CREATION of MY GASTRONOMIC LANDSCAPE
My mother used to say, “Jeralynn, will try anything. She’s my best eater.” My tastes as a child were not too refined. I loved food and tried new foods at most opportunities. My mom, an excellent cook, learned to prepare food with her instincts. She learned to cook from her Hungarian Jewish mother-in-law. But the food was mostly the things my father liked. He was a “meat and potatoes kind of guy”. My mom could make a “mean” Jewish chicken soup; delicious, crunchy potato latkes; and perfectly formed mouthwatering Hungarian stuffed cabbage, to name some of her specialties. l also loved her fried chicken, or anything fried that she made. She had a special secret.
The Jewish American palate is not heavy on vegetables. And in my youth, a lot of vegetables came from cans, which was not particularly appetizing. Protein and carbohydrates ruled the day in our household. Occasionally, my mom would try to make something a bit more exotic. Because, in truth, she had an underdeveloped creativity. I loved It when she tried something more unusual. But my dad’s response was always, “What is this slop?” So, back we went to the meat and potato menu.
As much as I enjoyed food, I can’t say that gathering around the table to eat was a warm and loving environment to talk and discuss life and the matters of the day. My parents never got along, so the tension always translated to the table. We would sit down to dinner, we ate the dinner and got up to help my mother clean the dishes and put them away. Probably, the consuming of our meals was over faster than it took to prepare them!
In contrast, eating at my Dad’s parents was truly an event. There was always enough food for an army. My Hungarian Jewish grandmother made the best dishes of her cultural background and lots of it. When she made Jewish chicken soup, it was in a pot that looked like a cauldron. And I can still hear in my head my grandfather always saying in Yiddish “Essen kinderlach”, (eat, children) and did we ever. We would sit around the table and indulge in our food and talk for hours. They were a colorful group.
My mom’s side of the family was an enormous, also, colorful group. We would have family gatherings at different aunt and uncle’s homes. It was more about just the consuming food around the table. My aunts screamed at each other. They weren’t mad. That was just their form of conversation. It was too loud for my ears. So, I would frequently abscond with my cousins to another part of the house to eat.
It wasn’t until I moved to California that my palate really changed and expanded to a wide array of fruits, vegetables, spices and different cuisines. The idea of just enjoying a good meal around the table with friends and relatives became a wonderful way to discuss, laugh, and share ideas.
When I lived in California, I was single and very social. I ate out a lot. I didn’t really get into cooking and preparing food. However, interestingly, I was always fascinated by cookbooks. I read them constantly and imagined the tastes and colors of various dishes. I always loved the photographs that went with the different cuisines. I particularly loved to read about French and Italian cuisine and the different regions.
While in California, my career was in magazine advertising sales. My friends and myself had expense accounts that we were always encouraged to use with abandonment by our managers in New York. There were always new restaurants to try in Los Angeles, as well as the traditional legends of LA from the old Hollywood days. My advertising sales friends and I were not just using our credit cards to entertain clients, some of whom were friends, but we were also using them to entertain ourselves. (Oops, just gave away that secret!)
These were the days during in which I learned that dining with friends around the table with great food, wine, and conversation, and often in an outdoor environment, were truly a life experience to relish. The food was displayed beautifully, the dishes were creative, the flavors would melt in our mouths, and a good wine was a luscious way to cleanse our palates for the next bite. We would talk, exchange ideas and laugh.
Those years in California were also the time of the “Pièce de Résistance,” my Thanksgiving holidays at the home of, my cousins who lived San Francisco.
My cousins, they are special to me. They are bright, open-minded, well-travelled, fine people. Leslie, an artist, has always been sensitive to her environment and keenly aware of color, texture, taste, and style in everything she embraces. Even today, her meals continue to be creative, fresh and delicious even in their most simple form.
My cousin, Robert, was a very special person, a neonatologist by vocation, but he had so many other interests. He was a photographer, a lover of great food, a wonderful father, friend, and husband and he had a wicked sense of humor.
Every year together with their sons, they indulged in travel to France, and not just for a week or two. Their vacations were more like the Europeans, lasting for a month or 6 weeks. They were total Francophiles, and it is through them that I, too, became a Francophile. Every year, from their rented place in France, they would often venture off with their two sons to visit another country, as well as, France. They did this for almost 15 years. Between the two of them, they acquired the European customs of enjoying great food, conversation, and making friends, sharing it all around the table.
They had a beautiful home in Pacific Heights. This is where I went for Thanksgiving for nearly 15 years. They were family for me while in California; and home on Thanksgiving weekend. When I arrived at Chez R, it was full of delightful smells of food that assaulted my senses. Leslie spent weeks preparing their home, buying groceries and then preparing the food the day before the big day. Dinner for the night before Thanksgiving was invariably Chinese take-out from a restaurant in the Richmond neighborhood. We would sit around the kitchen with their sons indulging in this delicious Chinese food until there was nothing left but the containers it came in.
