Bologna was the subject of familial intrigue. Image courtesy of Flickr user MomPop

For this month’s Inviting Writing, we asked for stories about food and reconciliation—reconciliation with a food or a loved one, or even a food-related failure of reconciliation. Today’s story comes from Kelly Robinson, a freelance writer for Mental Floss, Curve and other magazines, and the author of an earlier Inviting Writing essay about addiction to Tab. She blogs about books and writing at Book Dirt, and can tell you without equivocation that she didn’t do it.

The Case of the Criminal Lunch Meat

By Kelly Robinson

I read nostalgic food memoirs with a skeptical eye, especially the ones that are sweet as cotton candy unicorns. They’re true, I suppose, but the Norman Rockwell-esque scenes just don’t jibe with some of the most memorable moments at table with my family.

Sure, we had our share of dinnertime jollies—my toddler sister eating mountains of chicken livers because she was told they were chocolate cake, for example—but they’re so easily eclipsed by images of things like my Aunt Nancy in a white nightgown, covered from top to bottom with blood-red beet juice. I’ve never seen Carrie in its entirety. I don’t need to.

There’s also my other sister, who spilled her drink at something like 3,057 consecutive dinners, giving our mother fits that left no tooth ungnashed. Our mother seethed just as much when we had guests one night and the lid to the butter dish was removed to reveal the Twisted Sister logo my metalhead brother had carved there.

And then there was the incident of the gritloaf, which I’ve promised my mother never to speak of again.

The real family drama, though, the one that surpasses even metal bands in the butter or horror movie nightgowns, involves a single slice of bologna. It was 1979. My sister, brother and I were anticipating our mother’s arrival home, and for once, we scrambled to make sure things were in order: no plastic bags tied to the cat, no stray Weebles on the floor. We were neatly lined up on the couch, wondering what stunt Yogi Kudu would pull next on “That’s Incredible!”

Mom walked in, surveyed the room slowly, then stopped suddenly and screeched: Who put the bologna on the wall?!

And there was, indeed, a single slice of bologna, red plastic ring outlining its shiny meat circle, adhered to the wall, slightly above and to the right of the television set. The denials came in rapid fire, and once the interrogation was well underway it was clear that none of us seemed to have done it. None of us admitted it, anyway.

I don’t recall the actual punishment. I may have blocked some it out of my mind, but I know it was severe. I’m sure we were grounded for life plus twenty years and cut off of Little Debbie snack cakes. We probably didn’t get to watch “That’s Incredible!” that night, either.

The bologna game of whodunit still rages today, and it rages hard. We’re now entering our fourth decade of pointing fingers and making accusations. You’d think someone would be mature enough to cop to it, but no one has ever cracked, and whoever it was, the other two of us didn’t witness the deed.

The feud still rages, yes, but the more time passes, the more the feud bonds us rather than divides us. We’re parents of children who have moved out of state or joined the Army. We work in very different fields. We sometimes go months without seeing or talking to each other. But, come holiday time, when we’re all in one room for what might be the only time until next year, there is no conversation so awkward or silence so deep that it can’t be completely turned around with the question, “So who really put the bologna on the wall?”

I fume. I didn’t even like the smell of bologna, I insist. My sister points the finger at my brother, who is my prime suspect this year. He thinks it was me, and that my dislike of lunch meat smell is a lifelong cover story.

It might seem odd by some family’s standards, but it’s how we communicate, and there’s comfort in knowing that’s how we always will.

I’ve always wondered if a deathbed confession might be what it would take to ultimately solve the mystery, but it hardly matters. In fact, it’s far more likely that one of us would slowly wheeze and cough out last words from the hospital bed and say, “I-i-i-i-i-t wasn’t m-e-e-e-e-e-e-e.”

The only proper response from the rest of us would be, “We love you too.”

A wild boar doing some damage. Image courtesy of Flickr user minicooper93402

For this month’s Inviting Writing series, we asked for stories about food and independence: your decisions about what, how or where you eat; the first meal you cooked; or about how you eat to the beat of a different drummer. Debra Kelly and her husband have taken food independence to an extreme: They have lived on 23 remote acres in California since 1978, experimenting with solar energy and eating organic, home-grown food. And sometimes fighting for it.

Confronting a Nemesis

By Debra Kelly

I live on a remote mountaintop. A four-wheel-drive kind of place. Living here requires independent thinking and action. In this place are deep canyons and heavy forests of redwood, oak, pine and madrone, crisscrossed with old logging trails and overgrown with brush. Our homestead is a solitary retreat. It is modest and handmade. We travel along eight miles of pitted, potholed and curvy dirt road—like a stream bed in some parts—until we reach pavement. In this setting, independent people and food grow and thrive.

Living far from a town makes you self-reliant. We planted a garden and fruit trees to supplement our diet. We were well on our way to a nice harvest of veggies, and our fruit trees were still young and fragile, when we noticed ominous signs on the ground. A presence pressing in on us. It ravaged and stalked our homestead in the middle of the night. It peeled the limbs off our young fruit trees, like you would peel a banana. It tore a path of destruction through our place like a rototiller without a driver. It was wily and fast afoot. It has tusks it could use if it were challenged. Although this independent food is prized by famous chefs around the globe, it was my nemesis. It was the wild pig.

Wild pigs began roaming the mountains in increasing numbers. One pair was so bold that they dared saunter up on our deck at night! Our St. Bernard lay silent as a lamb as they approached him. I heard a noise and looked out the window to see one pig at his head and one pig at his tail. He was afraid. I stoically said to my husband, “the pigs gotta go.”

We hatched a plan. We knew their habits. The problem was that their hearing was so acute. They could hear our footfalls inside the cabin, which would send them running into the darkness and safety of the woods. How then would we be able to shoot them? They would hear us get out of bed, climb down the ladder from the loft, get the gun and open the door. SIMPLE. We decided to shoot them without leaving our bed!

