What My Dad Cooks

What I learned from Esquire's "What My Dad Cooked:" 

Dads like fried stuff, especially fried breakfasts. Mostly eggs and bacon. Steaks are good too. The dads of many of these famous chef's reminded me of mine (despite the fact that I am neither a famous chef nor a man). So I wrote something in honor of this upcoming Father's Day and "What My Dad Cooked." Only, my father still logs a fair amount of kitchen time (there's no "cooked" past-tense here).

My dad is a decent cook, but he thrives in the art of basic cocktails and dips. This isn't a dig. I'm serious, people. In a tall glass full of cubes, with just a splash of tonic, a standard G&T becomes a refreshingly fizzy wonder of citrus and crisp top-shelf spirits. Bloody Mary's are filled high with extra spicy V8 and bedecked with as many edible garnishes as the fridge allows. Topped off with a glunk of worcestershire sauce and Cavender's Greek seasoning, a Mike-made Bloody Mary isn't for the faint of heart. You'd better have a thing for heat. 

At times it seems a shame to patronize fancy cocktail bars when I've savored spiked sips of something so basic. Not to mention, these libations are strong to boot.

But it doesn't stop at happy hour. With enough avocados and garlic to scare even the toughest vampiric iteration, my dad's guacamole is a dish to be revered. Any game day or sunny Saturday evening provides a perfect excuse to cut, pit, dice and smash halves and wholes of the ripe green fruit atop wooden chopping blocks. 

Like any good ol' guac recipe, there is no recipe. The man measures nothing. Instead, he determines every diner will consume approximately one avocado. And he always portions four extra for himself. 

Cheeses, nuts and cured meats are a similar story. There's no pastry or oven temperatures to worry about, no broiler to check. He'll pour a can of Planter's fancy cashews into one of Mom's nice bowls, and it will mysteriously remain refilled throughout the night — past cocktails, past dinner and long-past the feeling of full, when mindless snacking becomes a vital necessity for eternal games of pool or late-night television comedies. This stuff is simple. And lately it's consistently better than all of the messy bruschetta that's stained my shirts.

Along with possessing a bottomless stomach and Olymipian-rate metabolism, my father is a generous guy. Depending on his mood, he may not say much, but there will always, always, be enough food and drink to satisfy the hungriest of travelers and friends. Perhaps it's because my dad is one of the hungriest people I know. And who would want their guests to endure the same feeling?

Driving

“You will never know everything about anything, especially something you love.”

— Julia Child

It happened so fast. I’d safely managed to back the heaving Oldsmobile out of the garage. The glass window creaked a tiny scream as it rolled down, releasing the musty, aging scent of the car’s leather interior out towards honeysuckled April. “Hang on,” called my mom from the front yard. She ran to the driver’s-side door. I braked hard and lurched forward inside the boat-sized sedan. Squinting towards her, I silently reminded myself how to park. With the camera to her eye, she snapped a picture. It was the first time I had driven on my own. How illegal. Craning my neck through the window, I blew her a kiss, threw the car in reverse, and waved as I backed up the black-top driveway and into a tree.


Eight years later, I am smearing fluorescent orange ink on the roller of the letterpress. I nervously hold down the large blue metal button: On.


Immediately, I hear and feel four different rollers turn methodically, mechanically, creating a soundtrack that mimics a mix of television static and metronomic tongue clicks. The spotless, silver surface grades to the shade of construction cones. I think of KitchenAid mixers; bicycle gears; keys turning; that day in the driveway.


In the photo, I am blonde, 16, pink-cheeked and smiling from the window. I had never been happier. I had never been more scared. The car I would later name Darth definitely weighed two tons and went on for days. He housed five seatbelts, but on the night of my senior prom, seven of us would cram inside. Driving Darth was exhilarating — like piloting a jumbo jet in a high-speed, airborne race.


I do not realize that this feeling has ever been catalogued until I lunge ahead with the steel crank and turn my first sheet of paper through the press. It too, feels illegal. Thrilling. Powerful. I cannot discern the pedal of the press from the pedal of that car.


