I love handling money. Not the way high-rolling financiers handle it, pushing digits and virtual dollars from account to account and hovering over balances on statements and ticker tapes. But really handling money—touching it, crumpling it, jingling it in my pockets.
There’s something so satisfying about tangible cash. Round metal disks that feel solid in my hand, and rectangles of paper that invite fidgets and folds. Cool heavy quarters. Wafer-thin dimes. Chunky nickels outweighing their penny cousins three to one.
And paper money! Crushable, creasable, waddable, stuffable. I iron it through my fingers, twiddle it into a tube, pleat it with origami zeal. Fresh-from-the-mint greenbacks, still crisp and sticky, call for a hard-fisted crinkle or a taut, noisy snap to make sure I use only one at a time.
Small wonder that my first real job during college was at a savings and loan, where I tallied thousands of dollars a day and balanced my cash drawer to the penny at every close.
This peculiar tactile pleasure started in childhood, when money was tight and handling cash become something I saw as a treat. When I was about six, Bank of America started a campaign to help kids start saving. They handed out big, pink cardboard booklets shaped like a piggy bank. I was so excited when my mom got me one. The booklet had a space for my name on the front and slots for inserting dimes inside. It held about two dollars’ worth—a fortune!—and when I finally filled it with my allowance, I got to start my very own bank account.
I was so proud to have a savings passbook. It was the size of a credit card and navy blue, with rounded corners and narrow lines and tidy, handwritten deposits that the teller always initialed and dated. I used to deposit my birthday and Christmas money each year—two, five, ten dollars at a time. Sometimes I’d ask Mom to cosign a withdrawal so I could buy something I wanted, like a charm for my bracelet or a new hair band. By the time I went to college, I had $1,258 in the account, which paid for a lot of the tuition my first year.
Using actual currency, my mom taught me the art of home budgeting in my early teens. She would cash Ken’s monthly paycheck, and together we would kneel at the side of their master bed while she laid out the money on the puffy patchwork quilt and figured each week’s budget for a family of six. We’d talk about finances as she split the money among envelopes—some for groceries, some for bills, some for clothes, some for gas, some for fun, and some for what-all-else ran a household.
She’d write the amount on the outside of the envelope and subtract amounts she took out every week. Sometimes she’d move money from one envelope to another. She called this “robbing Peter to pay Paul” and did it to make up for changes in expenses, or to carry out a special splurge she hadn’t budgeted for. “Shh,” she’d say, “don’t tell Ken.” Somehow there was always enough, but very little left over.
Counting money was a home ritual in other ways, too. Both Ken and Mom had spent their childhood in times when money was scarce—Ken during the Depression, and Mom during World War II. I also remember Moşu and Grandma (Mom’s parents) talking a lot about the meager days of the Depression. So of course all of them had the habit of saving every bit of loose change to convert to bills later.
Mom and Ken stashed their change in a three-foot-tall Galliano liquor bottle that stood in their bedroom. It was just wide enough at the top to accept a fifty-cent piece, and tapered to about six inches wide at the base. It stood in a wire stand to keep it off the floor and had a brushed-metal spigot at the bottom. Moşu and Grandma had taken several months to drink all the liquor from it and then gave us the bottle for collecting coins.
It seemed to take forever for the bottle to fill up. By the time it was half full, I’d be begging my parents to lug it from the bedroom and let us roll the coins into wrappers.
Shaking out the coins made an awful racket, like a thousand keys jangling on a janitor’s ring. It nearly drowned out the TV. We’d always have a butter knife ready to poke into the neck in case of a jam-up, and then the coins would rain out as if from a Las Vegas jackpot.
With some Saturday Night Movie Special going on in the background, the whole family would sit around the pile of spare change on the living room floor and sort and stack and roll coins as we went. I loved the cheery jingle the coins would make whenever someone raked through them to find a fresh vein of dimes or nickels among all the pennies.
Keeping the coin stacks tidy was important for proper counting, and we’d set out columns in even rows to match the amount that each paper coin-tube could hold: five pillars of ten pennies each, four columns of ten nickels, five stacks of ten dimes, ten piles of four quarters. We’d complete the wrapper rows until we didn’t have enough to make a full roll. The extras went back into the bottle for the next counting.