Yes, it was a master plan by masterminds….

Our bed was a mattress on the floor of a loft. It faced a picture window flanked by two smaller opening windows. We would leave one window open, just to slide the barrel of the gun out of it, as we lay on our bellies, ever watchful. My role would be to hold a powerful flashlight and turn it on the pigs below. My husband would finish them off. We’d have a luau and a boatload of meat for a season! We pledged to stay awake. It would be a piece of cake.

Midnight passed—no pigs. One in the morning passed—no pigs. I yawned and said, “this will be the only night they fail to come.” More time passed and we fall fast asleep. Then it happened. I awoke abruptly to the sound of a snort and a rustling below. I carefully, gently, shook my husband awake. He rolled into position and gave me the signal to turn on the flashlight. So I did. All hell broke loose, in an instant. Instead of the light piercing the darkness below, it bounced off the picture window glass, reflecting back at us, our own image. In a split second, my husband let loose both barrels, out of the window to the ground below. A short squeal resulted and they thundered off into the forest. At that moment, with the sound of the blast reverberating off the walls and ceiling of our small cabin, my heart pounded like a Ginger Baker drum solo. We looked outside to find no blood, and no pigs anywhere. Our master plan thwarted. We missed. The food got away!

Thirty cents could get the author an assortment of candy, including Boston Baked Beans. Courtesy of Flickr user daveparker.

For this month’s Inviting Writing series, we asked for stories about food and independence: your decisions about what, how or where you eat; the first meal you cooked—or ordered in—after moving out of the house; or about how you eat to the beat of a different drummer.

Our first story is about the thrill of illicit food. Nikki Gardner is a writer and photographer who lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. She blogs about art, food and stories at Art and Lemons.

A Mission for Candy

By Nikki Gardner

After years 7 years of living under my mother’s strict sugar-free household rules, I couldn’t take it anymore. It wouldn’t be far off to say that I kind of freaked out. My mission, which I bestowed upon myself, was to sample as much sugar as my stomach and allowance allowed.

My younger sister and I were allowed an occasional doughnut before a special Sunday church outing, a piece of birthday cake, or ice cream scoop. But there was a red line between candy and me: it was NOT allowed.

I remember clearly the ride home from school that day. I rode up to the stoplight, smiled and waved at the crossing guards, and made it through two crosswalks. Then I stopped. Parked my bike outside the Burger Dairy, which was another mile or so from our new neighborhood. The fluorescent lights flickered inside. One wall was dedicated to butter, bread, cheese, eggs and milk. Staples we often stopped for between trips to the grocery store. This was my first time there alone. The woman behind the cash register sized me up. We both knew I wasn’t in it for the milk that day.

She wore one of those black hairnets and snap-up white jackets like the lunch ladies at school. I was nervous and broke from her stare and busied myself with the business at hand. The coins in my pocket jangled recklessly, ready to be laid out on the counter. In a moment of haste, I pulled out 30 cents or so and quickly did the math. Thirty cents could get me a box of Lemonheads or Boston Baked Beans, a cherry Blow pop, a Fireball, and 2 pieces of Bazooka comic gum.

The cashier popped and cracked the small pink stash of gum in her mouth. She seemed as old as dust to me and she was all business. We were alone in the store and the small bubbles she blew between her coffee-stained teeth echoed in there.

I slid my money toward her. She wore black cat eye glasses. I noticed her eyes go squinty and small, like dots made with a ballpoint pen. I wasn’t sure what she would do. Rough me up a little about spending my college fund or give me some wisecrack about ending up like her one day, which seemed pretty okay to me.

“That it, sweetheart?”

“Um, yeah.”

A few gum cracks later, I walked out of there clutching my candy stash. I went back a number of times and it wasn’t until I developed a few cavities that I came clean, well not totally clean, but eating less candy anyway. So I switched to the fast food burger joint and replaced one restriction with another. But that’s another story.

Nobody can pass up a delicious dessert tray. Image courtesy of Flickr user snarkygurl

For this month’s Inviting Writing series, we expected some horror stories about cafeteria culture. Instead, writers have shared largely positive memories: learning social customs in the United States, creating an open-air lunch spot in Kolkata and today, a civilized taste of socialized shrimp in Luxembourg. Helene Paquin lives in Toronto and blogs about books at the CrackSpineDrinkWine book club. Her twitter handle is @CrackSpineBkClb

Cafeteria Culture? It’s Not All Bad

By Helene Paquin

Business travel can be taxing. The time spent at airports instead of at home with family. The challenges of inventory control as you’re living out of a carry-on for a week. The unfair reality that the Earth rotates around the sun and therefore you will be jet lagged. It’s not all negative, however. Business travel does provide an opportunity to visit places that you wouldn’t likely visit on your own. In my case it was Luxembourg, not exactly on my bucket list of must-see. I’d been asked to attend a week of meetings, and having no real choice in the matter, my answer was, “Oui, I shall go.”

After managing five hours of sleep on the flight, I take a taxi to Luxembourg’s second largest town, Esch. As the taxi pulls up in front of the headquarters I’m struck by the architecture of the building. A giant stack of red plastic building blocks in the shape of a V greets me. In contrast, next door is what appears to be a dilapidated steel plant facing foreclosure. I hand over 75 euros and in my best French I manage to squeak, “Merçi, au revoir” to my driver. I’m determined to use my native language while I’m here despite my Quebecois accent.

The morning meeting goes well and I’m invited to have lunch in the cafeteria. Flashes of high school flood my memory bank: long lines, steel trays steaming with the bland daily special, the refrigerated cases with slide windows to reach a chocolate pudding. Frankly I’m a bit horrified and do not have the best poker face. My peers immediately start explaining: The district is being developed and has no restaurants in the immediate area for dining. The office has planned for this and a subsidized cafeteria has been built for the employees. Apparently it’s the law for companies to do this. I fake a smile and we head to the second floor.