In the studio, I work under self-imposed, happily un-safe conditions. Early on I relinquish ideas of perfection. Unlike writing I am less focused on the outcome — or being completely understood. I sift through my mental catalogue and cannot recall another recent physical experience with words. These weeks with the letterpress are mentally filed as love/hate — in one moment the slow, tangible process is languid, refreshing, metallic. After lunch the tiny letters transform into painful, leaden, dead weights.


The studio is a vista of connected disconnect. Metal pieces make little sense in their singular, backwards-upside-down positions. The cases are divided into nooks. I note letterly neighbors. Each one requires attention. Each metal block is there for a reason. Time does not allow for empty language. There is time, though — in the meticulous preparation and routine — for thinking and drifting.


The room in the building on Coronet was a forest: There were letters — so many of them, in boxes and on desks; hanging on walls and printed on artworks. This was a forest so dense with letters it was difficult to make out a single one. Cases of haphazardly labeled uppers and lowers were stacked to the ceiling. The wooden shapes grazed our arms like tree branches. In the center of the forest was the press. Though I had seen many letters and words on paper and screens, and had thought of many ways I could use them, only one word ran through me: machine. The press was heavy and grey and must have weighed two tons. In a hundred years its lustrous muscles had pressed thousands of phrases. I wondered if it had a brain. Its weight excited me. Suddenly, the laptop in my bag felt light. I wanted to touch its cool metal skin but I couldn’t shake the image of scratching a Rolls Royce.


Inside the South London studio I try to sketch and plan. I think about the quote I am printing. About how it might look. About how Julia Child might've sounded when she said it. She is a serif, I decide. She would use italics, too — purposefully like butter, but discriminately, like Herbes de Provence. My mind drifts in the in-between world of food and mechanics and engines. I daydream about appliances and drive-thrus. I can’t visualize without my computer. When I open Adobe Illustrator, I feel guilty for falling on my crutch, but Sheena says there’s no right or wrong. Julia would say, “Never apologize!”


The French Chef weighs on me as I scour typefaces — Garamond, Bembo. Before I see it, I am seduced by the sound of Lectura. In my mouth its name feels like three courses I’d like to taste in summer: chilled cucumber soup, red snapper, lavender ice cream. But this is an impulsively fantasized glottal interpretation. In my hand, the letters are small and weigh nothing. Yet they are carved, forever and permanent. Their homes are so heavy. I carry a set to my workspace and try to assuage the paranoid image of 18-point bits sprinkling from the cases, scattering across the floor like lead candies.


Time is wicked. I make four lines, made of ten words, made of sixty-six characters, and two hours pass. Words form slowly like dough that rises from a recipe meticulously followed. They take on new meaning. They transcend definition. They are clauses of carefully crafted shapes.


Then, I ink and print in 15-minutes. A stopping point presents itself. I pack my things. A week passes.


The days away from the press are difficult to cope with. When I return, the space and equipment are familiar, but the first hour of every week for the past five Saturdays has been a game of getting-to-know-you. I think of December, when I drove again for the first time in months, and my old car’s foreign familiarity. I find my forme and trace my fingers over the phrase I’ve memorized — one that I now hear Julia Child say clearly, as if she has told it to me herself. But the cool metal surfaces of the letters remain backwards, three-dimensional strangers.


In our first meeting, Sheena paraphrased A.J. Liebling when she said, “Freedom of the press is for those who own one.” I never owned Darth. He belonged to my parents. I won’t own a letterpress. The words I print are Julia Child’s. But in a way I have never experienced as a writer, I own these letters. When they print, I think of first times — that first drive; that first crash; the realization that these letters have never been used in this way. I think about how strangely and unexpectedly relevant my quote has become. No matter how long you’ve done something, the something that you do never reveals itself completely. There are flashes, though, of that something realized. And although you’ve prepared, you’re never completely ready — it’s exhilarating — because it all happens so fast.

Swimming suits

When it is very hot, so hot that breathing in the thick summer air feels like work, so hot that the fat flies lag and I almost feel too bad to smoosh them, so hot that the only relief in an airconditionless flat is a head-plunge into an ice-cold bath, I think about all of the very hot summers before, spent with my mom. Even at its hottest, summer in London does not compare to Missouri's swampy mug. But sometimes the early, early morning light stirs me, and I wake with the unmistakeable film of dried sweat from a damp night's sleep. Here, a tinge of humidity feels like a nostalgic kiss. Even though the memory of drought and sticky skin is nearly too unpleasant to bear, in the sweltering summers of my 20s I've learned to trick myself, to see those hot days as the good ones. As the best ones. 