I loved to sit in the kitchen watching Leslie prepare the stuffing and her apple pie. She meticulously gathered, sliced, chopped and mixed all the ingredients. The recipes she used were from old Gourmet magazines that she had kept over the years. The pages were frayed and full of food stains. The stuffing had large chunks of fresh bread, chopped roasted walnuts, finely chopped onions, succulent prunes soaked in wine and a generous amount of butter. The taste was delectable. I never tasted stuffing like this and maybe won’t again.
Her apple pie made with fresh apples, sugar, cinnamon and currants culminated into a work of art. I can still see her fingers weaving the buttery lattice crust for the top of the pie. As an artist frequently working in clay, it was always like she was creating a piece of art.
The turkey bought for this soiree was always enormous. Leslie is maybe 5’1” and the turkey seemed to be half her size! Robert had to help her lift the bird in the oven and turn it when it was time to dip the brush into the butter and seasoning to slather over the skin.
Along with the turkey, pie and stuffing was the last-minute preparation of the gravy with the juice of the turkey, madeira wine, a bit of flour and the chopped giblets that thickened into a scrumptious sauce.
Besides lifting the turkey, Robert helped Leslie lift and place the flower arrangements she created in the ceramic planters she had made. He was also in charge of wine selection. He went to a wine boutique just off of Union Street for cases of California and French wines.
The other thing that made each Thanksgiving special was the ambience that Leslie created. Along with her fantastic food and flower arrangements was the table settings. The individual plates, made by her, were painted with a different face on each, vividly colored in pastels. The remaining serving pieces were either from her mother’s dish collection or her’s. The blown glassware was French, known as “La Verrerie de Biot”, a region in Provence, which is known for glassware of various colors with bubbles in the glass. The linens were Provençal. Her art filled the house, ceramics and painting inspired by their trips to France.
Thanksgiving guests always numbered somewhere around 25, with friends and their children around the big table. Each family would bring a side dish, a desert or an hors d’oeuvre. These weren’t necessarily your traditional dishes either. Most of their friends were creative chefs who brought something that was colorful, made with the finest ingredients that tantalized our taste buds. And if they didn’t make their own dish, it had been bought from one of the fine food boutiques San Francisco is known for.
We would have our appetizers and hors d’œuvres in the living room, with the children all around and conversations buzzing about. Their friends were all cultivated and interesting. We would catch up on our lives and laugh. It was warm and amicable.
When Robert carved the turkey (followed by me picking on carcasse, one of my barbaric pleasures.) it was time to gather around the table with Robert at one end and Leslie at the other.
Every year, Robert prepared a “Before Dinner Speech”. This was always special, and it always started by him saying, “This is the one time of the year that we, Americans, eat like the French”. And that we did! We would indulge in the pleasures of our plate and spend hours around the table going from course to course much like the French. Conversation constantly moved from one thing to another effortlessly. It was our version of a “Moveable Feast.” Everyone participated, everyone helped to clean up. There certainly was no television to distract us.
The rest of the weekend with my cousins was spent eating leftovers, another of my favorite pleasures, frequently taking a walk to downtown San Francisco or seeing the latest Thanksgiving movie release. The other thing I loved about those weekends was that often on Saturdays Robert would plan an outing for all of us. We would all pile into the car, and off we go for a “Robert Adventure”. The memories of those weekends will never fade from my memory.
When I met and married my French husband, I spoke often of these Thanksgivings to him and how special they were. He immediately loved Robert and Leslie and felt a special warmth for them. And so twice we made the trip from France to San Francisco to share Thanksgiving with “La Famille, R” and the occasion never disappointed him.
But as the years went on, things change as they always do. The children of their friends grew up and had their own families. The Thanksgivings that we once celebrated together became individual Thanksgivings spent with each of their friends own children and grandchildren.
Though I have had some wonderful Thanksgivings since, nothing will compare to the Thanksgivings at Chez R. The memories always bring warmth to my heart and feed my soul.
M.F.K. Fisher once said, “Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.” I now believe that to be true. Since those days of living in California and then having the opportunity to travel to other countries, as well my life in France, I have never taken sharing a meal lightly.
I believe that when we feed people food made with love, attention and abandonment, we are making memories that can last a lifetime. Learning to eat and enjoy food as well as the company we keep is an evolution. It certainly has been for me.
The truth is, I am not done yet with my gastronomic landscape. The journey continues. I haven’t even touched on my life in France. More to come!
- This memoir is dedicated to my cousin, Robert, who I miss terribly and think about with love always -
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