The elevator opens and I’m greeted with a display table featuring the season’s offerings. Giant white asparagus tied with string on a silver platter lie below vases filled with spectacular flower arrangements. A rectangular blackboard lists today’s menu choices written in white chalk. Employees pour in and say hello to each other as they swipe their employee cards. I ask about the cards thinking I may need one to order my lunch. I’m informed that employees swipe their card to prove that they have taken a lunch break. If an employee doesn’t swipe, his or her manager receives an email indicating the staff might be overworked. Again this is the law. The labor codes want to ensure health and wellness by encouraging breaks, eating meals and socializing. In my office we eat lunch at our desks while answering phones and typing emails.

There are five lines divided by meal types: grill, pasta, pizza, daily special and salad. I head to the shortest and quickly the chef asks what I would like. On my first day of travel I keep it simple: pasta with tomato sauce. “Voulez-vous des langoustines?” I grin widely. Why, yes, I would like subsidized shrimp on my pasta. He makes the sauce from scratch in a saucepan right in front of me. No bastions of steel trays filled with food that’s been sitting there for 3 hours. Everything is fresh. I look over at the others and it’s the same everywhere. The pizzas are made to order, so are the salads. This is unlike any cafeteria I’ve ever seen. Everyone looks happy, standing in line, talking to each other.

I’m handed my dish and head over to the fridges. There’s wine and beer! How civilized! I’d love to grab a red wine but my North American employment policy says not to. I make a mental note that I need to see about getting a transfer when I get back. The desserts are works of art. The shelves reveal crème caramels with slivers of chocolate on top, chocolate éclairs with fresh custard and what looks like a lemon cake. Want a coffee with that? Enter some coins in the espresso maker and a freshly brewed cup magically appears. I see my colleagues and join them at the cashier. She tallies my order: three euros. This is the best cafeteria ever! I sit at a table and stare at the trays filled with treasures from the kitchen. I’m overwhelmed and realize how grateful I am to be here among people who care so much about food and quality of life. I raise my water glass, “Bon appétit everyone!”

Fish curry, image courtesy of Flickr user prasad.om

For this month’s Inviting Writing, we asked for stories about cafeteria culture: the sights, smells, rituals and survival tactics of shared mealtime. This week’s entry takes us a long way from American middle schools. Somali Roy, a freelance writer living in Singapore who last wrote for Food & Think about her mother-in-law’s kitchen, takes us to lunch in Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta).

A Wildlife Cafeteria

By Somali Roy

As I squint to proofread the fine lines of advertising copy on my computer screen, a message box pops up: “Lunch?” I look through the glass wall at Jatish, who gives me the perfunctory nod and ambles towards the cafeteria with his stainless steel lunchbox. I scoot off to catch up.

On our way, we grab Seema, our third lunch-mate, and settle down at our standard spot. When the lunch boxes open and the captive smells of mixed spices and herbs waft through the air, bellies grumble and roar here and there. People waiting to buy lunch shift their gaze sheepishly.

The food in our lunch boxes differentiated us, in a way nothing else did. Jatish, being Gujrati, mostly brought thepla, a spicy, whole wheat flatbread accompanied by some chutney. Seema, a Punjabi, had split peas or kidney beans in red curry sauce with paratha. And I, a Bengali plus a sloth, did not bring any regional specialties to the table except some drab looking sandwiches. When Anoop Nair, a strict vegetarian Brahmin from Kerala, cared to join us, we formed a mini India around the table.

This was the routine for the two years I worked in a newly built four-story multiplex in Kolkata. Designed by one of the most prominent architects of the country, this swanky building with its transparent glass façade, English speaking service staff, plush movie theaters and other modern trappings, was surely bulldozing a good number of old and rusty single-screens but was seen as a welcome change by the city’s young, educated, bourgeois crowd that represented the modern and developing Kolkata, a crowded metropolis in east India.

All was good except that the building lacked a cafeteria for its employees. While moviegoers happily stuffed their faces with popcorn, soft drinks and other goodies, we employees had to fend for ourselves. Much to my dislike, I began carrying lunch to office, which was packed by our maid, who was not exactly known for her cooking skills.  I joined the petition for a cafeteria soon after examining my lunch box one day: a burned sandwich that had gone soggy from mushy fruits on the side.

Our plea was sanctioned, but until the cafeteria was built in line with the design and decor of the rest of the building, a makeshift arrangement took shape on the terrace. Four poles were lodged at the four corners, and a musty, threadbare cloth was mounted as a cover. A much-needed coffee machine appeared, a dozen white plastic chairs and tables hop-scotched across the floor and a temporary cooking area was set up at the far end with necessary accoutrements.

As most employees were local, the lunch menu was typically Bengali, with little or no variation to the permanent rice, lentils and spicy fish curry, much to the disappointment of others. Though a purebred Bengali, I too denounced the menu—rice makes me soporific, especially in the afternoons, and fish isn’t a favorite. Looking at the bright side, I am glad I escaped being mocked as “Fishy Bong,” as the fish-eating Bengalis were dubbed.

If I had to advertise this facility, I would have touted it as “lunching amid nature and wildlife.” Crows, sparrows and cats that pecked at leftovers or begged for food often greeted us with their cawing and purring. When the cloth ceiling leaked at places during monsoons, we huddled together around dry spots. On scorching summer afternoons we gobbled everything in seconds and rushed into air-conditioning, and dust storms made us take shelter behind a semi-constructed brick wall.

Yet we came, every single day, climbing two flights of stairs, crossing over half a dozen pipes and passing by loud and trembling generators to have our lunch, talk about our day, complain about the system, lament over the workload, gossip about the latest love affairs. This transient, tent-like cafeteria was tacky, morbid, far from the real deal but we went there because it added color to our plain vanilla workdays.

