weight so fast. In my first year of sobriety, I ate only nuts and cheeses, about a pound of each a day. I didn't know how to eat, and if I did, was only following my own prescription of want and need.

Eating is a constant test. How much do I want? And of this, how much will I take? I can never get enough.

I want to be happy. Stuffing myself with food, even quality fare, doesn't do it.

Scratch an itch, what happens? You gotta scratch some more. And so it goes.

What do I do with my insatiability, my lust for all the things I can't have -- for oysters, salmon, steak, roe, vodka, cognac, saki (that I never had)? I want to explore these inside out, outside in, taste and engulf them with my mind, then just let them go. They are toxic loves for me. I want not to lust, but to explore the lust and the logic of not eating, to consider abandoning myself to these things, then simply abandon them, relegating myself to catalytic emptiness.

It has been said that one way to let go an obsession is to dive deep into it. Only then can you let it go. If I were to indulge in these things I can't have, what would happen? Would I be spared a sudden death? A DWI? I don't want to go down hard, just float out easy.

I don't lust for what I can't have in any other arena but this. Some of those foods -- salmon, for instance -- are like lost companions. I miss them like that.

I have to remember what the decision not to indulge is about. For me, it's part of a lot of things. My mother and her mother died of stomach cancer. The H pylori bacteria, present in chicken, started everything off with my mother, and had x-rays detected it early, she might not have died so young.

Looking back, I realize I was following an instinct early on -- not eating fish or meat -- that was right for me. At a certain point, I couldn't eat lobster, even when it was right in front of me. I just couldn't. It was something my body couldn't bring itself to do even before my mind understood why not to do it.

As a drunk, at 20, I remember eating a burger that it took my stomach three days to digest. Something that took that long to digest couldn't be good for me. I stopped eating burgers first. It took a few more years to stop boozing.

There is of course a spiritual side to this that I'm loathe to mention, well, because people tend to resent it. They think that if you say what you're into that you are proselytizing or selling something that they should be into. That's not so. It's each into his or her own thing.

The point is I discovered that when I stop eating or eat lightly, I felt better. I feel quieter inside, calmer, clearer too. It's a fact about me that others have appreciated as well.

What's kept me from eating as little as I'd like of late is living in New Jersey -- no kidding -- Bourdain country, a town away from where he grew up, actually. It's a world where everyone eats heartily and eats out all the time, and I'm a part of that scene.

My friends are intimate with the art of excess. They've been known to order several dishes per course, they drink and dine out constantly. The pigging out I've watched has been on TV, in my reading and in the flesh, and I've had just about enough of it.

I don't want to grow old and fat. But it's a test sometimes. It's a test, pulling back my consciousness just when I want to lose it. There's that moment at the height of the night when everyone is buzzed and laughter is at its loudest when I ask myself, "Couldn't I do that? Just a little?"

Then I remember the reason I stopped drinking and hate gorging -- A little is never enough.

The Writer's Reading Life

2009-08-13T13:06:00.001-07:00

August 13, 2009

I'm on a culinary binge, a mental one, and it may last for a while.

I've been reading and watching Anthony Bourdain for a few months now, following his tracks, trying to see what he's about and what he has to teach me. I've enjoyed a few episodes of No Reservations, his cooking and traveling show. I loved the episodes in Spain, Brazil, Chile, Vietnam, Colombia, New Orleans and San Francisco.

In San Francisco, he talked and dined and drank with Augie Kleinzahler, who is the poet laureate of Fort Lee, New Jersey, where I now live. On Sunday night, Augie, Donna, Nelson, Tom M. and I, friends from the Fort Lee Film Commission, dined together at Inapoli's in Fort Lee. Augie said that Bourdain loved his book, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained One, and knew he came from Jersey (Bourdain is from Leonia), so his people contacted him for the show. Augie, I might add, has been living in San Francisco for a few years now, and his book is set in bars there. He is home now for a few months to sell his mother's house. Augie said there was a lot of drinking and that he couldn't remember what he said, only that he was sure that what Bourdain said "was much worse." It was an engaging episode, of course.

Bourdain looks tired. He drinks too much. I am sure this is no news to him or to any of the people who follow his shows or his writing. But I like the guy. Mostly, I think because he reminds me of my brother -- which is no reason to like anybody, really.

But as far as No Reservations goes, I am beginning to view Bourdain as a one-note toot. After reading his highly entertaining and energetic memoir, Kitchen Confidential, and being mildly impressed (certainly impressed by the good looks of the guy on the cover), I have moved on to Bill Buford's Heat, about Buford's experiences working in the kitchen of a famous chef. I'm not as "into" this memoir, as it's chalk full of too many details for me -- too many characters and too many recipes. I often have the feeling the writer, Buford (who left writing at The New Yorker in order to launch into his culinary adventures), is talking to himself and a coterie of highly sophisticated and knowledgeable writers and foodies, neither of which I am. What I like most about Bourdain's writing style is that it's up front, plain-spoken and chatty as if he is sitting across from you in some restaurant, telling you the goods. I prefer Bourdain's style.

I'll say to my credit that I'm by no means uninformed, or unexperienced, when it comes to either reading or cooking. I come from a long line of readers. My mother got us started. She was a very sophisticated reader, loved the Brits, Anita Brookner and Graham Greene and passed on her love to her children, particularly my two sisters and me. My sister Marcela in particular is a voracious reader, and I am sure, were it not for the fact that my other sister Alexandra has to raise three kids, she would be right up there, consuming the best of the best -- as Mar does, and I aspire to do.

I'm not totally clueless as a cook either, which is one of the reasons I love watching the cooking shows, and Bourdain in particular. I put myself through college, working summers at Chez Pierre in Westport, Connecticut, and let me tell you, I have kitchen tales of my own. Chez Pierre was upscale, frequented by personalities like Paul Newman, who came in for beer and oysters almost every day.

I was the pantry girl and used to get regularly bonked in the rear by the assistant cook, Tom, who thought it was very cute to crotch bump me in the behind every time he had to slide past me in the narrow quarters in which we worked. I finally complained to the owner, who gave me a raise, which of course I took. The bumping stopped, but it was a crazy kitchen and the work, the hardest I have ever done.

All I had to do was make salads, shuck oysters and clams and get it all out on time, but it was more than that. The pressure was constant, and the cooks saw to it that I never had a free second. I was always doing more than one person should have had to do, prepping dishes, cleaning, shucking, and all the while taking crap, but also enjoying the cooks, Tom especially, who was a regular comedian.

I had a helper, Ana, from El Salvador, who was my assistant. One day it seemed like she was eating up all the fruit that I needed to have peeled for fruit salad. When I asked her to stop eating the fruit, she said, "Oh no, I'm not eating it, just peeling it" -- with her teeth!

We worked in a narrow space and once in a while a sweetbread that Tom was cooking would slip from his hand and fall into that groove where grease and the grime of ages collect. Tom would just pluck up the sweetbread, dust it on his pants' leg and plop it on the plate. It's true what they -- Bourdain, Buford and others-- say about the kitchen. It's peopled with wild characters and their habits would skieve out the funkiest of diners.