A novel by Marcy Goldman (C)
Chapter One
It is a truth universally unacknowledged that most people would prefer familiar misery over unknown joy. It is another truth, similarly universal and unacknowledged that falling in love, or better yet, love itself is the most hungered-for food. It is the bread of our souls.
As a baker, I know a lot about bread because I am its handmaiden - an intimate of wheat as it were. I am also one well acquainted with hunger. But the hard part for me and everyone else I know seems not to be the hungry part, it's the fed part. To be loving or harder still, being loved seems much harder than hunger. I'm not entirely sure how to manage this. But if you spend enough of your baker's days coaxing stubborn sourdough breads to rise and perfecting the perfect boleo turn on the tango dance floor somewhere, somehow, in this alchemy of flour and dance, you also figure out something about love, which is at least putting balky doughs and imperfect tango steps in service to life lessons.
Unlike the secret to melting white chocolate properly or making vanilla extract that is more elixir than ingredient, the recipe for love really needs to be shared. That much I know and so I will (share it) but to be honest, I don't have a clue where I am and yet this is where I start.
Dear G-d,
I don't get this journal thing which is a dubiously honest thing to admit on my first day of (Oprah, wait for it), "The Journal'. A journal (when did we stop calling it a diary?) feels wildly uncomfortable because let's face it, why would anyone want to face themselves in the mirror of their own writing? Selfies are fine for Instagram but I'm of the opinion that my terrified little soul could use less self- examination. I'm good with measured scrutiny and with problems I have solutions for or to-do lists for but I hate the big and the murky stuff. I'm so desperate for a tonic these days and journaling is the advice of respected creativity guru Julia Cameron (as well as Oprah, Louise Hay and essentially anyone who ever spent too much time Looking Inward) who I never even heard of until I started feeling really bad or more to the point, permitted myself to notice I was feeling really bad.
Julia Cameron has written a few books about the spiritual side of creativity. Her books are simply chock full of wisdom for the creative soul, most often pointed towards writers, which (apparently) it seems I am although on most days I look like a cookbook author/blogger-baker-chef. Spirituality and creativity are just the sort of things to read about if you find yourself stuck between god, your life and a hard place (aka my ruminating brain). Actually, I have two Julia(s) (JC's) in my life. There's the aforementioned passion-and-creativity expert Julia Cameron and then there is, bless her for I miss her so; (who doesn't?) Julia Child.
Now that Julia, and I say this having actually met the culinary goddess was special as a foodie like Katherine Hepburn was special as an actress: the sort of one of a kind real person of substance and forthrightness you just never see anymore. She wasn't coy, didn't seduce or pander and would be in style no matter where and when you cast her. Not to be too hashtag about it, she also didn't abuse people on or off camera. The fact that she was in food and inspired me, as much as James Beard and MFK Fisher, Laurie Colwin (and in no particular order or sense: Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, Jane Austen, Stephen Sondheim and Howard Roark (minus the rape) and Scarlett O'Hara to name a few of my heroes is just incidental. I would have been a fan even had I been an accountant, which of course, given that everyone is a foodie these days doesn't really say much; I just wanted to make it clear that I was a fan in every sort of way.
How could anyone not miss Julia Child? Once in a tizzy about food feature I phoned her directly (I curse Google for revealing her phone number), while doing an absolutely useless, silly bit on capers aka "The Caper Caper" for the Chicago Tribune.. Once she answered, I barely introduced myself and then immediately asked her for her insights on capers which really was an inept cover-up on wanting to speak to my idol and get a quote. Truth is, there's not too much unexplored territory when it comes to capers which, to save you a time, capers are the unfurled buds of the caper berry shrub that have been pickled in salt. Yes, I know: meh. Although I have to say, once in a while a few capers hidden in something like a sandwich let's say, not a Caesar Salad, offers a certain savory perk, now known as 'umami', which is just about the same thing. A weird note of salt or tang is known a je ne sais quoi of flavor that is not oh-so-trendy. Unami is actually a good thing mostly because it's someowhat unexplored flavor frontier but equally because no one has figured out how to really describe it.