The daunting school cafeteria. Courtesy of Flickr user ericnvntr

For this month’s Inviting Writing series, we asked you for personal stories about cafeteria culture: the sights, smells, rituals and survival tactics of shared mealtime. Our first essay comes from Katherine Krein of Sterling, Virginia, who works in a middle school in the special education department, helping students in math and science classes. She charts the skills one learns to master over time as the cafeteria poses new and more elaborate challenges.

Learning Cafeteria Culture, Grade by Grade

By Katherine Krein

School cafeterias from my youth are first remembered by their artifacts. I can visualize several things: the hard and heavy rectangular trays, the substantial metal silverware, the breakable plates filled with food, the little milk cartons, and the thin plastic straws. Lunch was paid for with change in our pockets or purses. Learning how to carry the heavy tray in order to balance the plate of food, silverware, and milk was a proud accomplishment for me as a young girl.

Social navigation was the next thing that had to be learned. You had to make friends and form a pact that you would sit together day after day. This could be hard at first if you were the new kid in town. My family moved about every two years throughout my elementary schooling, so I had to be brave and friendly. Trying to fit in would sometimes put me in a morally uncomfortable position. I have a recollection of making friends with a group of girls whose leader was a little mean. I remember one day she put potato chips in the seat of an overweight girl. When the girl sat down and flattened the chips everyone, including me, giggled. This memory still haunts me and fills me with shame.

By junior high school everything became smoother. I had grown, and carrying the full heavy tray became easy. My father’s job no longer required us to move, and we settled into our social surroundings. Knowing where to sit in the cafeteria became routine, and it no longer filled me with uncertainty. But social faux pas were still rather common. I remember sitting across the table from my friend Lisa when somehow milk came shooting out from my straw and ended up in Lisa’s face and hair. I’m not sure how this all transpired, but I am sure that I must have been doing something unladylike. Lisa did not speak to me for the rest of the day, and later in the week she got revenge by flinging peas in my hair and face. We remained friends through it all.

In high school, manners and appearances became more important as I began to view boys in a new way, and I began to notice them noticing me in a different way. Keith was a boy my age who I thought was very cute, and we were sitting across the table from one another. He was playing with his ketchup packet as we talked and flirted, and in an instant the packet burst. Ketchup squirted in my hair and on my face. Shock and surprise turned into laughter. What else could I do? We did end up dating for a while until my interest moved on.

I can barely remember specific foods from my K-12 cafeteria days. In California I loved the cafeteria burritos. Fish was frequently served on Fridays. Pizza is remembered from high school because my sister, two years older than me, could count on me to give her half of mine. Last but not least are memories of the mouth-watering, gooey, sugary and aromatic cinnamon buns. Eating them was such a sensory and sensuous experience.

I have a theory about why I don’t remember more about the food. As a student my brain was bombarded with numerous new and nervous social situations, and I was busy trying to analyze and remember new and complex ideas. Eating was a response to being in the cafeteria, and my primary consciousness was busy with socialization and academic learning. Eating did not require much of my thought.

Will Leslie's kitchen forgive her for reckless abandonment? Image courtesy of Flickr user Wine Me Up

The final installment of our “what’s your relationship with your kitchen” Inviting Writing series takes seriously the “relationship” part of the prompt. Can this relationship be saved?

Leslie Waugh is a copy editor at the Washington Post and a yoga teacher. She lives in Falls Church, Virginia, she writes, “with my husband, who is a big fan of food TV shows, and two cats, who, like me, are more fond of eating than cooking.”

A Letter to the Kitchen

By Leslie Waugh

Dear Kitchen,

I’m sorry we haven’t been getting along lately. We’ve grown apart, I know. But it’s me, really, not you. I’ve become too busy for you, too distracted with other things that are feeding me in different ways. I’ve been cheating on you with easy catches like the Whole Foods buffet. You might think that would be healthy, but I have brought home some unsavory characters. And so many things in the pantry have grown stale, stuffing up the space way past their sell-by dates. My guilt is bottomless, and I am heavy with shame. I know you require more than I have been able to give, so I wouldn’t blame you for abandoning me. Yet you are still there. Unchanging. Stoic. Practically goading me.

To say that I miss you would be a bit of a lie, because our relationship has always been fraught and one-sided. You’ve kept me at a distance, like a chemistry lab whose experiments I will never understand. You haven’t made it easy to understand you, and I feel as if I’ve had to do all the work. I have forced my ineptitude on you, humiliating myself (hello, 4-H contests) in trying to create magic with tools whose power I do not understand. You have not responded to my pleas to cooperate; you won’t yield the secrets of baking or help me figure out when to dig in and redouble my efforts or back off and save a dish from ruination. Perhaps I ask too much. Perhaps it is I who must change.

My impatience has not helped, I admit. And I am fickle. Once I extract a certain dish from you, I’m instantly bored with it. I’m even bored by the time it’s ready to eat, because it’s no longer a surprise. I know what it’s going to taste like, because I’ve smelled and seen its innards the whole way along. But instead of looking for a new thrill, I give in to my laziness and inertia. And, let’s face it, here’s the rub: You are the keeper of a very double-edged substance, food. You are the storehouse of life-sustaining staples but also of those that have become diet-demonized—anything white, for example—and you yourself are fickle about holding on to anything healthy. The clock is always ticking on fresh produce, meat and anything from a cow. The pressure to use these items on deadline becomes too much. But in deserting you, I’ve hurt myself more than you.

Can we make up? Will you take me back? I can change, but it will take time. And I might stray now and then in attempts to find longer-lasting footing with you. Let’s face it, you hardly notice my absence anyway, but for the lonely utensils, pots and pans, and the dust in the countertop corners. A hearth unstoked cannot survive, I know. And a death from neglect, even benign neglect, is still a death.

