Energizer Bunny

It all started on Friday ...

.. when we woke up and faced a landscape ripe with snow. Suddenly, the trees were heavy and budding branches looked like delicate lace carvings. As I told J, it was rather like living inside an Ansel Adams photograph for a day.

It's been a busy week at work, so Friday night J and I fetched some groceries (hot date night!) in preparation for Saturday A.M. because ...

... my mom arrived on the scene, up to visit for the first time since January. The last time she saw me I was about 48 hours out of the hospital, post-pulmonary emboli, so I'm pleased to report that she thought I looked a great deal better. I was even able to show her how I "walk" (and again, I use only the loosest definition of the term here) with my little old-lady walker and Das Boot. Very sexy, no?

We trolled along Saturday afternoon, visited my great-aunt Anna (more on this in a separate, later post) and then met the fab K & D for my first real dinner out at Ristorante Lucano. It was ... magnificent. For those unfamiliar, Lucano is a little Italian restaurant that lives in a tiny strip mall at the corner of East and Winton. From the outside it looks like nothing -- literally, a hole in the wall, perched near a dry cleaner's and a Subway restaurant. But inside? There are three small rooms and perhaps 18-20 tables, total. It's homey, intimate, a little upscale and oh, lord. Real Italian food: SO GOOD. I had this amazing creamy potato garlic soup, followed by osso buco (a house speciality) and then some ice-cold limoncello. And to finish? A piece of the homemade tirimisu. I learned later from the owner that her mother was the one to make the tirimisu, and it showed. Yes, it was gorgeous, but you could see that this dish was not all about the flash and the sauce swirls and the little pretty embellishments placed just so, but was about the FLAVOR: liquor-soaked lady fingers, marscapone, sweet whipped cream, bitter cocoa powder. And knowing some wonderful little Italian grandmother made it, that this was real and wonderful and amazing? Made it all that much more sweet.

We decided the night was young and so, post-dinner, made our way to Barnes and Noble to close the place out and then finally crashed for the night. The next AM we were up bright and early and at it again, this time heading to James Brown's Place for breakfast. In addition to the standard breakfast of eggs and toast (over-medium and Italian, respectively), I also had the JB Porridge. It changed my life in meaningful ways, and I usually don't even like this stuff! But it was thick with cinnamon and granola and nuts and dried fruit, and it came in a lovely little cup with a tiny pitcher of cream, a little dish of brown sugar, and another little dish of nuts and dried fruit. There are no words for how damn good that was, and I strenuously recommend it to anyone and everyone. And also, I plan to go back for more as soon as I can talk J into it.

And then, to finish out my mom's visit, we made one trip to every good Italian's mecca, as it were:

Savoia Pastry Shoppe is just a killer bakery. You can smell the sugar from a block away, and as soon as you enter you are just seduced by the smells and the sights of Italian cookies and breads and pastry, lined up in glass-fronted displays and stacked on wire racks. We scored some St. Joseph's bread (for tomorrow, you know) and a multitude of other yumminess, including my favorite petit fours.

And then we finally staggered home, clutching white paper bakery bags, tummies full to bursting, so Mom could get on her way home and J and I could mainline some Pepto and recover. Vivia la weekend!

Cel-e-brate Good Times -- Come On!

Today is a great day for many reasons, but the one that makes me smile most is that TODAY IS J'S BIRTHDAY!! Yes, that's right: today J turns 41 years old. As his much, much, much younger wife, I want to take this opportunity to wish him a wonderful day and an amazing year-to-come. Baby, I love you. Thank you for being such a wonderful friend and partner in this crazy life of ours. You're the greatest.

Happy Ham Day

We had a lovely Easter ... J's folks came over for the ritual overeating to celebrate the Resurrection. We had the traditional ham, which has always struck me as odd: who decided that eating baked pork would be the appropriate meal to celebrate the greatest miracle of Jesus, a Jew? It seems like a somewhat poor and disrespectful choice. Just sayin'.

