Mashing Up a Marine with a Literary Icon with a Little Lamb
Good company.....except maybe not the poor lamb.
Saturday News Digest, V1/E31
That Wasn’t So Bad!
The Reason for All the Gray Hair
Who Knew He Read Cookbooks!
Talking Heads
That Wasn’t So Bad!
But have your pies on standby.
The world, for now, didn’t end on Tuesday. So far, the center holds. But the great social activist Alan Kay, aka the Yippee Pie Man, aka the “pied sniper of New York,” would advise us to keep a few pies in stock for those in the coming year or two who may deserve a good coconut custard smack in the puss.
The Reason for All the Gray Hair But proud and celebrating anyway.
See this young Marine? He’s pictured in Helmand province, Afghanistan’s most dangerous region during the last years of the war’s major campaigns. He drove the truck behind him while accompanying Special Forces’ operations. Before that he served in Iraq. That was when he helped dismantle camps near burn pits.
He’s my son, Sam. This weekend he is out in the city celebrating the Marines’ Birthday with his comrades, all of whom would do anything for each other.
We are not a military family. His father remembers the day the Marines’ recruiter drove to our house to pick Sam up for recruit training as one of the most terrible, shocking moments in his life. A hundred miles or so away on a reporting trip, I was alone crying in some motel room. But Sam made it back as intact as one could be—he has hearing difficulties, a bad back from driving over bombed roads, and pretty much has his PTSD under control.
After he returned home, Sam finished a master’s degree in social work, worked for a few years with homeless families, then quit and went to culinary school and started a successful food truck with a fellow Marine until the punishing hours wore both men down. He now counsels Vets in a program that supports them in pursuing a college degree.
By now, my husband and I don’t shudder as much when reminders of his years away (like this weekend) come screaming back into focus. We are, instead, very very proud of him and his accomplishments. One the best turns out to be his inventive cooking skills. You don’t want to be in the same kitchen with him, though, especially if he takes charge of holiday dinners. Between culinary school and his Marine’s training, Sam can be very demanding, bordering on intolerant, about subpar techniques, such as his mother’s mincing skills. Love and admiration, motherly forbearance and survival instincts, result in him being the only person on the planet I will relinquish my kitchen to.
The flip side is that I’m now able to put my feet up in the living room with an extra glass of holiday wine. Life is so blessed when it is comprised of listening to your child sing and grumble in the kitchen, when we are all able to be together for a family dinner.
Who Knew He Read Cookbooks! Wonder if he cooked, too?
Of all the books produced since the remote ages by human talents and industry, those only that treat of cooking are, from a moral point of view, above suspicion. The intention of every piece of prose may be discussed and even mistrusted; but the purpose of a cookery book is one and unmistakable. Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of mankind.~ Joseph Conrad, cited in Cook, My Darling Daughter by Mildred O. Knopf, a stellar hostess and cookbook author
The Unexpected Visitor in the Kitchen The husband is not amused.
“Do you have lamb shanks?” I ask the man behinds the meat counter at the Greek market down the street. His accent is thick but I’m pretty sure he want to know how many.
“Two, please.”
He disappears into the meat locker and, upon returning, holds up a plastic bag. “Okay?” he says.
The bag is opaque with frost but its heft seems right for two meaty shanks. And they’re a bargain at $7. Back home, I place the bag on the counter to defrost for dinner.
“Pat!,” my husband shouts from the kitchen a few hours later.
I kind of ignore him. I’ve been staring at a blank white page for a week now and may have just come up with the best opening sentence ever written in the history of all womankind.
He breaks into my room. “What is that?”
POOF!, there goes the best opening sentence ever written in the history of all womankind. “What?”
“Beside the coffee pot.”
“Oh, lamb shanks.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is.”
“It has teeth!”
Oh! for the love of Pete, I mutter, and get up to prove him wrong.
The frost has dewed in the plastic bag and, even from the doorway, I can see what my husband is talking about: large startled black eyes, a long narrow nose ending in a mouth where the tip of a tongue lulls behind buck teeth.
“Oh,” I whisper.
“It has to go!”
“I can’t throw it out….”
“Then get it away from the coffee pot!” (My husband’s voice registers somewhere between a shriek and authoritative, both foreign tones to him.)
The little head gazing out at us represents a prominent food culture edict which demands that meat eaters contemplate the animals they eat. The other element at play here is that I’ve read a lamb’s head—actually a lot of animal and fish heads—is a delicacy. And I’ve never backed away from dishes that nauseate others.
My husband knows what I’m thinking. “No!” And off he goes back to his office.
I pull out cookbooks but don’t find any references that specifically covers lamb head. YouTube, of course, is more helpful but presents a major problem given it’s a two person job and requires a hack saw, chisel, hammer, and meat cleaver. I have the tools, but not another person (unless I call my son, Sam).
I contemplate the head. It contemplates me. We return together to the Greek market when the owner laughs a little when I explain the situation. He understands but says they don’t have lamb shanks at the moment. Instead, he tells the man behind the meat counter to bring out a couple of lamb chops.
There’s an unspoken understanding between my husband and I that we’re not at all certain we’ll ever want lamb again.
And now….an announcement!
The Saturday News Digest will now become a monthly. I have to get back to a long manuscript that’s sitting on the corner of my desk annoying me. You’ll now find the Digest in your mailbox every third week in the month. ~ Pat