Can we look at each other with fresh eyes? I’ll try not to ask too much. I’ll try to respect your boundaries if you honor my limitations. After all, relationships thrive on compromise.

Leslie

Do you know the five spices that go into fish curry? Image courtesy of Flick user spo0nman

Relationships can be complicated, sure. But relationships with kitchens? It turns out people have very intense affection, respect and even fear for these rooms. For this month’s Inviting Writing, we’ve read about dorm kitchens, tiny kitchens and kitchen boundary issues, and now Somali Roy tells us about intimidating kitchens. She is a freelance writer based in Singapore.

Making Friends With the Kitchen

By Somali Roy

For a very long time, the kitchen to me was a room where magic happened day and night. I grew up watching my mother, grandmother, aunts and cooks flurry into that tiny space, armed with innocent and naive looking vegetables, meat and fish, and after much chopping, stirring, frying and steaming, transform them into incredibly scented and deliciously attractive concoctions.

I was amazed and forever in awe. I loved food in whatever form or shape, and the humble kitchen delivered it every time. That’s all it was between the kitchen and me, until my folks thought it was time I started thinking about marriage and therefore take the kitchen more seriously. Seriously? Why?

Well, here’s why. In India, prowess in the kitchen has always been considered the most important facet of a woman’s repertoire, and it takes on ultimate importance when your daughter reaches marriageable age. To the prospective mother-in-law, it matters less if you are a rocket scientist or a school dropout. But answers to certain questions—Does she know the five spices that go into making fish curry? Can she made perfectly round, 12-centimeter-diameter chappatis (Indian flatbread)?—can make or break nuptial ties.

Such questions haunt the minds of Indian mothers who have bred their sons on a diet of spicy and unctuous home-cooked meals (repositories of fat and cholesterol, but that’s another story) and shudder at the thought of handing them over to cooking novices.

I wasn’t a shining beacon of hope. I needed assistance to even boil water in the kitchen, and that is after I learned how to turn the gas on. I was well fed, initially by my mother and later by the numerous take-outs around college. “So why do I need to get in the kitchen and move pans and pots, again?” I asked with gay insouciance.

Just when my distraught mother was losing all hope of getting me married, I found the right guy. Since he never mentioned how good a cook his mother was, I married him without a hitch.

It was customary to visit in-laws after marriage and that was when hell broke loose. For the first few days I deviously avoided the kitchen and watched my mother-in-law conjure up dishes and savories faster than a magician. Panic hit me when I saw my husband lapping up every drop of gravy on the plate with utmost pleasure under his mother’s caring gaze. What could I ever feed this man? I mentally cursed whoever said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I needed to keep him alive first—and to do that, I needed to make friends with the kitchen.

So on the fourth day of my stay, I wandered into the war zone and confessed that I was a novice and needed training. That was five years and countless burned, under-seasoned and over-cooked dishes ago. My love for food, the gift of a good palate and an extremely forbearing mother-in-law helped me reach where I am now. Not only did I keep my husband alive, I now spend countless happy hours in my kitchen, cooking away.

An old kitchen can still have its charms. Courtesy of Flickr user ga3lle

For this month’s Inviting Writing, we asked you to share a story about your kitchen. So far we’ve read about dorm kitchens and the importance of kitchen boundaries. Today’s entry, like last week’s, is a reminder that great food can come from lousy kitchens.

Sarah Wortman lives in Seattle and is the Executive Director of Marketing for NAC|Architecture. She blogs at MidEast Meets Midwest and is currently taking a cheesemaking course.

Our Semi-Satisfactory Linoleum Playground

By Sarah Wortman

My husband and I relocated halfway across the country a while back and, once again, we found a fabulous place with a lousy kitchen. It’s stunning to me that two gastronomically obsessed, “the-only-time-I’m-not-thinking-about-food-is when-I’m-under-anesthesia” people like us keep finding places to live with small, inadequately appointed rooms for food prep.  This one, at least, has a window.

My current kitchen is an antiquated 6-foot-by-8-foot pass-through. The 1940s hand-built cabinets squeak every time you shut them, and the porcelain sink needs reglazing. It sports about four linear feet of beige laminated counter space, a backsplash made of cracking porcelain tile and a floor of dingy, yellow, peeling linoleum tile. Recently a floor board in front of the sink has begun to squeak every time we step on it. We have repurposed a coat closet in the front hall into a pantry and much of our cookware sits on the floor in the dining room. And yet, the most tantalizing, magical, restorative things happen in that bizarre little room.

This closet-sized space is a virtual meditation center for me on Saturday mornings. While my husband slumbers I put on a pot of tea, then pour yeast and honey into warm water in the bowl of my stand mixer.  Over the next half hour or so flour dances in the air like fairy dust as I work out a work week’s worth of frustration on a lump of dough, with nothing but the occasional sound of the Food Network in the background. At these times that dumpy little room is my own slice of serenity.

My husband is one of those mad chemists of the culinary world who fling ingredients around with reckless abandon.  He will spend a few hours and use almost every pot in the house concocting the most magical meals. After we enjoy them I will spend a half hour swiping the back ends of vegetables into dust pans and sponging spices and olive oil off of every flat surface, vertical and horizontal. The way he cooks, trust me, it’s worth it. I can’t think of a place on earth that he seems more completely himself than in our kitchen.

Once a year we fly to my sister’s house to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her family. She has one of those amazing gourmet kitchens that I often find in the homes of people who hate to cook. The island alone has more square footage than my entire kitchen and she has two, count them two, ovens. We love this annual ritual of spreading out and spending several days cooking a feast for a dozen or more people. Yet, for all the gourmet appointments her kitchen offers, I’m always happy to return to mine.

Making pigs in a blanket was a "true test of patience and stealth" for the author. Courtesy of Flickr user prizepony.

