Eat Your Artichoke, Lorelai

Some food stories. As we speak, Kristi Carlson, the author of the warm-hearted, all kinds of fabulous, and so cheerful Eat Like a Gilmore cookbook, the title of which I paraphrased as one of the labels on this blog, is collecting funds to kickstart her second Gilmore Girls related assembly of recipes. Now, I haven’t exactly tried any of the foods on the existing book yet, because I’m such a dang-a-lang and a whatchamacallit who buys a cookbook and then fails to make anything from it, but I have tagged a lot of pages with pretty neon-colored post-its, marveled at the fun of just browsing through it, and discussed having a Gilmore Girls feast, inspired by Carlson, with at least three or four people.

While I have already shared earlier the one recipe I have mastered in my life on this blog and have nothing else to add to the world of gourmands but my undying enthusiasm and cookbook browsing, I will now proceed to share some of my food related stories from the days of both yore and present.

I was slicing up an avocado. One of the reasons Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip it means so much to me is the fact that I heard Jens Lekman singing for the first time ever on the soundtrack. When I watched Lady Bird earlier this month, I, while loving it all good and proper, since I was already a fan of both Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan, as well as Jon Brion the composer, and Noah Baumbach, who had absolutely nothing to do with it, could not help thinking that there is an existing earlier version of this film, and what a shame that Barrymore did not get more recognition from her efforts. Whip It is just as fabulous a story as Lady Bird, and the protagonists are equally gorgeous. Even the role of the continuously angry and demanding mother, played by the uniquely talented Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird, and the frighteningly formidable Marcia Gay Harden in Whip It, is uncannily similar.

The music is so wonderful too, in both films. The first thing I did when I first saw Whip It was order the soundtrack album online and play it on repeat for at least four months. Jens Lekman, an enormous crush of mine ever since, would have sufficed as What I Got Out of This Movie, but I love Drew Barrymore, she is such a survivor, and always happy and cheerful, even after having undergone one of the most difficult childhoods of all of Hollywood royalty, and I have always been a little sad that her efforts weren’t recognized more in directorial area as well as using hours and hours to personally choose the entire song selection for the soundtrack album. Go Drew! Whip It is a wonderful, joyous and life-affirming movie about a girl’s struggle to find her place in the world. Extra kudos for using Dolly Parton’s Jolene in the movie. Dolly is the queen and that’s the way it is.

Don’t misunderstand, Greta Gerwig is one of my heroes, so offbeat and talented, and ever since seeing her act for the first time on Baumbach’s Greenberg, I just fell in love with her, just like Baumbach himself, and proceeded to watch everything else she has starred in, everything I was able to grab a hold of. Saoirse Ronan gave such a killer performance in Atonement, one of my favorite films, that I have followed her career ever since with great interest. Metcalf, Chalamet, the rest, they are all fantastic, and deserve wonderful things, and the fact that Lady Bird was up for Oscars was an astounding and rapturous thing.

I still would like it acknowledged that Drew was there first. She was always ahead of her time, and the slight clumsiness and handicraft feel of the film makes it, in my opinion, even more appealing; an aspect to be found also in Gerwig’s lovely movie, and part of why I fell in love with Lady Bird, too. Don’t you just hate it when directors become big and lose the handicraft, homey, feel that you used to just adore in their films? Unfortunately, this has happened to a lot of directors that used to be really interesting and alternative and original (for instance, I’m looking at you, Tim Burton).

The time wasn’t perhaps right for Drew, but times, they are a-changing. And good for us, including Drew Barrymore. If you haven’t seen Whip It, I suggest you check it out. A little gem of a movie. And here’s why I babbled about it for so long: every time I am making my variation of Hanna Gullichsen’s avocado pasta, I hear Jens Lekman’s song Your Arms Around Me, from his album Night Falls Over Kortedala, about how he cuts himself on the index finger slicing an avocado on the porch and has to be rushed to the emergency room, in my head. I love that song. I love it. I can’t even look at an avocado without starting to hum the tune.

Even artichokes have hearts! The line is Amélie’s quip to Collignon, the rude and pompous produce stand owner, after witnessing him bully the bagboy and receiving the witty comeback from the Cellar Comeback Whisperer. Another artichoke-related bit of funniness: Emily’s frustrated command to her daughter in ep 19, Emily in Wonderland, of season one, which is also the title of this story, never fails to make me laugh.

I remember distinctly storming home one afternoon many years ago, after being treated hideously by a friend at brunch, but, having been such a coward and not badass enough to confront her about the abuse I was receiving, I instead took it out on the lettuce in my fridge, and raged myself a torn artichoke heart and lettuce salad, which I proceeded to eat in a purple fury.

The artichoke spread was first brought to my attention as I was attending the thirtieth birthday party of my then-boyfriend’s sister. It was an easy recipe, and I ate at least seven pieces of baguette with the delicious spread and practically hogged the entire bowl at the buffet. When I made it for my own dinner parties after the initial discovery, it was always the biggest hit of the evening. And there’s nothing to it: just take a few of those delicious preserved artichoke hearts in a bowl, slice up a couple of garlic cloves, I think I use as many as three, and run it through a blender. Not only will your party smell wonderful, but everyone attending will get a natural shield against that pesky flu bug that’s going around. As an added bonus, vampires will think twice before crashing your party. I mean the Buffyverse vampires at least, I’m not sure about the sappy sad vampires from the Twilight Saga, because Stephenie Meyer rewrote some of the vampire rules for her story, but hey, those guys wouldn’t present any danger whatsoever, anyway. Spike, on the other hand – well, here lies the question: do we, or don’t we, want to have Spike crash our party?

