Guest blog: It all started with Grilled Cheese

La Calavera notes it has been a while since a posting – but reading Franklin’s posts on dinner most nights got me thinking how much I too love to cook (and how ridiculously much I think about it, even though I am decidedly not a foodie). He thinks about it too, so I asked him to write about how he thinks about cooking. I expect more installments – thank you Franklin!

Some people love to cook, others cook out of necessity, and some want nothing to do with it.

I love to cook.

As a child, I often stayed with my grandmother in Kansas. Omi (a German nick name for grandmother) believed in breakfast. At the beginning of one summer visit, I wasn't waking up hungry and ready for breakfast. She knew I loved grilled cheese sandwiches, so she would get one started on the griddle, then go wake me up. My bedroom was close to the kitchen, so I could smell it cooking. I remember groggily sitting at the table and a plate with a grilled cheese, sliced on the diagonal, was slid in from ofme, with its toasty, buttery, cheesy, steamy vapors eliciting just about the only response capable to a six year old. I picked it up, and crunched my teeth through the crispy brown crust, bit through the corner, and chomped away on the hot, silky cheese interior.

I think it only took two days and I was waking up hungry. Eventually, she weaned me off the grilled cheese and I was eating whatever she had cooked. Pavlov had nothing on Omi, she'd had five kids and a grandson – he only had his dogs.

So, my beloved grilled cheese was the first thing I learned to cook. I don't remember exactly when, but it was around first or second grade. The secret to the perfectly toasted grilled cheese is the size of the fire. Omi showed me how to turn on the stove, and with the griddle in place, she had me adjust the flame until the blue flame was above the edge of the burner: “Just so.” And I remember this each time I tweak the fire, in the same way, bending over and adjusting the flame “just so”. I still love grilled cheeses, and they are best at breakfast. Gouda, Muenster, or Imported Cheddar which is only made under the light of a full moon and schlepped to town by a donkey drawn wagon… all will make a very nice grilled cheese, and I've eaten some very exotic combinations,  but my taste buds were corrupted on this topic in my youth (Foodies and Food Nazis jump to the next paragraph) and the two best cheese-like products are American Cheese or, horror of all culinary sins, Velveeta (which if you actually read the ingredient list, has nothing bad except the reputation).

A recent dinner: Franklin’s Braised Beef Short Rib on smashed potatoes,

cauliflower with browned butter, black pepper, and parsley. He didn't strain and make fancy sauce: “I love the carrots and garlic cloves.”

In my grade school years, my mother was ill and was often in the hospital, so I was on my own. My father's idea of cooking was buying this new product called Hamburger Helper, or we ate out. Thankfully, we ate out often, and frequently went to very good restaurants, so my palette was exposed to some excellent food. Lobster Thermidor and Duck a l'Orange were not what most kids were eating.

I also started watching Julia Child. Then, I met two United Airlines stewardesses. Terri taught me how to make Sweet and Sour Pork (and layered candles using L'eggs pantyhose containers). Marie Ann, a crazy Dutch woman, taught me how to make Beef Stroganoff,the classic way, except we had to use sour cream because she could only get crème fraiche in Europe (this was the early-mid 1970's). So, I cooked these for dinner a few times and found cooking was easy. So, armed with hints from Julia, and a bit of experience under my belt, I started reading cook books and cooking various recipes.

Perhaps later, I can tell about some of my successes and a spectacular failure that ripped the seasoning out of a wok, and why I did not become a chef.

We are hoping for future installments! Thanks Franklin!

A Shrine for a departed Chihuahua

This morning as we arrived at the office in Brooklyn (DUMBO – for the uninitiated, “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”) we saw a shrine on the wall across the street. In this trendy but still warehouse-y area it was a colorful and unusual sight. The shrine was styled as a real, Catholic-style edition, with a little roof covered with iridescent flat marbles and many lovely things inside. We don’t know the Chihuahuas’ name, and it is not provided on the shrine that we could see. But this dog was loved, and is clearly missed by his master, who we assume is the guy holding his little living body in the shrine photo.

This shrine is located on Jay Street between

York and Water Streets in DUBMO, Brooklyn.

This was a sincere little
dog, a real individual
(as all dogs are) with
a sweet and
sympathetic face.







This dog had many little toys and representations of toys provided, a little like the sorts of things packed away in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s tombs (but for doggy taste). Jewel-studded rubber duckies, plain rubber duckies, sparkly stones, a yellow feather, a woolen finger puppet, shiny objects, even a little Oriental carpet. One feels that Chihuahua had a nice life filled with love, fun, and playfulness.

Goodbye little Chihuahua! I’m thinking of you now too.

Pigeon Condominium in Colombia!

Today as I was walking near the conference center in Cartagena, Colombia (where I am today), I noticed some pigeons on the grass. I walked closer, and saw to my amazement some REAL pigeon condominiums! What a remarkable coincidence! I had to take a photograph to share with you.

There were two pretty little three-story houses side by side (with a servant’s quarters on the top floor!), set on a plinth about 6 feet up from the ground. The pigeons were happily standing on their balcony and hanging out in their condos. Truly a wonderful coincidence.

And then, though I had lamented not seeing much wildlife here, within only a few minutes I saw this gorgeous, large iguana. He didn’t let me get too close, and it was both surprising and amusing to see him run away. He could really move fast!