I don't remember waking up on mornings in Missouri. I don't remember eating breakfast. I will, however, always remember the heavy heat that seemed to live permanently on the fringe of May through most of September. I will also always remember plodding barefoot down the stairs, on any morning of summer vacation, to find my mom in her swimming suit. Each year it was a variation of itself. Always black, always a one-piece. The backs of some styles dipped into a classic U-shape. Others were crisscrossed or racerbacked. She'd sit at the round kitchen table with the day's Kansas City Star and coffee, dog at her side and joined for a few hours by the voices of Bob Edwards or Steve or Renee. She'd cross her legs, turn the page. Read. Sip. Cross. Turn. Read, sip. Until the voices stopped or the pot was empty, or there were simply no more pages to turn. Then she might walk to the washing machine, remove the load, stride onto the back porch and clothespin the pile of tops and bottoms onto the line to dry. 


Before it got too hot, she'd unwind the hoses and set the garden sprinklers out across the drying lawn. All morning she'd weed and prune and shovel and water and plant and wonder why the deer had to eat the heads off the tiger lillies. Sometimes she'd stop for a secret cigarette. Sometimes she'd raid the fridge for a can of Diet Coke. Sometimes, instead, she'd make an instant glass of raspberry Lipton. Sometimes we'd eat lunch together — peanut butter and cheddar cheese on Club crackers was our staple. But always, my mom existed in her swimming suit. 


After lunch she'd take me and my brother to the pool. She drove a white Oldsmobile minivan. Its electric doors opened with a touch of a button and the back was filled with inflatable rafts. I put down towels to keep the leather bucket seats from sticking to the backs of my thighs. With its new-car scent long-gone, the minivan smelled like Banana Boat sunscreen year-round. Even in winter, that car felt like an escape-craft. We had the cheap membership at the country club — the one that doesn't let you golf, but lets you hang out at the pool as much as you want. My mom's favorite spot was in the southwest corner of the lounge area. The sun there was excellent, unobstructed, blistering. She'd stretch a pair of purple beach towels over a padded chaise. And that's where she'd remain. For hours, she'd drink Diet Cokes from white styrofoam cups with straws and voraciously consume whatever million-page novel she happened to be reading that week. She'd lie on her back and then lie on her front. When she'd sweated through the sunscreen, she'd walk to the pool's edge, drop her sunglasses on the concrete and disappear with a splash. She swam the breaststroke for slow, even miles. When she'd had enough, she would paddle to the south ladder, climb up, round the corner, find her glasses and return to the chaise. By then, my brother and I would be long-bored of inventing new formations to make down the winding water slide. We would have exhausted the life guards with our endless contests off the high and low-diving boards. We would have expended our snack allowance on lemonades and Bomb Pops and chicken fingers. By late afternoon, the busy pool would empty of warm and tanned bodies, and we would still be there. 


When could we go? "What else do you have to do today?" she'd ask us. My mom had a point. But it was summer and we lacked the minds and will to relish in the nothing in the sun. Still, if we bothered her long enough and if our swimming suits were dry enough, we'd pack up the oversized totebags with our books and toys and various bottles of SPF and head home. I don't remember what I did on the rest of those days — maybe a ballet class or a cello lesson or piano practice later on. Yet, I always knew to look for my mom in her studio in the basement, where she'd paint until it was time to make dinner. Always in her swimming suit.


That was years ago.


The first time I noticed it was happening, I was living alone in my college apartment on Cherry Street. The air conditioner was too loud and it didn't help anyway. And unless you were sitting right next to the screams of the Vornado, the portable fans gave little relief. So I turned everything off and opened the rest of the windows. The sun had just started to set. I poured myself a glass of white wine and walked into my studio, where I sat down at the desk to write for the rest of the evening, in my swimming suit.


That was four years ago.


