Comfort Me with Apples

I was completely charmed by this photo Chloé took of Claire holding her afternoon snack. She has a new camera and has been experimenting with filters, to great effect. It reminded me of a verse from the Song of Solomon: "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love." It's a long time since I've been lovesick (thank goodness), but I love the elevation of the apple to the upper echelons of Comfort Food.

Again, I was reminded of that verse when I went last Saturday with Karen to meet Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet Magazine. She's touring for her latest book, Not Becoming My Mother. The Book Passage bookstore does a great series called Cooks with Books, where you get to meet the author have a meal based on recipes out of their latest book. I've been to a few of these events -- all wonderful.

Ruth has written several memoirs, one entitled Comfort Me with Apples (second in a loose series, but entirely readable on its own). If you love food stories interspersed with recipes, you'll love her books. Her latest doesn't have recipes, though, so the meal we ate was out of the Boulevard cookbook by Nancy Oakes, who was there with her sleeves rolled up on Saturday. All I can say is, I don't get out too much any more, and it's a crying shame. Comfort me.

Travel Companion

This little green apple was supposed to be my breakfast on the train to Venice, but it made the round trip to Graz uneaten, and then rolled around my bag in Munich, Paris, Vic-sur-Cere, and back to Paris. I lifted it to my mouth on the day I was leaving for San Francisco, and then hesitated. My petite apfel/mela/pomme had made it this far; if I took it home, would it be the most well-traveled apple in the world? I may never know, but now I can't bear to eat it, either.

Of Aliens and Onions

My family says I have no sense of humor, and I want them to know they are seriously wrong. A humorless gal wouldn’t put herself out there for the whole world to see looking like a roast suckling alien (more on the goggles later).

First, you can’t change up to 32,000 diapers in your lifetime and not have the ability to laugh in the face of Der Poopinator. Call it bathroom humor, if you will, but you’ve got to focus on the amusing aspects of the situation when someone pees (with amazing accuracy) all over the shirt you just ironed.

Now, the slapstick routine of picking up the same shirts, hairclips, smelly shoes, wet socks, toys, sippy cups, bits of food, underpants, lip glosses, book bags, text books, magic markers, blankies, fur balls, marbles, Legos, spare parts, curling irons, dishes, and I-don’t-know-whatzits from the same places around the house seven times in the same day – that most certainly requires a funny bone. My feng shui got up and feng shwent a long time ago, but there’s still some sort of harmony in the hilarious.

Then there’s kitchen comedy. Last night for dinner I made what I’ll call Parody Pot Roast. This took seven hours to make, required a special trip to the Spanish food shop for smoked paprika, and tasted like, well… I’d say the dog’s food gets higher marks. Ha ha, ho ho, hee hee, the joke’s on me.

But a little side note on those glasses: they’re called OnionGoggles, and with the dense foam that encloses the eye socket, they guarantee tear-free onion slicing (and I slice a lot of 'em). Plus, they look pretty darn funny, especially with a color-coordinated apple. So you can’t really say I don’t have a flair for the farcical…