Food

What do you eat now?

I think more and more of what we ate on Truesdale. It's really quite funny of you think of it.

When I moved to Georgia, I remember new friends jeering of what I ate and referring to things like calamari as bait, etc. Jimmy Warino once said to me at Ursuline when I was being teased about what I wanted to eat or ate, he said "what do they know, they don't know nothing." I remember that moment. He sounded just like his dad.

We ate well, didn't we? I remember things now that I can never have again more than anything. Grandma used to make me sandwiches for school from the bread she made. Hand slices of lunch meat, a slice of the oil marinated eggplant she used to can, all wrapped in a piece of wax paper. By the time I got to lunch the whole sandwhich was a big oily mess, according to my class mates. What did they know, they didn't know nothing.

Pubacha Cruscht, not how you spell it, but she would dry long red sweet peppers. Then (this was a rare treat) she would fry up the peppers. They were like a homing device. Her kids would drop in just in time for some of the fried dried peppers. They were, in my memories, Italian potato chips. They were crispy, salty and about the best thing I ever remember eating.

The cavatelli she made were amazing. Just flour and water. She would roll out the dough and pinch a piece, roll it then take a small piece, roll that with some flour and then roll it into a small shell and easily toss it to the side. She made these by the 100s. I've tried to make these several times over the years with very little luck. It looked so easy, but in fact it's impossible for me to make. She had cold hands, you see. I think that is key. The dough remains subtle, even with the rolling action.

Rabbits, they were everywhere. See my old post about finding rabbits frozen in mid-leap when I looked for a Mr. Freezie stick in the freezer (these were cheaper than Popsicles.) Rabbit was always cooked in tomato sauce and presented as chicken. I eat rabbit frequently now.

Baby salad greens from the garden, we used to grow leaf lettuce and scallions (green onions) in the back yard with wonderful tomatoes. Now I pay some ungodly sum for the weeds we used to pull out and bathe them in good olive oil and red wine vinegar. Then we used Mazola oil and a splash of Regina red wine vinegar. Those salads were much better. I was told not to use a fork to eat salad. It's meant to be eaten with your fingers.

Pizza. The Warino's were way ahead of the curve on this one. I remember having pizza in grade school on special occasions. It was foreign to the Slovaks at St.s Cyril and Methodius. Like Thai food was here a couple of years ago, just eating it was and adventure. It was nothing like the current variety, more like bread with some green peppers, a light glaze of sauce and a sprinkling (and I do mean sprinkling) of cheese.

Biscotti. It almost makes me angry to hear Biscotti advertised to me in fine restaurants dipped in chocolate, and served with the American version of gelato (which is nothing like the real thing.) These were substitute for Viscots, but much better at sucking up any dunking target.

WINE, such a big deal now. Should we have Merlot, Pinot Noir, Valpolicella, or Beaujolais with rabbit cacciatore? We just had big gallon jugs of generic red around back then. Very little debate about vintage or varietal. It went with everything.