For this month’s writing invitational, we asked you to tell us about your relationship with your kitchen. We got some terrific essays that we’ll post on the next several Mondays. First off is Ashlee Clark’s reminder that, no matter how small or inconvenient or outdated your current kitchen is, chances are you had it worse in college.

Clark is a freelancer writer and editor in Louisville, Kentucky. She writes about local food and frugal eating at her website, Ashlee Eats.

Dorm Food

By Ashlee Clark

I traveled through a medley of kitchens befitting of the life of a young adult during my college years. Dormitory kitchens were the worst.

These kitchens were dark and abandoned rooms at the end of the hall outfitted with a stove, sink and little else. The rooms always smelled of stale pizza and popcorn from other students’ half-hearted cooking endeavors.

In the three dorms I lived in during my time as an underclassman, there was usually just one kitchen on each floor. I had the misfortune of always being on the opposite end of the hallway from aforementioned cooking spaces. Every time I got an itch to eat something that required more prep than tuna salad, I would have to gather my meager collection of utensils in a plastic grocery bag, go to the kitchen, make my dish, then take it all back. God forbid you leave your cooking tools in a communal kitchen. It would take only five minutes of your absence for your cookware to end up in the trash or in someone else’s grocery bag.

Making pigs in a blanket, a comfort food that nourished me through many Western Civilization study sessions, was a true test of patience and stealth. I never realized how much it took to make this tasty treat until I had to carry it down a long, The Shining-esque hallway. There was the tube of crescent rolls, the package of hot dogs, the cheese slices. The Pam, the baking sheet, the oven mitts. The knife, the spatula, the plate.

I would spread my supplies across the Formica countertop and assemble my meal by the dim light above the oven. But slicing and stuffing a hot dog with cheese and rolling the creation in dough was simple compared to getting my meal back to my room with the original number of pigs in a blanket in hand.

The scent of processed meat quickly slid under the doors of my neighbors as my meal baked. Hallmates to whom I had never spoken would slide down to the kitchen and create some idle chitchat before finally asking me to share. My hungry belly wanted to yell out, “Make your own, buddy,” but my Southern manners always made me oblige their request.

So to avoid sharing my bounty, I had to cook with ninja-like stealth. As soon as I slipped my baking sheet into the oven, I began covering my tracks. I threw away plastic cheese wrappers. I vigorously washed my utensils. I gathered everything I could back into my grocery bag and waited for the dough to turn a golden brown and the cheese to start dripping down the sides of the meat. At the first sign that my meal was complete, I took the tray in one oven-mitt-covered hand and the grocery bag in the other. I peeked my head out the door and sprinted down the hallway before someone discovered my culinary delight. This task was made difficult by the clanging of the utensils against my aerosol can of cooking spray, but I never stopped. If someone stepped out of their room, I gave them a simple nod without slowing my pace.

I repeated this process a few times each month for much of my college career. All that sneaking around taught me how to cook in an inadequate kitchen under extreme pressure. And I still have a soft spot for pigs in a blanket.

Visitors and artists interact under the guadua (bamboo) tents in the Colombia program area. Photo by Francisco Guerra/Smithsonian Institution

A woman named Yolanda, who lives in Retiro, Colombia, a small town outside of Medellín, runs a roadside restaurant called “Mi Jardín,” or “My Garden,” that caters to local workers, tourists and anybody else who happens to be passing by. She learned what she knows from her mother and has been cooking for more than 30 years.

Yesterday, Yolanda was standing on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., teaching Americans how to make frijoles.

Colombia is one of three featured themes at this year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival (the others are the Peace Corps and rhythm and blues music), and volunteers are offering cooking demonstrations every day from 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (See our Around the Mall blog for full coverage of the festival and daily schedules.) I headed out in the blazing hot July sun yesterday to learn a little bit about traditional Colombian cuisine.

Frijoles, or red beans, are one of the most common foods in Colombia, and especially Antioquia, the department (the Colombian equivalent of a U.S. state) where Yolanda lives, in the coffee-growing region in the northwest of the country. People from this area eat frijoles nearly every day, she said, either blended into a soup, as a side dish, or as part of a larger main dish.

Antioquia used to be populated mainly by laborers who spent their days in the fields. They needed something cheap, filling and full of energy and protein to keep them going throughout the day. Hence, frijoles.

Today, there are endless variations on the dish, and each family has its own distinctive frijoles recipe. Yolanda’s mother made them with carrots and potatoes, so that’s what she does, too. Other ingredients include yucca and plantains, and most variations contain an adobo-like mixture composed of tomato, onion, garlic, pepper and oil. On a holiday, Yolanda said, she goes through about nine pounds of beans at her restaurant.

Speaking in Spanish, Yolanda also told me a little about other traditional dishes, including bandeja paisa, a large plate filled with a variety of foods, often including frijoles. At her restaurant, Yolanda adds rice, avocado, egg, sausage, salad, plantain and fried pork skin to the plate. Empanadas and arepas, a kind of cornmeal cake, are also popular.

Another traditional option is sancocho, a soup made with varying ingredients, but that Yolanda makes with broth, chicken, yucca and potatoes. It’s typical for Colombian families to make sancocho during a “paseo de olla”—literally, a walk with a pot. A paseo de olla is kind of a like an extended picnic, where a group of family and friends takes everything they need to make sancocho, from a hen to the pot itself, to a river. There, they spend the day swimming, cooking and enjoying one another’s company.

“You go with all your family and all your friends, you’re drinking all day, and at the end of the day you have the sancocho,” Yolanda said. “It’s beautiful.”

I’ll say so.

– written by Julie Mianecki

Cafe Mai's cup of ca phe cut chon. Photo courtesy of Jon Brand

On a recent trip to Hanoi, Vietnam’s coffee-mad capital, a local friend exhorted me to seek out a cup of ca phe cut chon—what she cryptically referred to as “weasel coffee.”

