January 24, 2004

This Day in My History

TODAY's QUOTE

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

~ Anais Nin

Yesterday's Entries

2001: Singing and Driving in the Rain
2002: It's Hard to Type with Frozen Fingers
2003: What Would You Do with a Brain if you Had one?

TODAY's READ

Rubyfruit Jungle
(It's getting good now)

TODAY on the TELE

Nothing. I'm reviewing 2 For the SeeSaw tonight

TODAY's WEATHER

foggy all day

REAL MEN DO EAT QUICHE

24 January 2004

I’m shopping for ingredients for quiche today.

I am such a product of "food" that when I think of certain places, people, and situations, I very often associate them with food items.

Risotto, for example, will always remind me of Peggy. I made it for her on her first night here and she hated it. It was the only food she absolutely could not eat. I thought we were off to a very bad start. She never complained again during her six weeks here, but has never let me forget the last meal I made for her. She had been talking about baked vegetables and I thought it was rather odd to bake broccoli and cauliflower, but did it. Turned out she intended to steam/boil those and bake the pumpkin and potatoes. (I got her back a bit a couple of weeks ago when I saw a recipe for cauliflower soup which starts out with baking the cauliflower!)

I think of specific foods with many of our guests from foreign countries. I remember the afternoon I spent with all the Chilean students making and folding empanadas. I learned that hamburger could mix very nicely with raisins (but made certain that you never served empanadas that way to Juan Ignacio, who hated the combination of sweet and salt).

I can’t count the number of times I’ve either cooked or eaten feijoada, the national dish of Brasil, which was a staple for all the "farewell" meals for each of the Brasilian groups we had, which was always cooked for us when we visited our Brasilian daughter Sonia, and which I learned to make pretty well myself.

There was that recipe for "ensalada de bacalau" which I struggled to translate from Portuguese to English when Eduardo’s mother sent it to me because he loved it. Ultimately it turned out to be potato salad with cod fish and quite tasty–another combination I never would have thought of. I haven’t made it much since he left here, but I did make it for him when he lived here in the early 1980s.

When I think of tempura, I remember Chieko. I suggested to her that she share a dish from her native Japan when she had dinner with us for Christmas. Only it turned out that she didn’t know a thing about cooking, and I ended up teaching her how to make tempura!

I remember Ndangi’s wife hunkered down on her haunches, a big pot between her bare feet, pounding some sort of mixture to make for us a national dish of Zaire. She preferred that stance to using the kitchen counter. I wish I could say I liked the food. I really didn’t.

But every time I think about quiche I again remember Eduardo. Eduardo came to live with us in 1981, our very first foreign student (if his homestay hadn’t been so successful, we never would have had the subsequent 60+ people staying in our house over the next ten years!). Eduardo loved most of what I cooked for him, but he went crazy for quiche. He had never eaten anything like that and he couldn’t get enough of it.

Last night, out of the blue, the telephone rang and it was Eduardo. He is on a business trip 2 hours from here and wanted to know if we would be home this weekend so he could come and see us. The last time we saw him was in 1986 (Tom saw him in Toronto, where he now lives, a few months ago).

He will be here tomorrow afternoon. Ned, who lived with Eduardo and his parents in Rio de Janeiro for a year back in 1983, is also coming. He, too, has not seen his adopted brother since 1986.

Eduardo offered to take us out to dinner, but of course I will cook here instead. I can’t think of a better dish to make than quiche. I hope he still likes it!

PHOTO OF THE DAY

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Tom and Eduardo: 1981 and 2003 --
there have been a few changes in 22 years!

For more photos, please visit My Fotolog and My FoodLog