Happiness Fruit

This is a Buddha Hand Fingered Citron, which I discovered today at the North Berkeley Farmer's Market.  I think they look like chicken feet, only prettier.

I came home and read up.  The  BHF Citron was introduced into California from Asia in the late 19th century, and in Japan it's known as a "bushukan."  Pulpless, juice-less, and seedless, it's inedible, but people use the zest in recipes.  You can infuse vodka with it, and you can candy it.  In Asia, it's a symbol of happiness.  At the Farmer's Market you can buy one for $3.00.

Menu Suggestions?

Here's what a pal's been told by prospective dinner guests:

Guest 1: Can eat anything

Guest 2: No dairy, no red/green/yellow/orange peppers; no raw garlic or or onion.  Can eat blue cheese, parmesan, and yogurt
.
Guest 3: No gluten or meat

Guest 4:  No eggs or meat

Hurray! And yet...

I heard on the car radio this morning that a panel of federal judges upheld a lower court's ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.  My friend Anne and I just about did high-fives in the car (a new trend: old ladies doing high-fives). Oh, hurray!  Sanity reigns!  Justice! 

Except.

Gay people in California still can't marry. The decision will be appealed by fanatic, blindered people who want to meddle in other people's lives.  Not to editorialize.

My dear friend Rob, who died last fall, told me while he was ill that if Judge Walker's decision lifted the ban on gay marriage, he and his partner of 30 years, Emanuel, would marry. That would make inheriting easier for Emanuel. Well, Judge Walker did rule against Proposition 8, saying it was unconstitutional, but the decision didn't open a window during which gay marriages could take place.  Rob died unmarried.  Legally, anyway.

In September when I flew to Los Angeles to say good-by to Rob,  there was no mention of marriage.  The focus was on coping with his condition.  Emanuel was up every two hours in the night to check on Rob, even though an attendant slept in Rob's room.  Emanuel carried him up and down the stairs.

When it was time for me to leave for the airport, I called a cab, and the driver turned out to be an efficient driver, but a horrible man.  We passed a poster advertising Ellen DeGeneres's TV show, and he said, "She looks like a man."  I said, "She's wearing a suit."  "She is a lesbian, I think," he said.

Not now, I thought. Please, not now.  I've just said good-by to a friend of forty years who has a devastated and devoted partner.  Just get me to LAX and then go away somewhere and evaporate.

"She's married to a woman," I said, evenly.

"Next thing, people will be marrying animals," he answered.

"No!" I said. 

He shut up.  I was so upset, I miscalculated the fare and gave him a tip.  I grabbed my totebag, and he drove off with his ugly baggage.

Speaking Up

On Saturday, my friend Lin and I went out to lunch.  We were seduced by the description of a Brussels sprout salad with caramelized onion and bacon.  The waitress brought two bowls mounded high with shredded Brussels sprouts, not very appealing to look at,  no focal point, and so much of it.  We each took a forkful. 

There was a strong, undefinable bitterness.  Not the Brussels sprouts, but something weirder than that.  We tried to eat it, we picked away at the hard-boiled egg and the bacon for a little protein.  The waitress came by to ask how we were doing, but  we were in the middle of conversation about how life is too short to put up with social situations you don't want to go to  ("I think I'll pass," was an excellent response of Lin's, I thought), and I waved off the waitress because I didn't want us to be interrupted.

When we were ready to go, the waitress gazed at our still-full plates and asked if we wanted boxes to take home the salad.  No, we said.

"What's in that salad?" I asked.  "It's very bitter."

The waitress said she didn't know, that other people had liked it, but there was another cook today.  She whisked away the plates and returned with the check.  Lin's eyes widened.  She turned the bill so I could see:  We'd been comped the lunch.  The only charge was for my Diet Coke. 

We paid, we tipped, we went outside and did high fives.  At 61, we were finally figuring it out--why make nice when you can't stomach it?   Literally, in this case.  And it was so on topic.

After that, we went to the San Jose Art Museum, where there's a show of Joan Brown's work, which I love.

Self-Portrait at Age 42, Joan Brown, 1980

I'm pretty sure Joan Brown would have sent that salad back right away.  After all, she swam to Alcatraz, for God's sake.

After the Alcatraz Swim #3, Joan Brown, 1976.

Getting Away from the Airwaves

My house seemed full of bad news yesterday.  In my studio, where I listen to NPR, it was all about the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which was  cutting up very badly,  aided in full by the Republicans, who, as Jerry says, are never satisfied just to let people be.

I switched to TV, and there was Leon Panetta speculating that Israel may attack Iran in the spring, very scary.  After lunch, I got in my car and sped away from it all. 