Having happily consumed a variety of Vietnamese java at cafés across the city, including the sublime ca phe sua da, iced espresso blended with sweetened condensed milk, I was looking forward to another great-tasting experience. Then I Googled ca phe cut chon.

Cut chon is Vietnamese for civet cat dung.

The civet cat, not a cat but a relative of the mongoose, is native to Southeast Asia’s jungles. Sometime after French colonists introduced robusta coffee to Vietnam in the mid-19th century, coffee growers found that beans eaten and excreted by wild civets produced a richer, more mellow drink than those simply harvested from the fields. (The practice began, supposedly, when European colonists wouldn’t share coffee beans with natives, who wanted to try the drink and resourcefully picked the beans out of civet dung.)

Many coffee producers use captive civets today, but the process remains the same. Civets are fed robusta coffee cherries, the coffee plant’s fruit. The civet’s digestive enzymes partially ferment the fruit’s stones—coffee beans—and strip much of their harsh flavors. (Bitter-tasting robusta, arabica’s cheaper, faster-growing cousin, is ubiquitous in Vietnam. Which is why sweetened condensed milk is a constant companion to Vietnamese black coffee.) After a thorough washing, the “dung” beans are roasted and ready for brewing.

All of this sounded a bit unpleasant, but a friend and I mustered up the courage to taste ca phe cut chon one sweltering afternoon at Café Mai, a Hanoi institution famous for its version of the drink. Sitting on a balcony overlooking a motorbike-filled street, we ordered two coffees. Small white cups topped with piping hot metal drip coffee filters arrived at the table. When the coffee was ready, we removed the filters, examined the dark brew and took a sip.

I braced myself for pungent, earthy flavors. Instead, the coffee was smooth and rich, all salty caramel and bittersweet chocolate. The sharp bite that I had come to associate with Vietnamese coffee was nonexistent. “It tastes like 99% cacao,” my friend said excitedly.

We lingered over the drinks for a while and then called for the bill—at 55,000 Vietnamese dong, or $2.70, it was more expensive than a typical Hanoi cup, but well worth the difference in flavor.

Only later did I realize that we’d grossly underpaid. It turns out that certified civet-fermented coffee, which is also produced in Indonesia and the Philippines, can sell for up to $600 per pound. At a London department store recently, a single cup cost £50, or $80.

So how does Café Mai keep the price down? They’ve cut civets out of the production process. Using artificial fermenting methods, Café Mai, along with other Vietnamese roasters like Trung Nguyen, have brought the flavor of ca phe cut chon to the masses.

Whether the traditionally fermented coffee truly tastes different, I obviously can’t say. But if you have $600 burning a hole in your wallet, order some and let Food & Think know.

—By Jon Brand, a writer based in Austin, Texas. You can read more of his work at www.jonbrandwrites.com.

A delicious tray of chocolate. Photo courtesy of Victoria Neff

A Long Recovery From Chocolate

By Victoria Neff

When I was five, someone took me, my friend, and his little brother down the street for ice cream.  I remember we sat up high, on counter-side stools, and I remember all three of us chose chocolate.

That was the last time I ever wanted chocolate ice cream. All three of us (and our mothers) were up all that night, while our bodies did everything they could to get rid of whatever contaminant was in that ice cream. For years after that, even the thought of chocolate ice cream would turn my stomach. My little-kid brain put hot chocolate in the same category, and I couldn’t stand it, either.

Eventually disgust reduced to indifference.  The time came when I could eat chocolate ice cream, or drink hot chocolate, but I never enjoyed them.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010, when I had the chance to spend three weeks in France with my daughter, exploring different regions and cuisines. We started in Bayonne, the capital of France’s Basque country.  Bayonne is known for ham, Espelette peppers and chocolate.

One lovely morning (all our days in Bayonne were lovely), we strolled over the bridge spanning the river Adour, to the old part of town. The narrow, cobbled street leading to the cathedral is lined with bakeries, boutiques and chocolate shops. Cazenave is known as one of the very best places for chocolate. In addition to dozens of varieties of fancy chocolates, its attractions include a hot-chocolate and tea room. The tea room is a charming place, with white wooden chairs, lace, brown-sugar cubes, tiny napkins, cute china and historical information in four languages. It has been serving hand-whipped hot chocolate for over 100 years.

I ordered tea. My daughter ordered the hand-whipped chocolate. The tea was fine. The hot chocolate was much better than “fine.” Here, at last, was the hot chocolate that was able to overcome my aversion. Here was hot chocolate that was delicious. Chocolatey. Bitter. Rich. Complex. Creamy.

Delicious.

We delighted in a large variety of wonderful foods in France. It’s hardly a surprise that it was there that I recovered an ability to connect with chocolate. I didn’t miss hot chocolate, and I haven’t missed chocolate ice cream all these years, but as I write, I wonder if French chocolate ice cream may be as delicious as French hot chocolate. Perhaps, next time I am there, I will eat ice cream, and will be glad I chose chocolate.

What is "Cancun Style," exactly? Image courtesy of Flickr user dental Ben

For this month’s Inviting Writing, we asked you to share your favorite stories about dining out—your funniest, strangest, most memorable experiences, from the perspective of either the server or the served. Here are three of our favorite short items.

Assault With Menu

I was driving my mother and her friend from Florida to their home in Michigan. We picked up my sister in North Carolina and stopped for lunch. The four of us were taking our time going over the menu when my mother’s friend asked those at the table about grits because she had never had them. The waitress, who was not standing there waiting for our order, somehow overheard me when I quietly replied, “I don’t care for grits, they taste like wallpaper paste!” Suddenly, in a flash, the waitress flew up from behind, gave me one good smack on the side of the head with a laminated tri-fold menu, and said, “Honey, you’re in the South, everybody here loves grits!” I was pretty much dumbfounded! (By the way, it actually hurt and left the side of my face red!) After the initial shock, everyone in our group (except myself) politely laughed, then we ordered our meal. Later, back on the road, my sister made an excuse for the waitress (adding insult to injury) saying that the waitress probably recognized her from previous visits, which must have given her the inclination and liberty to land me a good one! Really?!

