My Fall of Food Winds Down to Take Off

This morning my grandma, Annette, called to wish me well on my trip. The last time we talked she hit some nerves that were particularly raw (Grandma in a very demeaning tone: "What are you doing with your life?! When are you going to finally settle down?") and we have not talked since. But today she phoned just to say she hoped I might be able to find the specific type of curry one is supposed to use in Senegalese soup. I'm not quite sure what she has in mind...she referenced la soupe Senegalese that she makes in summer because it is meant to be served cold. I can't recall having ever eaten this dish at her house, but who knows what I might come across. I think mostly she called to tell me to eat well while I'm away, which is a nice thing to hear from your French Grandmother. It's also a nice thing to hear from Monica, my friend at the cafe where I've been working this fall. And Grace, my sweet new roommate woke me up this morning with a loaf of blueberry nut bread to take in pieces on the plane "lest I get hungry." Last night Rowena and I munched on a pomegranate that was so blood red when we cracked it open and the juice squirted out we both jumped back from the cutting board for a moment. This afternoon as I was trying to clean out my corner of the icebox I cooked what I could with the rest of my groceries. I stood at the stove and fried onions thinking of how my homestay mother in India made puris for me and wrapped them in tinfoil when I was set to take off with my study abroad group. When I got to the bus station and convened with the other students I found that most of us had been sent out of the house with these oily little pancakes, which we ate on our way from Jaipur to Delhi.

This fall I've spent my time working at a food magazine some days, then pulling espresso at a French cafe the other days of the week. It has been what I like to call my Fall of Food, in which I have spent hours tracking down heirloom watermelon farmers, talking to cranberry growers, meeting Greenmarket organizers, arranging dinner parties, soaring on the high from feeling I’ve found my niche here in this city among foodies and local food fanatics. I bought a shirt that reads “Happy as Beets” which I don’t really understand grammatically, but has also been the easiest expression for how I’ve felt these past few months. Totally content, busy, and busier, well fed and very whole. I even dressed up as a beet for Halloween.

On my birthday last January my horoscope said I'd work harder and face challenges more difficult than I've ever known, but I would pull through and the rewards for my efforts would pay off big time. I think I am at that turning point just now, as I finally feel I've hit normal ground again after working full tilt for a couple of months. As I write this, the sun is steadily moving westward, though it's only a little past three in the afternoon. The red church kitty corner from my apartment is quiet in the middle of the week, and I can hear kids chirping along as they head home from school with parents and nannies. On the table where I'm writing there are bottles that doubled as candleholders for a dinner party we threw here last week. My parents were in town to see me before I left, and I marched us around Brooklyn and Manhattan, so we could eat our way through Chinatown, Little Italy, making a stop over at The Hummus Place, sampling apples at the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza, visiting the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, and taking in the carefully arranged plates at Little D's in Park Slope. We also got to spend a fair amount of time cooking together in my kitchen-- my mother spent hours peeling chestnuts, while my dad went to work on chopping cranberries for cranberry relish. I made a squash lasagna and Day of the Dead Bread which turned out to be fantastic the next day as French toast dressed up with apple and apricot compote. By the end of their weekend here, while we sat around waiting for one last meal to arrive at a little bar down the street, we made a list on a paper napkin of the marathon of food we'd taken in over the weekend.

I just finished reading Judith Jones' new memoir, The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, which documents the years she spent working with Julia Child on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as well as her relationships editing for Madhur Joffrey, Marion Cunningham, and Edna Lewis. By the end of the book she talks about preparing food as a sort of religious practice, bringing people together to nourish and care for them. She also talks about how after her husband died she didn't think she would be able to cook for just herself, not being able to stand the thought of eating alone. But instead she finds that cooking is a way of remembering him, and when she sits down at her table with a hot meal and a good bottle of wine, the seat across from her is not empty.

On a different scale, after having spent time alone in India, and feeling quite tout seule in France, or at times in China (when I was not walking around with my parents), I promised myself some time ago that I wouldn't see another new country alone. Yet here I am, having said my goodbyes I almost feel as though I've already left. I've got a new digital camera tucked carefully into my carry-on bag, and am already fantasizing the little movies I will snap with it, the detail shots of fish markets, and tables so splendid I will want to remember what they looked like both before and after the food itself is even tasted. So, I will be seeing on my own and reporting back. If you like to check in, I will write you novels. The thing about traveling alone is that you are more apt to meet people along your way. On my last day in Paris, the last time I was out of the country in summer of 2005, I wandered into a gallery by La Sorbonne. The man who was gallery sitting for the afternoon had a great straw hat on and asked me to sit for a while and chat to pass the time. I told him I was on my way home after a year abroad spent first in India, then in Toulouse, and all I'd been able to think about for the last two weeks was how many hours until my plane took off for New York. I told him I studied writing and he said I'd be a journalist "you have the skin of a journalist,” he emphasized. We talked for a while and he told me about how he'd grown up in Senegal and had spent days and days fishing with his father on the beach. I fantasized dark stone cliffs and sunsets and silver fish on the ends of swaying fishing rods. I told him I'd love to go some day. Tonight I fly back to Paris, and tomorrow I'll land in Dakar.