Perhaps this is the real reason why I haven’t made the artichoke spread in a while. You know, in case Spike decides to stop by.

Friends who bake together, stay together. I once watched a blueberry pie bake in the oven for over three hours. There was a blackout, and the electricity went awol from the entire neighborhood, and Sally and I had just put the pie in the oven ten minutes earlier. The killer was, we had for once decided to make a less carb-happy meal instead of our usual pasta feast, and after the lean chicken salad knew that the reward was coming in the shape of a wonderful blueberry and vanilla custard pie. Well fuck that, the Goddess of Chance, as well as Mr. Murphy’s defense attorney, seemed to think.

The good news was that there was wine, plenty of it, and it was summer, and the imminent electric storm never materialized. The sun shone in thin biblical beams between the dark clouds, and it was so moist our clothes were practically glued to our bodies, as we sat on the front steps of Sally’s house, and talked and talked, one of us going inside to check if the oven light had come back on every once in a while. Eventually the power did return, but the damage was done. After three hours, we were dying for some pie, and had lost all patience to actually watch it cook, so we ended up taking it out before the batter had solidified fully, and ate the whole thing, semi-raw. And after all those glasses of wine, I can honestly say it was the most wonderful blueberry pie I had ever tasted.

The salmiac cake that never was. I have no recollection whatsoever who’s birthday it was, if anybody’s, or what the occasion was, but the recipe for the salty licorice cake I found from one of the free recipe booklets that the markets have on display has achieved an almost legendary status in my discussions on food with Roberts. It was a three tier cake, entirely covered in dark grey glazing made from several Hopeatoffee pieces, and O my lord did it look so very delicious. Roberts, as I have said before, is the Sookie St. James of my work place, a baker so fine she could easily be a professional, and when we started discussing her making the cake in question, we were both hyped to the point of exhaustion. I think I went as far as buying the pieces of candy and handing them out to her one time.

But, as things sometimes go in life, it wasn’t meant to be. There was never a good time for us to meet up outside our work place to go ingredient hunting together let alone arrange an actual baking session. Then there was the small matter of Roberts’ lactose intolerance breaking out in biblical portions. I am lactose sensitive, too, but nowhere near as sensitive as her, and the idea of baking a cake that she wouldn’t be able to eat at all became I think the straw that eventually broke the camel’s back. But sometimes we would nevertheless bring up the idea of still baking the cake, somehow bringing it magically together without the salmiac, and as years progressed, the baking of the cake has come to signify anything that should be done but, for some insane reason, never is. “So it’s like the salmiac cake all over again!” one of us might say, or “But is it as hard as baking the salmiac cake?” or “What’s taking so long? You baking the salmiac cake in there, or what?”

I may be an intolerable drill sergeant, but I make a mean pancake. The final story is dedicated to my man. About a year ago I posted a short story on the blog, honoring the magnificent Alice Hoffman, about the magical qualities of my mother’s secret pancake recipe, and this is just to say (thank you, William Carlos Williams, for that): the magic is real. It works. And here is why.

I, they say, am not an easy person to live with. In fact, I believe the words demon-child, Medusa, and Lilith, have been used to describe me as a living companion. And I’m afraid it’s all true. I am not an easy-going person. I can’t relax, if my house is in disarray, and I am lamentably quick to point out if anyone else is being a messy-mess in my queendom. I like things to be clean and tidy and organized, and this tendency for control-freakouts has its consequences. Every now and then I try to take it easy and let things slide, but then a cleaning rage takes over me, all of a sudden, and I all but throw everyone out of the house while I am mopping and dusting and arranging and pouring citric acid in the detergent compartment of the washing machine to give it a good biannual cleaning.

That, combined with the borderline fun of being an insomniac with a highly sensitive disposition, can be a deal breaker for a lot of people. Which is precisely why I need to have a little sorcery handy from time to time. So, I guess I am trying to say that after the demon has left my body, and I am feeling regretful for being such an inflexible and despicable, well, drill sergeant, I make peace with either my avocado pasta variation, or the magic pancake.

When Sex and the City was on, everyone I spoke with about the show said they most identified with Carrie the protagonist. I always identified with Miranda, the anal yeller. When watching Grace and Frankie, both my man and I find Jane Fonda’s Grace almost uncannily like me, and joke around how I, too, should buy some martini glasses and grow fangs to go with the role (I did buy the glasses from a flea market recently, sans the martini, because I still shy away from hard liquor at this point in my life). Monica’s shock on Friends, when being fooled into believing her guests aren’t using coasters at her party, is not lost on me in the slightest. On Frasier, the characters that represent me best are both Frasier himself as well as his brother Niles. Interestingly, we both feel Frasier reminds us from not only me, but my man, too.

I know I am being a hyperbole here, that everybody is more or less hard to live with. But I am harder. That is just the way it is, and if not for mother’s pancake recipe, I think maybe I would no longer have anyone to vent on, to yell at, to order around, or to apologize to. Drill sergeants have hearts, too, and I for one am lucky to be with someone who still sees it, hidden and hard to reach as it sometimes may be.