I liked taking the flat paper wrappers and squishing their sides to make them round. They usually stayed eye-shaped until I got the first coins set, though, which was tricky. When I was little, my fingers weren’t long enough to meet in the middle of the tube, so I learned to set four or five coins at once in the center of the tube first. Then I’d carefully tip in more coins a few at a time. Trying to stuff in a lot at once usually bungled it, and I had to un-jam the coins and start over. I still enjoy the ringing, shuffling sound they make when I can get five or so to flow in at once.
When I’d added the right number of coins, I’d hold the filled roll in front of me with one forefinger in each end of the tube, so I could make sure I had equal amounts of paper to fold over at the ends. Sort of like those Chinese torture tubes, only I couldn’t get my fingers stuck.
We had to write the bank account number on the rolls, too, so the bank could adjust our account if we’d miss-counted our nickels. It was easier to write the number on the tube while it was empty, but I didn’t always remember to do that. Most of the account numbers I wrote down wrapped drunkenly around the roll because I couldn’t write well on the curved surface.
Moşu and Grandma also saved loose change, and they would plan their coin-rolling event for times when we kids would visit them. We’d sit at their big maple dinner table and organize coins on a white tablecloth embroidered with blue and pink cross-stitch flowers. I don’t remember what they saved their coin in, but they didn’t usually have as much to roll at once.
They also had a small collection of really old silver coins stored in a black porcelain bank that looked like an old upright wall phone, the kind they used in 1940s gangster movies and on Green Acres. I used to pretend to dial numbers on it in the den. Sometimes when I visited, they’d let me empty the bank and count all the silver and ask them questions about what was there. I especially liked the Mercury dimes. They were thinner and prettier than Roosevelt dimes; they were real silver and felt old and good in my fingers.
Ken was an avid coin collector, too—near to being a hoarder, actually. Many was the night he would open the huge safe in the master bedroom and tote out his collection of cash to the living room for a recount.
Most of the loose stuff was stored in an olive-green, canvas bank bag that was impressively heavy to my eleven-year-old grasp. The rest was a pile of envelopes, books, and money miscellany.
A dozen clear tubes with screw-top lids held ribbed stacks of quarters rigid. Used orange prescription bottles capped with white would rattle with dimes. Several dark-blue, heavy books opened and opened and opened again to reveal a two-foot strip of cardboard punched with perfectly round holes, each printed with a date and a letter like -S and -D, and most of them plugged with dimes or nickels or pennies.
Ken would sit with us on the floor, a modern-day Silas Marner, and let us kids spill the treasure onto the threadbare brown carpet. The silver slid and rang out merrily into a pile. We would sift through the collection—counting, categorizing, fondling the coins—while he documented the count, described the nuances of numismatics, and impressed upon us the extreme value of these specimens.
He taught us how to quickly recognize silver dimes and quarters from their copper-nickel counterparts by checking the edges for one- or two-metal coloring. I learned that D and S on coins told me the place of minting (Denver or San Francisco) and that no letter mark—a “plain” coin—meant Philadelphia was its source. I soaked in our nation’s history as it’s recorded by its currency, from the first national banking of Revolutionary War times, to the issue of gold and silver certificates, to the Federal reserve notes we use today.
Ken had original two-dollar bills from the Depression, and Indian Head pennies, Buffalo nickels, and Mercury-head dimes in varying states of wear. Heavy Liberty dollars and silver fifty-cent pieces. A Depression-era silver certificate or two, with its identifying blue-inked seal on the front of the note. I came to appreciate currency as art—each coin a sculpted bas relief, each note a finely etched engraving. I still smile when I spot the spider that Ken always pointed out on the face of a one-dollar bill. Was this some engraver’s private joke?
Occasionally, my parents would buy special edition sets, like all the coins minted in one of our birth years, or the whole set of coins struck for the Bicentennial. My favorite one was a slip of cardboard in a plastic sleeve that held a Lincoln penny and a Kennedy half dollar. Between the two coins, a paragraph told all the similarities in their lives and deaths—even the trivia that their full names contained the same number of letters. I took that to show-and-tell one time in sixth grade.
As co-keepers of the collection, all of us in the family were trained to scrutinize every bit of currency that crossed our palms—from sidewalk finds to change given at the grocery store. Wheat pennies (pre-1959) were valuable. Nickels, dimes, and quarters from 1964 and earlier were solid silver and therefore valuable. “Three-liner” twenty-dollar bills—which stated the note was redeemable for lawful currency (gold or silver)—were outdated and thus valuable. Coming upon a 1943 steel penny—the only time they weren’t minted in copper because of war shortages—was like finding the Holy Grail.