First, I drove to Office Depot, where I bought a package of ten lanyards.  This didn't do much for my spirits, but it got me out of the house, and I learned what lanyards are (cords you wear around your neck attached to a plastic nametag).   Then I went to North Berkeley farmer's market where  I bought two bunches of calendulas for $5.00.  The woman who wrapped them up assured me that I could put them in salads. Instead, they're on the kitchen windowsill.  Thanks to Susan G., I am now boycotting pink. 

Freezer Camp

One night Jerry and I were having dinner with one of his graduate students,  who had just moved with his wife to a house they'd bought.  The move had been a nightmare.  Everything went wrong, truck late,  things broken,  and then, in the midst of it all,  their much-loved, elderly cat died.

"Oh, no!"  I said.  "What did  you do?"  I'd heard about this cat for years.

"We put him in the freezer,"  the wife said.  "We couldn't deal with it."

Jerry lit up. He finds all cats smug, manipulative,  and pretty much useless.  Ever since that dinner,  he's suggested throwing bothersome neighborhood cats in the freezer; also,  elderly ones that cost a lot of money in vet bills, or really just about any cat that happens on to his radar. 

Yesterday over breakfast,  I read in the SF Chronicle about a cat coach named Marilyn Krieger, who charges $250 per house call to advise owners on cat behavior issues.  ("Laughing all the way to the bank," Jerry snorted.)  A reporter followed Ms. Krieger on a house call to consult on a cat named Harvey who was "doing his business"  under the dining table rather than in a $300 self-flushing cat box.

It turns out that not only is it poor form to put a cat box next to a feed bowl,  but the owners had just moved in together, each bringing two cats.  There was resentment.  Harvey did not like being a step-cat.

Ms. Krieger's solution?  A program that involved re-introducing the cats, using  clickers and rewards,  rubbing cats with old socks treated with cat scent, and--I kid you not--the owners moving to separate beds.  And for some time.

"What?" said Jerry, cereal spoon motionless. "Why?"

"So the cat won't think the owners are playing favorites," I read.

"The people can't like each other better than  a cat?

I knew what was coming.

 "Throw it in the freezer!" he said.  "Right away!"

He resumed eating his cereal, shaking his head.  And,  reader, I have to admit, I was shaking mine.

Cooking Is Not Simple

Last night Jerry and I went to Berkeley Bowl supermarket (named after the  former bowling alley where the first store opened.  I've lived in Berkeley so long that I actually remember that bowling alley and in fact lived so close to it the summer after I graduated that I could lie in bed and hear the balls strike the pins.)  Our cupboard was bare, and we'd run through all the take-out options we could think of: soup, tostadas, pizza.   We had no choice but to go buy some raw ingredients.

Berkeley Bowl has a marvelous array of vegetables, many of them unrecognizable to me.  It has a complete fish and meat market.  Everything is fresh. Jerry maintains that the temperature of the store is only a few degrees higher than at Everest Base Camp. He wears a down vest and wipes his eyes.  The aisles are crowded. 

We'd made a  detailed shopping list, starting with ingredients for something we call "Mexican Muck," which is actually Mexican lasagna--I know, I know--from the South Beach Diet Cookbook.  It can be stretched to four nights, which is ideal.  We bought a ton of stuff, almost $200 worth, packed our recycled grocery bags, lugged them to the car, and bleated all the way home about how the ultimate indignity lay ahead:  after we put away all the stuff, we'd have to cook.

After a thrown-together dinner,  I collapsed with a book, "My Life in France" by Julia Child.  I came across this paragraph on page 74:

"One of the best things I absorbed [from the Cordon Bleu] was how to do things simply.  Take roast veal, for example.  Under the tutelage of Chef Bugnard, I simply salt-and-peppered the veal, wrapped it in a thin salt-pork blanket, added julienned carrots and onions to the pan with a tablespoon of butter on top, and basted it as it roasted in the oven.  It couldn't have been simpler.  When the veal was done, I'd degrease the juices, add a bit of stock, a dollop of butter, and a tiny bit of water, and reduce for a few minutes; then I'd strain the sauce and pour it over the meat.  The result: an absolutely sublime meal."

Simple?  A thin salt-pork blanket?  Julienned carrots?  Degreasing and straining?

I've noticed this about many people who write cookbooks:  They moan about the lost American home-cooked meal and the nightly gathering of family around the dining table.  It's not that much work, they maintain.  It's homey, it's the soul of family life, blah, blah, blah.  They have not visited chez nous, where dinner is cooked in a resigned silence, dutifully eaten--admittedly with sometimes lively conversation-- and cleaned up with more resignation.  We are not Paul and Julia absorbing the essence of France.  We don't even absorb the essence of  California produce, which is available at Berkeley Bowl.  We cook it,  and we eat.