Pigeon Condominium

Pigeons (or vermin as I call them) are a fact of life in the New York metropolitan area. Somehow they manage to survive harsh winters and scary food, and do it with a sort of dogged detachment that might under other circumstances be inspirational. Mark loves the pigeons and thinks of them tenderly as New York ducks. His heart aches to see one suffering or in trouble (but I think he’d kill me if I brought a sick one home to nurse!)

At Tower West, we live in a condominium, but we also have a Pigeon Condominium on the side of the building. I suppose some might find this disgusting as the pigeon residents don’t have housekeeping staff to keep their place nice. However, there is something inspirational about it to us.

Here they are, on the north side of the building under the patio that surrounds the building. I learned recently that this interesting bunch of hutches was not created for the birds, but rather is a leftover artifact from a heater and cooling system that was replaced. So they just closed these holes from the inside, and the pigeons moved in! It’s just delightful.

This close-up of one of the condos with two residents shows the long drizzle of dung (not to mention the big pile that’s nearly crowding these two guys out of house and home!) But they don’t seem to mind; they are placid and happy in their safe little house.

And another sweet photo of some others in their houses.

The resident on the lower right seems to have brought in some bedding for a nest – perhaps now we will find out for real where pigeons come from.

We had a sighting of a dead pigeon in one of the condos, but the body seems to have gone away now. It’s just like the rest of the building – the human inhabitants. We come and we go. One of life’s hard but real lessons that we’ve learned up close here in Tower West.

Mom’s birthday

Today is my mother’s 78th birthday, which she was not able to actually enjoy on the outside of the planet. I’ve thought about her all day. Thinking about my mother is not necessarily a completely happy situation; she was a staggeringly complicated person. Some of that is no doubt attributable to the complexity of her family life as a child. Her mother and father divorced when she was still a very little girl, in the 1930s when this was not a popular thing to do. Her father was subsequently killed in World War II, in 1944 when she was 11 years old.




A piece of my mother's gravestone, which my
stepfather Clark gave to each of us.

 

After we published her obituary (and it was put online by the newspaper) it was a curious discovery for us to find that we were contacted by a young (and incredibly generous and kind) French man who was researching the soldiers who died in France near the end of the war. We learned a tremendous amount of information about her father, including finding a photo of him which we never had before. It was really pretty fantastic.



John Newton Apperson, my mother's father, in the uniform of the
Richmond Light Infantry Blues. He was awarded a Purple Heart,
and buried in the US Military Cemetery Rhone, Draguignan, France.



Clark sent me much of the “archive” such as it was of my mother’s early life, which I have cataloged, scanned, and provided to the family. It tells much of the missing information from her early life. She never wanted to talk about any of these things, which we didn’t understand. At least now we know a bit more about them all, and their complex lives, and the deep love of some of them for each other which had been previously unknown to us.

On another day I will publish the material I wrote for her 75th birthday, which is her “real” eulogy.

A 9/11 Shrine – Again

Yesterday morning after the announcement that Osama bin Laden was killed, our neighbor who lost his son in the World Trade Center attacks put his shrine downstairs in the lobby. I took a picture of it for the blog because it touched me, and it so exemplifies the shrines that I talk about all the time.

Michael’s death in that horrible event had a bad effect on his mother, who was never the same after that and died a few years ago.

His father was so proud of him, as you can see by the details he provided about his life here. Reading Michael’s accomplishments, it reminds me of my own thoughts about the deep tragedy of the loss of knowledge and experience that such an untimely death causes – besides the deep heartache and never-ending sorrow from the loss of the loved one.

We wrote a card and added it to the shrine. I think of the Colberts every time I think about that awful day. The elimination of Osama bin Laden does not take away the sadness or create “closure” – that over-used, false word that is so often used in place of “revenge.” Nothing closes wounds like these.

Knut gets love

Our housekeeper Mona has a sense of humor, and occasionally leaves the bed decorated with some of the stuffed animals we have in the bedroom. Yesterday’s was especially cute, featuring the cuddly embrace of two bears that have been given to us – a Steiff Knut from my friend Andrea and a hand-made fluffy brown teddy that Mark’s sister Vickie made and gave to us. Everyone knows we like bears!


Bear love



Andrea, who lives in Germany, knew that we were Knut fans and sent us this beautiful little Knut. Like the rest of the world we were enraptured by the poor rejected polar bear that the Berlin Zoo hand-fed and nursed into adulthood. Who couldn’t love a baby polar bear? The trouble was, Knut grew into a brownish scraggly and not-so-pretty adolescent and young adult, who seemed isolated and depressed. People still came, but that lovely bloom of fresh white youth and huggable-ness was long gone.

But then, to the shock and sadness of the whole world, Knut died last month of some sort of strange changes in his brain, and convulsions which caused him to fall into his pool and drown. He was only four years old, which is very young for a polar bear. Thinking back, his mother rejected him when he was so young that he would have died without human intervention. Because we anthropomorphize, we fed him (though many wildlife experts thought this was wrong and said so). But what if his mamma was right? What if she perceived that he had a problem that would not let him live long, and she chose the solution that nature would have provided. . .

We will never know – but it’s something to think about. Knut had some good years of life, he was by the account of his keeper a happy if shy bear, and was learning how to be social with other bears when the tragedy occurred. By human standards, we did the right thing for Knut. And I suppose that Knut gave the humanity a renewed focus on the polar bear kind, which the bears badly need in this complex world today.

In a gesture not usually provided to human kind (except perhaps Evita Peron), the Berlin Zoo decided to stuff Knut’s body and place him in the Berlin Museum of Natural History – so visitors can still see at least the outsidy parts of Knut for generations to come.