Usually all I ever got were wheat pennies and silver nickels, but I checked every coin just the same. I’d bring each find to Ken or Mom, and they’d either pay me the face value and add the coin to the stockpile, or they’d have me save it myself.
Two decades later, after Ken died and his collection was divvied between his two kids, we were all surprised at how small it actually had been. My own vast collection, which I’d started at age ten and increased with silver inherited from Moşu and Grandma, could fit in a shoebox and still leave room for one of the shoes.
In time I wanted to cash in these rare and esteemed coins for the high value they would undoubtedly bring after so many years out of circulation. My whole collection fetched little more than $45, including the special edition sets and my prized Lincoln-Kennedy comparison card. Of my assiduously saved silver nickels, the dealer declared, “They’re still worth a nickel. Spend them.”
Only my tubes of a hundred or so wheat pennies had shown any real appreciation over the years: they had doubled in face value to two cents apiece.
Showing posts with label Misc. Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Misc. Musings. Show all posts
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Monday, October 31, 2005
In Grandma's Kitchen
Ask almost anyone to finish a sentence that starts, “In my Grandma’s kitchen,” and you’ll get a litany of memories that come forth in a rush. Making gingerbread men out of chocolate-chip dough, or basting the Thanksgiving turkey with Grandma’s secret brandy recipe. Mastering the art of whipping mashed potatoes and still keeping them lumpy. Feeling the coolness of linoleum under bare feet on the morning after a sleepover, or tugging on the pantry door that was just a little bit sticky to open.
Of my grandmother’s kitchen I remember the countertops. They were tile—pale, sunny yellow squares with aqua rectangles that rolled over the front edges. I liked that tile, its tidy geometry joined by creamy lines that darkened over time.
Next favorite was a knife—the one Grandma used to make ham and egg salad. Lots of mayonnaise. Some mustard. Celery and onion. Salt and pepper. And ham carved right off the five-pound roast that we’d had the night before—the flat, egg-shaped kind that somehow fit perfectly into a flat, egg-shaped tin that we had to open with a key that unwound a strip of metal all the way around the tin. It was like unwrapping an oversized cigarette or gum package, only I had to be careful not to cut my fingers on the metal and not to spill the ham juice all over the table.
Grandma would cube the cold, leftover ham on the counter and slice the hard-boiled eggs in her palm. The knife sliced easily through the ham slabs—click click click on the tiles. Soundlessly through the eggs. Scrape the side of the blade on the edge of the Pyrex bowl—the green one from the nested set. A lovely sliding chime of metal on glass to move all the smooshed egg yolk into the bowl.
After she was done, we’d wash the knife and dry it—“Blade side out from the sponge and towel,” said Grandma, “so you don’t cut your hand”—and then hang it on its metal rack of two magnetic strips. Mosu had screwed the rack to the side of the cabinet that held their Franciscan ware—dinner plates and bowls and cups in the Apple Blossom pattern. Service for 12. The cabinet had been painted off-white several times over.
The knives would stand at attention on the magnetic strip, handles up, cutting edges toward the window, backs flat, slapped against the magnet above the kitchen sink. I would hang a dried knife into its empty spot on the strip. Click-snap it would go into place like some kind of sucking magic was at work. I was always careful when I let the handle go, afraid that if I jerked it in my sometimes clumsy way that the knife would drop down like a guillotine and clatter into the sink and everyone would come running to see what the matter was.
That knife rack always gave me the willies. We’d do the dishes left-sink to right-sink, and I’d have to pass my hands under the rack to put the dishes in the strainer. I always did it fast, as if the strip would somehow lose its grip just at the moment I passed under its weaponry. But it always held, and the knives never fell.
I have that knife now. Its blade is no longer exceptionally sharp; its edge is scratched and slightly pitted from many inexperienced sharpenings (mine). The point is blunt. My palm curls easily around its wooden handle, around corners that are no longer corners but rounded and smooth and hand-oiled. The wood has lost its stain, bleached with detergent and washings to a natural gray-brown. Two brass rivets, gleaming golden, run through the sandwich of stainless-steel tang and wood. Their flat, embedded buttons feel cool to my thumb and forefinger. The rivets hold the blade true and firm. No hint of wobble in this knife.
Sometimes I still make ham and egg salad using this knife and the green Pyrex bowl. I’m usually halfway into the process before I realize why I’m doing it—because my spirit hankers for a connection to the childhood hours that I spent with my grandparents in the two-bedroom home that they’d had made specially for them in an assembly-line factory. (Grandma had even been able to choose the tile colors she wanted.)