Yesterday, when Tom and I awoke, the weight of summer film was there. He was running late. He jumped out of bed, hurried into the front room. I stayed there for a while, supine, above the duvet, scratching mosquito bites, licking salt from my lips, listening to the neighbors cling their plates and chatter the morning away. That was when I spotted the swimming suit, under some clothes on the wicker chair. I got up, dug out the article and slid into its lycra form — a black one-piece. On this day there was breakfast to be made, coffee to drink, a lido to visit and work to be done. And I looked forward to doing it all in the outfit of every summer. It would do. Always, it would do.

Dictionary Top 10

I enjoy the poetic tension of the Top 10 words looked up this week on Merriam-Webster.com

austerity
pragmatic
touché
marriage
bona fide
disposition
biweekly
debauchery
hypocrite
austere


(Post idea post crimped from The Beheld)

Happy Trails

Slug paths weaved iridescent strands along the pavement. Headed in no particular direction, dozens of mother-of-pearly lines dashed east, north, south, west, refracting Peckham's rare sunlight like a slow cosmic prism. Those who made Lulworth Road part of their regular Saturday route into town, or to post a last-minute letter, or to the off-license to pay 1.50 for the suitcase-sized weekend Guardian that heaved with the promise of special issues and special editions and John Lewis vouchers, fell victim to the unexpected brightness of sky and ground. Helpless to 12-o-clock's haze of hangover and instant coffee, they squinted hard in failed attempts to squeeze away last night's last sips of gin, to mentally remain under the duvet for just five more minutes. 

Most of the sparkling threads oozed to everywhere and nowhere, their ends disappearing into thimble-sized front gardens that sprouted from concrete cracks before showing up again, perhaps having turned a corner toward Wherever's next wet, soily patch. 

There was one, though. One that fell prey to its own victims that shuffled with their eyes closed, that slowly inched towards a Saturday's equivalent of everywhere and nowhere until: Crack! The lone snail shell shattered under a careless foot. It seemed strange that a clumsy step could crush with such militaristic force. The Stomp! — followed by serial crunches and the inevitable smoosh of shoe sole and ooze and pavement — surprised the empty street's invisible occupants with its unintentionally brutish misstep. 

A later walk down Lulworth revealed the afternoon's drizzle had washed away all sluggish traces. But the shell and its sad remnants remained, clearly visible in the light of unsleep, glued to mismatched concrete like a fading jewel.

Philip Glass Makes You Look Old

My latest for the St. Louis Riverfront Times:


The classical music of 75-year-old Philip Glass occupies an unlikely place in pop culture. It still attracts the same age group it did when the composer first performed his minimalist works more than 40 years ago.

This audience is ever present for the renowned artist's recent performance at the Kaufman Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City's futuristically handsome new complex whose scallop-like frame of steel, concrete and glass curves elegantly to join Downtown's eclectic skyline. Here, a young set of cool, bespectacled 20-somethings have made a collective effort to shower, show up and Instagram the sunset.

After all classical music performances provide ample reason to unironically wear fur and suspenders. And, like, everyone they know is here. 

But the flock isn't just here to be seen. This migration of Kansas City's youthful urban bestiary towards the theater has plenty to do with Philip Glass's extraordinary ability to relate through compositions that seem to get better with age. At a time when classical music struggles to attract young audiences, Glass continues to be one of the kids.

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Facebook Invitation to a "Depressing Birthday Party"

I make a habit of never checking my Events, except for today. Here is an excerpt from a most excellent invitation from a dear friend:

Hey everyone, it's my 29th Birthday on Saturday. I really didn't feel like celebrating because turning 29 is basically, not turning 30, and because birthdays nowadays are depressing and it's really stressing me out with the rain and the recession and all and I really don't feel like going far from my house. 

So, therefore I've decided I'm not gonna celebrate my Birthday on Saturday and it will happen somewhere in East (you need to get out of South London anyway). So, If you feel like shit, then great, join me. We'll mope together and pick at some shit food, probably cheap vietnamese (Because I'm broke… and so are probably you), then get absolutely shit-faced at some shit pub with a rude bar staff and get ignored by all the pretty hipster dickheads. (Spurstowe Arms maybe? Depends how far I can be arsed walking in the rain) If it sounds like your idea of a good time then I love you and you can come.

His dismal tone is refreshing to me. No exclamation points. No hint of excitement. This invitation captures both the spirit of growing out of one's 20s and how we all feel about London's absolutely shit weather. I say we strive for more invitations like this. They are, at least, mildly entertaining.