ANYwhooo, we baked the pork and the green beans and mashed potatoes and all sorts of other things, and gorged. For the first time back entertaining since MBLF, it went really pretty damned well. Perhaps the most fun thing was the dessert, made by my mother-in-law: a birthday cake for J (coming this Thursday!) which was a lovely yellow cake with cream cheese frosting ... decorated with Peeps. Strange and funny and true.

In any case, to all of you who celebrate: Happy Easter. And love and peace to us all.

Spring Has Sprung (?Question Mark?)

Today is the first day of spring -- huzzah!

However, you'd never know if based on the view outside of my window. The trees are starting to bud, but there is strong, cold wind and snow in the air. On the ride home tonight I saw the very first robin red-breasts of the year ... they sat, almost motionless, eyes wide in my neighbor's front yard. I imagine that they had been elected as lookouts for the the rest of the robins -- advance scouts, if you will. I also imagine that they were wondering what the HELL they were doing back here when it was so obviously still January and also? Where was the spring? The sun? The prancing, leaping fluffy bunnies? Instead of coming back from their winter vacation (The Carolinas? The Keys? Boca? Who can say?) to a warming earth gracefully sprouting greenly back into life, they were standing in mud amidst icy piles of blackened snow and weathering a storm. It had to be a bit of a shock.

If I were a robin on the first day of spring, I have to believe that I would be hella pissed.

Ciao Italia

There's a place in the northern part of town that I love to visit. It's a store, and for me going there is like visiting a cave of wonders.

It's a true old Italian grocery, filled with sights and sounds and smells that take me back to my childhood. Hand-made gnocci and imported penne fill aisle one. The cantucinni cookies my Aunt Rose used to slide me under the kitchen table are in aisle two, next to the 15 varieties of espresso, the ameretti, marinated anchovies, toothpaste tubes of tomato paste and half-gallon jugs of extra virgin olive oil. On aisle three we find an abundance of riches: large tubs of almond paste, creamy toblerone, bulk pignole and ceci beans, jordan almonds, fresh loaves of crusty bread, homemade bread crumbs.

Finally, aisle four. AH, aisle four. Here we encounter the backbones of Italian cuisine: the butcher and the cheesemonger. Sausages stuffed with fennel; deep red meats, rich with creamy veins of marbling; slabs of white, flaky bacala; tins of fresh-made ricotta, whey dripping down the sides; enormous hanging rounds of provelone and parmesean; salumi glistening red and sweet under the florescent lights; prosciutto cut to order by the pound (three types: U.S, Canadian and imported Italian) ... it's all there.

Old men in suit coats, felt hats and black canes resting quietly beside them, sit at little tables, sipping espresso and speaking as much with gesturing hands as with accented voices. Cannoli line up insider display cases, dotted with candied orange rind and rolled in chocolate chips. A tower of bimbi, rich in shining foil wrapping, sit next to the cookies-by-the-pound, awaiting Easter.

And the smells. There really are no words to describe the smell of tens of years of cooking sauce and fresh grated parm and roasting meats and drying herbs and All Things Good. The smell clings to my clothes when I leave, and invariably on the ride home I find myself burying my face in my sleeve to catch one last whiff of heaven.

Once, not long after my grandfather's passing and the sale of the family home, I walked in with my husband. As is my custom I paused just over the threshold to take a deep breath, feeling my muscles relax into the familiarity, and my husband, as is HIS custom, said his ritual phrase: "Smells just like Grandma's house." And it did, the smells of my childhood, the smells of my family, many years past, history soaked into the walls and floor of the house on Holley St. And I knew at that moment that phase of life was over, never to be revisited, and that this moment just inside the grocery store doorway was as close as I would ever get again. And surrounded by the hustle and bustle, standing underneath an old and somewhat faded Italian flag, I took in a deep breath of the past and wept.