The knife nestles into my adult palm, but it is Grandma’s hands that I see. Capable, thick-knuckled, manicured with false fingernails painted in the dark coral-red polish that was her best color. Grandma’s hands on the same knife, making the same motions of cutting ham and eggs, chopping onions and celery, scraping again and again onto the sides of Pyrex bowls, creating a tasty vat of nourishing, silent love.
Of my grandmother’s kitchen I remember the countertops. They were tile—pale, sunny yellow squares with aqua rectangles that rolled over the front edges. I liked that tile, its tidy geometry joined by creamy lines that darkened over time.
Next favorite was a knife—the one Grandma used to make ham and egg salad. Lots of mayonnaise. Some mustard. Celery and onion. Salt and pepper. And ham carved right off the five-pound roast that we’d had the night before—the flat, egg-shaped kind that somehow fit perfectly into a flat, egg-shaped tin that we had to open with a key that unwound a strip of metal all the way around the tin. It was like unwrapping an oversized cigarette or gum package, only I had to be careful not to cut my fingers on the metal and not to spill the ham juice all over the table.
Grandma would cube the cold, leftover ham on the counter and slice the hard-boiled eggs in her palm. The knife sliced easily through the ham slabs—click click click on the tiles. Soundlessly through the eggs. Scrape the side of the blade on the edge of the Pyrex bowl—the green one from the nested set. A lovely sliding chime of metal on glass to move all the smooshed egg yolk into the bowl.
After she was done, we’d wash the knife and dry it—“Blade side out from the sponge and towel,” said Grandma, “so you don’t cut your hand”—and then hang it on its metal rack of two magnetic strips. Mosu had screwed the rack to the side of the cabinet that held their Franciscan ware—dinner plates and bowls and cups in the Apple Blossom pattern. Service for 12. The cabinet had been painted off-white several times over.
The knives would stand at attention on the magnetic strip, handles up, cutting edges toward the window, backs flat, slapped against the magnet above the kitchen sink. I would hang a dried knife into its empty spot on the strip. Click-snap it would go into place like some kind of sucking magic was at work. I was always careful when I let the handle go, afraid that if I jerked it in my sometimes clumsy way that the knife would drop down like a guillotine and clatter into the sink and everyone would come running to see what the matter was.
That knife rack always gave me the willies. We’d do the dishes left-sink to right-sink, and I’d have to pass my hands under the rack to put the dishes in the strainer. I always did it fast, as if the strip would somehow lose its grip just at the moment I passed under its weaponry. But it always held, and the knives never fell.
I have that knife now. Its blade is no longer exceptionally sharp; its edge is scratched and slightly pitted from many inexperienced sharpenings (mine). The point is blunt. My palm curls easily around its wooden handle, around corners that are no longer corners but rounded and smooth and hand-oiled. The wood has lost its stain, bleached with detergent and washings to a natural gray-brown. Two brass rivets, gleaming golden, run through the sandwich of stainless-steel tang and wood. Their flat, embedded buttons feel cool to my thumb and forefinger. The rivets hold the blade true and firm. No hint of wobble in this knife.
Sometimes I still make ham and egg salad using this knife and the green Pyrex bowl. I’m usually halfway into the process before I realize why I’m doing it—because my spirit hankers for a connection to the childhood hours that I spent with my grandparents in the two-bedroom home that they’d had made specially for them in an assembly-line factory. (Grandma had even been able to choose the tile colors she wanted.)
The knife nestles into my adult palm, but it is Grandma’s hands that I see. Capable, thick-knuckled, manicured with false fingernails painted in the dark coral-red polish that was her best color. Grandma’s hands on the same knife, making the same motions of cutting ham and eggs, chopping onions and celery, scraping again and again onto the sides of Pyrex bowls, creating a tasty vat of nourishing, silent love.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Tangerine Teachings
I remember the trees of my childhood, five of them already planted as part of the San Diego tract home my Mom and step-dad bought in the mid ’60s.
The dwarf tangerine is the one I loved most. It stood alone near the northeast corner of our postage-stamp-sized backyard amid an expanse of scruffy, usually sun-dried grass. I grew up with that tree. Our black collie, Duffy, and I would chase each other around it when I was five.
