A Walker in the Suburbs

On a lunchtime walk through the neighborhood yesterday I smelled what I imagined was a hot lunch bubbling away on a stove. It smelled vaguely tomato-ey, and made me feel cozy and warm, as if I would soon stroll into a kitchen, pull up a chair and dig into a plate of spaghetti.

Instead, I ate my usual salad.

What is it about the hot lunch? It’s old-fashioned, for sure, because someone must be home to cook it.   In fact, it extends further back than I can remember, to a time when people worked close enough to their homes to eat lunch there.

It implies small towns, then, or the Venice of Commissar Brunetti mystery novels. Guido Brunetti often eats lunch at home, if I recall, but he (in addition to being fictional) lives in a place that builds its society around the big lunch and the long siesta.

That will not happen here, I know. But a walker can dream.

(Photo: wikipedia)

Celia subscribes to a cereal blog, in which she gets the latest word on campaigns and brands. I haven’t gone that far, but I am a big fan of a certain cereal, and I want to take a moment to sing its praises.

For this year’s birthday dinner I asked for — and received — an old favorite: fried chicken. It was yummy! The older (!) I get the more I return to my culinary roots: friend chicken (southern style), mashed potatoes, sandwiches on white bread.

These are not gourmet delicacies. They’re not something one even admits to eating these days. And to be fair, they are treats, not my steady diet (which runs more along vegetable lines).

But they are tasty and lacking in pretension. You know where you stand with them. The world is crazy these days. Bring on the comfort foods!

It was 18 degrees when I woke up. The daffodils are nodding, the forsythia is quaking and I don’t even want to know about the rose bush. Still, winter weather has its consolations. One of them is soup.

This morning I had a sudden craving for my dad’s vegetable soup, rich and tomatoey with potatoes and carrots and celery and peas. So I started rooting through the freezer and pantry.

First I located a frozen soup bone, then a pack of frozen stew beef, left over from when I made beef bourguignon in the crock pot a few weekends ago. There were a few old potatoes in the larder and a half-forgotten stalk of celery in the bottom crisper drawer. Onions aplenty. Even two cans of tomatoes. There was, in short, everything I needed to make soup.

… Or almost everything. As I write this post I realize what’s missing. The V-8 juice. That’s what gives the broth its richness and flavor.

Too late now.  The soup bone is simmering. And the grocery store is only minutes away.

For the last two Mother’s Day in a row, Claire has whipped up this confection. It’s two layers of feather-light chocolate cake, iced and topped with a thin layer of hazelnut, a cushiony helping of whipped cream and a generous dollop of strawberries.

Five of us consumed half of it last night — and I’m embarrassed at how much I’m looking forward to nibbling on what’s still left in the fridge.

Yesterday, watching the girls in the kitchen together, thinking about all the meals I made when they were young, thinking about one in particular when Claire was just a newborn and I had for some reason decided to make lasagna. She was sitting in her little seat on top of the counter, amidst the ricotta and mushrooms and mozzarella — probably breathing it all into her little brain.

It was one of those times when I probably should have just heated up a frozen pizza. But the cooking and the kids just naturally went together. They still do.

How much of family life takes place in the kitchen, how many joys and sorrows, how many delights. When I think about it now, the cake in its yummy extravagance was the perfect expression of the day, of its bounty, of how much I have to be thankful for.