—By Judith Burlage, a registered nurse who comes from a huge family of great cooks

Invasion From The Deep

Several years ago I was an executive chef for a major oil company, managing food service on one of their offshore platforms. One night, one of the roughnecks asked my night baker if he could put a loosely covered can in the walk-in refrigerator. Thinking nothing of it, he said, “Yes.”

When I walked upstairs for work the next morning, I was horrified to find the world’s creepiest menagerie of alien-looking sea creatures wandering through my walk-in. Seems the loosly-covered can contained live critters that had been belched up from a pipe that was being cleaned and the roughneck though they would make excellent fishing bait if he could just keep them alive until he left the platform in a couple of days.

—By Rebecca Barocas, through our Food & Think Facebook page.

That’s Cancun Style?

Back in the 70s my hippie art teacher from college and I went to Cancun, long before it became the bustling resort you see today. We got to Cancun on a sketchy wooden boat that had at least 30 people on board. We’d been dining on rice, beans and tortillas all week to try to manage our sparse funds, but we decided to splurge on a real meal for a change and ordered a dish called “Red Snapper Cancun Style.” This was a quaint local establishment and I was looking forward to a nice local treat. We got our meal—and what a plate it was. It was a piece of fish with a half-cooked piece of bacon wrapped around it, skewered into the fish with so many toothpicks that the flavor of wood was imparted to the fish. Topping it were cold canned peas and mushrooms. Not what I expected! (We had a much better meal later that week in Cozumel in a beachfront restaurant that served langostinos sauteed with garlic that was just lightly toasted, and then a little lime juice. Perfect!)

—By Sue Kucklick, a mental health counselor who lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

A restaurant's refrigerator is the perfect place to spend some private time. Courtesy of Flickr user jczart

For this month’s Inviting Writing series, we asked you to share your best, worst or funniest dining-out experiences, from the perspective of either the served or the server. Our first essay reveals just how educational a job in food service can be.

Dana Bate is a writer living in Washington, D.C. She has produced, reported or written for PBS, Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. You can learn more about her at danabate.com.

What About Bob?
By Dana Bate

I should have known there was something odd about Bob from the start. When I met him in the summer of 2003, I was fresh out of college and looking for a part-time waitressing gig. Bob managed a small, upscale restaurant in suburban Philadelphia, and he agreed to meet with me on a hot and muggy June afternoon. I had never interviewed for a position as a waitress before. I didn’t know what to expect.

When I walked into the air-conditioned chill of the restaurant, the room lit only by a sliver of light from the glass block windows, Bob emerged from the back. His skin appeared almost translucent against his thick eyebrows and jet-black hair, and his eyes sunk deep into his skull. He looked a bit like a poor man’s Jonathan Rhys Meyers in vampire form—and I mean that in the worst way possible. Why I didn’t immediately head for the door I will never know.

Bob sat me down, and after chatting for a few minutes about my waitressing credentials (or, rather, my complete lack thereof) he offered me the job. Then he proceeded to extol, in a very animated fashion, the virtues of a macrobiotic diet—as one does when hiring a woman to bus plates and memorize daily specials.

Although I had recently graduated from an Ivy League school and prided myself on my book smarts, I lacked street smarts, and so none of Bob’s quirks raised any red flags. Maybe all restaurant managers dressed in black from head to toe and wore silver and onyx rings the size of Cerignola olives. Maybe all restaurant managers offered prospective employees a copy of An Instance of the Fingerpost. What did I know?

Bob promised to show me the ropes, and as the weeks passed, I picked up tips I surely wouldn’t have gathered on my own. For example, when a couple is on a romantic date, it’s a good idea for the manager to pull a chair up to their table and talk to them for a solid twenty minutes. The couple will love it—or so Bob assured me.

Also, disappearing in the basement to “check on the walk-in” every half hour is totally normal – nay, expected. I had so much to learn.

A month or two into my waitressing stint, a new waitress named Beth joined the team. She had fiery red hair and had waitressed for many years at another restaurant down the street. Beth took grief from no one. To her, my naiveté must have been painful.

One night, as we rushed to flip the tables for our next set of reservations, Beth looked up at me.

“Where the hell is Bob?” she asked.

“He’s checking on the walk-in.” I paused. “He kind of does that a lot.”

Beth chuckled. “Yeah, and I’m sure he comes back with a lot more energy, right?”

Come to think of it, Bob did always come back with a little more lift in his step after his trips to the basement. I knew he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. Maybe it was a nicotine high?

Beth cackled at my ignorance. She tapped on her nose with the tip of her finger and sniffed loudly. “I think we’re dealing with a different chemical here.”

Wait—Bob did cocaine? Could this be true? I considered it. A drug addiction would explain his chattiness with customers and his frequent disappearances. It would also probably explain why I came in one Monday to find that Bob, on a whim, had spent the previous day buffing the copper siding of the bar, alone, just for fun.

As I let this information sink in, Bob emerged from the basement, his lips and nose caked in white powder. My eyes widened. It was true: Bob was doing drugs.

I realized then how naïve I was—how college had broadened my horizons intellectually but had done little to prepare me for the realities of life outside the ivory tower. Sure, I had friends who’d dabbled in illegal substances here and there, but I’d never known an addict. For me, those people existed only in movies and books and after-school specials. But this wasn’t some juicy story in Kitchen Confidential. Bob was real, and so were his problems. I had even more to learn than I thought.

Beth smirked and shook her head as she watched my innocence melt away before her eyes.

“Welcome to the real world, honey,” she said. “It’s one hell of a ride.”