At age six or seven, I learned the tree held an amazing secret: the seasonal transformation of tiny, hard, green balls into pliable orange fruits big enough to get my fist around. The flowers, white and fragrant, would crumple to a creamy brown and drop to darken into the earth. Then this little green ball would start up where each flower had been. The size of a pea, the color of the leaves. Sometimes I could find only a few, unless I looked really, really hard. In just a few weeks, I would spot them in all kinds of sizes.
I’d study them in all their stages of change. First green as Mexican limes, they’d blush to half-orange, half-green, then one sunny day there’d be nothing but bright orange rounds in the heart of the branches. The tree never looked like those pictures we all drew as kids—a big green circle with orange dots all over it. Instead, the fruit nestled in among the branches, hid under the leaves, hugged the trunk. Even though the orange was so bright, I was often surprised at how many I missed from one day to the next.
I remember being afraid to pick and eat the fruit at first. Was it OK to do? Was it safe? Could I really eat these pretty mini-orange sections? Mom said yes. The tangerines had lots of seeds. I didn’t like that. They weren’t always sweet or juicy, either. We didn’t water the tree much. Like the kids and the pets, the tree was left pretty much to fend for itself with whatever the elements would give it. Benign neglect was big in those days.
Picking the tangerines was easy. The tree was a dwarf variety, and even I could reach up into its middle with my little-kid height. Sometimes I’d get so many tangerines I couldn’t hold them all. Then I’d fold up the front of my T-shirt and carry them in a stretchy basket.
I learned they were ripe when just a nudge would drop them into my hand. If I had to pull too hard, the rind would rip, and the fruit wouldn’t be as tasty because it hadn’t been ready to come away from the tree.
Life can be a lot like that—push it, struggle to pluck its goodness, and you never end up with the best that it could have been. But let it ripen on its own, give it the least little prod, and all that we need falls into our hands in its own perfect time. No struggle. No coaxing. Just life at its best—ripe, ready, full of juice. For me, that tree was abundance.
At ten, I remember reading that you can splice trees together—graft them—so that one kind of tree could be made to grow from another. I once took a knife to the side of the trunk and tried to graft a lemon branch to it, but the add-on died. A botanical Dr. Frankenstein I was not.
The tangerine tree is gone now—cut down two or three years ago to convert the always-scraggly yard into a lovely sanctuary of rose bushes, white rock, curvy tiled benches, and stepping stones studded with butterflies and frogs. While the yard makeover is beautiful, I do still miss that friendly tangerine tree and its sweet little surprises hidden in the branches.
The dwarf tangerine is the one I loved most. It stood alone near the northeast corner of our postage-stamp-sized backyard amid an expanse of scruffy, usually sun-dried grass. I grew up with that tree. Our black collie, Duffy, and I would chase each other around it when I was five.
At age six or seven, I learned the tree held an amazing secret: the seasonal transformation of tiny, hard, green balls into pliable orange fruits big enough to get my fist around. The flowers, white and fragrant, would crumple to a creamy brown and drop to darken into the earth. Then this little green ball would start up where each flower had been. The size of a pea, the color of the leaves. Sometimes I could find only a few, unless I looked really, really hard. In just a few weeks, I would spot them in all kinds of sizes.
I’d study them in all their stages of change. First green as Mexican limes, they’d blush to half-orange, half-green, then one sunny day there’d be nothing but bright orange rounds in the heart of the branches. The tree never looked like those pictures we all drew as kids—a big green circle with orange dots all over it. Instead, the fruit nestled in among the branches, hid under the leaves, hugged the trunk. Even though the orange was so bright, I was often surprised at how many I missed from one day to the next.
I remember being afraid to pick and eat the fruit at first. Was it OK to do? Was it safe? Could I really eat these pretty mini-orange sections? Mom said yes. The tangerines had lots of seeds. I didn’t like that. They weren’t always sweet or juicy, either. We didn’t water the tree much. Like the kids and the pets, the tree was left pretty much to fend for itself with whatever the elements would give it. Benign neglect was big in those days.
Picking the tangerines was easy. The tree was a dwarf variety, and even I could reach up into its middle with my little-kid height. Sometimes I’d get so many tangerines I couldn’t hold them all. Then I’d fold up the front of my T-shirt and carry them in a stretchy basket.
I learned they were ripe when just a nudge would drop them into my hand. If I had to pull too hard, the rind would rip, and the fruit wouldn’t be as tasty because it hadn’t been ready to come away from the tree.
Life can be a lot like that—push it, struggle to pluck its goodness, and you never end up with the best that it could have been. But let it ripen on its own, give it the least little prod, and all that we need falls into our hands in its own perfect time. No struggle. No coaxing. Just life at its best—ripe, ready, full of juice. For me, that tree was abundance.
At ten, I remember reading that you can splice trees together—graft them—so that one kind of tree could be made to grow from another. I once took a knife to the side of the trunk and tried to graft a lemon branch to it, but the add-on died. A botanical Dr. Frankenstein I was not.
The tangerine tree is gone now—cut down two or three years ago to convert the always-scraggly yard into a lovely sanctuary of rose bushes, white rock, curvy tiled benches, and stepping stones studded with butterflies and frogs. While the yard makeover is beautiful, I do still miss that friendly tangerine tree and its sweet little surprises hidden in the branches.
Monday, September 05, 2005
The Big Bhang and Other Brownie Moments
I’m making my first batch of hemp brownies tonight. Yes, the kind that’s interspersed with actual Cannabis sativa seed—those happy little nubules that would, when not suspended in a bowl of chocolate lava and subjected to 350° heat in a Maytag oven, blossom into marijuana (aka bhang), ripe with the promise of ropes, joints, and hashish.
I laughed when I saw the box on the co-op’s dessert shelf: “Hemp Plus™ Brownie Mix” from Nature’s Path. Organic and “Quick & Easy” into the bargain. I’ve never tried pot or any other recreational drug, but the box brought back memories of the ’70s when baking hashish into brownies was all the rage. I still remember that Barney Miller episode when Wojo’s girlfriend brings a plate of brownies to the precinct and all the detectives get giddy, not knowing the stuff is spiked with hash.
While I don’t expect to get happy off of anything more than the chocolate, I did doctor tonight’s mix with a generous tablespoon of extra cocoa (organic), another of wheat germ (just for the heck of it), and two eggs (per the box’s instructions for added moistness—not much is worse than a dry brownie).
At this point in my life, I dare to call myself a brownie aficionado. OK—a brownie snob. At least of the boxed kind. Duncan Hines was the best when I was a kid. Moist, chewy, chocolaty. Hands-down better than what that upstart Ms. Betty Crocker or that puddin’-bellied Pillsbury boy could muster.
Then I discovered Ghirardelli’s at Costco a few years ago. A typically humongous box that I could barely palm in one hand, but packed with three—count ’em, three—floppy plastic bags full of a magic brown powder that cooks up into the most gloriously fudgy gooey cakey brownie that has ever come out of a home oven. I could eat my way through a pan in two days flat—but usually manage to stretch it to three.
The mix is studded with bits of Ghirardelli chocolate—none of the sissy Hershey’s or Nestle’s chips here. These brownies are like eating a chocolate cake candy bar—meltable yet chewable, thick enough to cleave your tongue to the roof of your mouth, but not so cloying as to take your teeth with it. A close-your-eyes-and-moan kind of brownie.
For several years I always had at least one triple-bag box of Ghirardelli brownies stashed in the cupboard. It came in handy for an emergency dose of chocolate on a Saturday after a long week. Baking up two bags at once made a fast, sure-fire 13x9 offering at any party or potluck. So I was pretty pissed at Costco when they recently replaced the top-notch Ghirardelli brand with a mix by the more pedestrian Hershey people. It’s like being able to drive a Porsche for years and then one morning finding a Kia in my garage.
Those Ghirardelli’s brownies are the closest thing I’ve gotten to reclaiming the delight of splitting a slab of mouth-watering brownie with my husband on the sidewalk outside of Harrod’s in London. We’d spent a long day touring London’s streets and wandered into the Food Halls at Harrod’s. The Food Hall itself is a destination site. This was in the mid ’90s, in the days before upscale grocery stores began catering to the fresh-food takeaway crowd in the U.S. Even today, you wouldn’t go to Nordstrom’s or Sears to buy meat and cheese for the evening’s supper. You can at Harrod’s.
We inevitably gravitated toward the dessert counter, where we breathed on the curved glass and oohed and aahed over the delectable offerings. Cheesecake wedges and petit-four squares, domed truffles and flat cookies, rounds of fruit tarts and miniature trifles, and—oooh, yummy! A whole tray of fresh brownies. Our mutual weakness.
The squares were big enough to tile a bathroom. They were also frosted. I usually steer clear of frosted brownies because the only reason to frost them is to try to salvage a dry brownie—and there’s not much worse than a dry brownie. But, hey, this is Harrod’s. We have to try it.
So the lady wraps a square of waxed paper around the biggest brownie in the bunch and exchanges it for our British pound notes over the glass case. I am surprised at the heft of this brownie. It must weigh half a pound. We grab napkins and look around for somewhere in the Food Hall to sit and share our booty. No such luck. No tables. No benches. Not a chair in sight. Irritated at this lack of nicety in a food hall, we thread our way out of the store in hopes of finding a bench outside. No such luck. No benches. No nearby park. Not even a stoop to sit on.
So we use the nearest thing onto which we can hitch a seat bone—a 3" beveled ledge that’s built into the side of the Harrod’s building and that’s far too low to be truly comfortable. We half prop, half push ourselves straight-legged against the wall, unfold the wax paper from the brownie, and realize that neither of us thought to grab forks.
No mind. Thumb and fingers dig into the frosting and the brownie’s soft underbelly as we each ease off a piece to pop it into our mouths. Heaven. Absolute heaven. Fudgy and cakey and just enough sweet. Squeeze it through the teeth, swish it out of the cheek folds, chew it and melt it at the same time. Smile and lick fingers and catch crumbs from falling—we don’t want to waste any of it. We linger half an hour over the luscious lump and are buzzed for the rest of the afternoon. Definitely a 10 in both brownie legend and travel memories.
And as for the hemp brownies I made tonight? A bhang gone bhust. I’d hate to find out how dry they would have been without the eggs I added. I give them a 4 and won’t do them again.
I laughed when I saw the box on the co-op’s dessert shelf: “Hemp Plus™ Brownie Mix” from Nature’s Path. Organic and “Quick & Easy” into the bargain. I’ve never tried pot or any other recreational drug, but the box brought back memories of the ’70s when baking hashish into brownies was all the rage. I still remember that Barney Miller episode when Wojo’s girlfriend brings a plate of brownies to the precinct and all the detectives get giddy, not knowing the stuff is spiked with hash.
While I don’t expect to get happy off of anything more than the chocolate, I did doctor tonight’s mix with a generous tablespoon of extra cocoa (organic), another of wheat germ (just for the heck of it), and two eggs (per the box’s instructions for added moistness—not much is worse than a dry brownie).
At this point in my life, I dare to call myself a brownie aficionado. OK—a brownie snob. At least of the boxed kind. Duncan Hines was the best when I was a kid. Moist, chewy, chocolaty. Hands-down better than what that upstart Ms. Betty Crocker or that puddin’-bellied Pillsbury boy could muster.
Then I discovered Ghirardelli’s at Costco a few years ago. A typically humongous box that I could barely palm in one hand, but packed with three—count ’em, three—floppy plastic bags full of a magic brown powder that cooks up into the most gloriously fudgy gooey cakey brownie that has ever come out of a home oven. I could eat my way through a pan in two days flat—but usually manage to stretch it to three.
The mix is studded with bits of Ghirardelli chocolate—none of the sissy Hershey’s or Nestle’s chips here. These brownies are like eating a chocolate cake candy bar—meltable yet chewable, thick enough to cleave your tongue to the roof of your mouth, but not so cloying as to take your teeth with it. A close-your-eyes-and-moan kind of brownie.
For several years I always had at least one triple-bag box of Ghirardelli brownies stashed in the cupboard. It came in handy for an emergency dose of chocolate on a Saturday after a long week. Baking up two bags at once made a fast, sure-fire 13x9 offering at any party or potluck. So I was pretty pissed at Costco when they recently replaced the top-notch Ghirardelli brand with a mix by the more pedestrian Hershey people. It’s like being able to drive a Porsche for years and then one morning finding a Kia in my garage.
Those Ghirardelli’s brownies are the closest thing I’ve gotten to reclaiming the delight of splitting a slab of mouth-watering brownie with my husband on the sidewalk outside of Harrod’s in London. We’d spent a long day touring London’s streets and wandered into the Food Halls at Harrod’s. The Food Hall itself is a destination site. This was in the mid ’90s, in the days before upscale grocery stores began catering to the fresh-food takeaway crowd in the U.S. Even today, you wouldn’t go to Nordstrom’s or Sears to buy meat and cheese for the evening’s supper. You can at Harrod’s.
We inevitably gravitated toward the dessert counter, where we breathed on the curved glass and oohed and aahed over the delectable offerings. Cheesecake wedges and petit-four squares, domed truffles and flat cookies, rounds of fruit tarts and miniature trifles, and—oooh, yummy! A whole tray of fresh brownies. Our mutual weakness.
The squares were big enough to tile a bathroom. They were also frosted. I usually steer clear of frosted brownies because the only reason to frost them is to try to salvage a dry brownie—and there’s not much worse than a dry brownie. But, hey, this is Harrod’s. We have to try it.
So the lady wraps a square of waxed paper around the biggest brownie in the bunch and exchanges it for our British pound notes over the glass case. I am surprised at the heft of this brownie. It must weigh half a pound. We grab napkins and look around for somewhere in the Food Hall to sit and share our booty. No such luck. No tables. No benches. Not a chair in sight. Irritated at this lack of nicety in a food hall, we thread our way out of the store in hopes of finding a bench outside. No such luck. No benches. No nearby park. Not even a stoop to sit on.
So we use the nearest thing onto which we can hitch a seat bone—a 3" beveled ledge that’s built into the side of the Harrod’s building and that’s far too low to be truly comfortable. We half prop, half push ourselves straight-legged against the wall, unfold the wax paper from the brownie, and realize that neither of us thought to grab forks.
No mind. Thumb and fingers dig into the frosting and the brownie’s soft underbelly as we each ease off a piece to pop it into our mouths. Heaven. Absolute heaven. Fudgy and cakey and just enough sweet. Squeeze it through the teeth, swish it out of the cheek folds, chew it and melt it at the same time. Smile and lick fingers and catch crumbs from falling—we don’t want to waste any of it. We linger half an hour over the luscious lump and are buzzed for the rest of the afternoon. Definitely a 10 in both brownie legend and travel memories.
And as for the hemp brownies I made tonight? A bhang gone bhust. I’d hate to find out how dry they would have been without the eggs I added. I give them a 4 and won’t do them again.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Gestalt & Pepper
OK, OK, so I’m finally on the web. About time, no doubt. Here I am—a born writer, making a living by putting everyone else’s ideas into words—and it’s taken me the entire history of the Internet to sit myself down and put my own story out there for others to read. I was just too chicken until now.
All of us have one. A story, I mean. Actually lots of ’em, all gathered in memory like so many beads tossed in a bowl. Fiery glass tubes. Lumpy clay blobs. Sparkling crystals. Big wooden rounds in primary colors. Occasionally we rake up a handful and string them together in whatever order suits us, as if creating some sort of personal rosary that reminds us of who we are. We wind strands together and call it a Lifetime.
That’s what this particular blog is about: A chance for you to join me on the front porch of the Internet as I stir through the bowl of my own memory beads and share what comes up.
I may free-write about a particular word of the day, or record a truth that I woke up remembering. Perhaps post a poem that came to me on a walk, or a vision that rose from a meditation, or a dream that stayed with me til morning. You may also find snippets from my journals and an occasional soapbox delivery.
And sometimes I’ll just post the rambling, “nothing” kind of talk that defines all our days—the meeting with a friend over supper, the fragrance of a rose I’d never noticed before, the bite of Thai basil plucked fresh from the bush and sent zinging around my tongue.
So come on in. Grab a cup and a chair and stay a while. Even I don’t know what will pop up next in this place.
All of us have one. A story, I mean. Actually lots of ’em, all gathered in memory like so many beads tossed in a bowl. Fiery glass tubes. Lumpy clay blobs. Sparkling crystals. Big wooden rounds in primary colors. Occasionally we rake up a handful and string them together in whatever order suits us, as if creating some sort of personal rosary that reminds us of who we are. We wind strands together and call it a Lifetime.
That’s what this particular blog is about: A chance for you to join me on the front porch of the Internet as I stir through the bowl of my own memory beads and share what comes up.
I may free-write about a particular word of the day, or record a truth that I woke up remembering. Perhaps post a poem that came to me on a walk, or a vision that rose from a meditation, or a dream that stayed with me til morning. You may also find snippets from my journals and an occasional soapbox delivery.
And sometimes I’ll just post the rambling, “nothing” kind of talk that defines all our days—the meeting with a friend over supper, the fragrance of a rose I’d never noticed before, the bite of Thai basil plucked fresh from the bush and sent zinging around my tongue.
So come on in. Grab a cup and a chair and stay a while. Even I don’t know what will pop up next in this place.
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