In all fairness, re: calling Julia Child, I was in a post-partum fog post-birth-of-my-third-son and at the time, cold- calling her on a Saturday night seemed both brilliant and normal. Incredibly she was so generous and responsive. Without skipping a beat (after the: 'Who are you exactly?") she provided me with some cool caper factoids, a few great quotes and a recipe (see Julia Child's Tomato Pizza with Capers which I've included for your convenience). When I oozed out my thanks she simply said, 'Oh my dear, we are all colleagues. We are here to help each other'. She actually said: "each other" – as if it is truly a democracy of food writers instead of the food fight it really is. Not long after that there was more Julia, a bonus as it were. Julia's assistant phoned me, on behalf of Julia Child and on the specific occasion of my piece on Bread Machine Baking for Fine Cuisine. Mrs. Child wanted to pass on her good words.
'Before Ms. Stein, I never considered a bread machine but now, and thanks to her, she could now see the fine attributes of this appliance for bread making and how I, as a baking expert, had done the good thing for home bakers at home and at large, in legitimizing bread machines'
See what I mean: how could anyone not miss Julia?
But my other favorite Julia (Cameron) recommends you keep a journal, advising everyone from a start-up millionaire to a floundering au pair write three pages long-hand (no less) in the morning before the brain clears (which is an oxymoron because the clarity, however yucky it is, often comes with the fog of sleep and dreams) and reality sets in. Write reams if you have to but get it all out on paper. Cameron calls this the Morning Papers but I call it a Barf Bag but I'll do anything at this point because whatever this malaise is it's sticking around much too-long. It's morphed from difficult house guest to a pesky resident. I told Dana the other day that inside my own head, I call this mood "the blahs" because frankly I'm skittish about the sound and feel of the "D" word (depression) and my modus operandi has always been more upper-case A (Anxiety). Not to be cute but let's face it, anxiety is far easier to camouflage and has a certain jauntiness about it. But the current mood cocktail is a mezzo-grande cup of (mood-wise) flat-line with tremors of something a disquieting at the edges.
Anxiety can actually be quite the poseur. Done well, it might just resemble busyness. Busy people are happy people, my ass. Busy people are frantic people and probably more than slightly anxious and are covering up something they can't quite figure out or won't deal with. At any rate, anxiety is pretty mobilizing which, at the least, helps get things done. As a wake-up call, it can't be beat.
I had one of those dreams last night, the variety of which contains that over-the-top quality that not even daylight helps you dispel. This one but was so vivid and so real that it actually woke me up. One minute I was deep into Nod and the next I was upright, sweating, and wired, poised to fight a dragon. I was also, oddly, acutely feeling what seemed to be hunger pangs but quantum hunger pangs that were so large they felt like muscular contractions. I clutched my stomach because the hollow feeling was so large. So there I sat, cradling my stomach, not knowing what it was, what to do or where it came from. I literally felt as though someone had reamed out my soul with a melon baller.
This was not any hunger; it was a huge, hellish, an insatiable monster that insistently gnawed at me like an intestinal Golem. It tenacled its insinuating fingers into me and even through the fog of sleep, I had to bow to one of those unavoidable truths that simply would no longer be ignored. I knew, and I say this as some who creates recipes 24/7 and is dieting all the time, the dream was not about that food at all. It was about him: the husband. It was about my life, the big picture and regrettably, I knew it to be one of those, you-might-have-to-change-the-very-foundation' sort of deals. It occurred to me with the subtlety of a lump of cold, indigestible bubble tea that I don't want to be married in general or not to him in particular. I could barely tell the difference but I'm pretty sure it was the latter. I whispered (or did I say it in my head, still holding my stomach): I'm starving from the inside out. It was that clear to me. Something hurt, something was empty and hollow and it wanted attention.
At this point, I was wide awake I and sleep was a distant rumour. I got up, snuck out of bed and made the perfect tonic which you should always consider when you can't sleep. It has a bit of all the things purported to make you sleepy: Chamomile tea, warm milk, vanilla extract and on the side, a chunk of banana and half a soda cracker. You don't have this altogether but you have the tea with the warm milk and vanilla first. Then you nibble on the chunk of banana and soda cracker. It sounds silly but I've researched this (each element has some chemical compound that is sleep-and-relaxation inducing) and it's certainly is no sillier than taking sugared water for hiccups, which I might add also works (given you drink it down while holding your breath). Not to brag but stuff like this is what makes me a superb chef or at least moments like this make me imagine I'm not just a chef but a shaman. A lot of times I seem to instinctively know remedies for what ails people and I always want to help them.
I sipped the chamomile latte, it watching Guy Fieri on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives make Bacon-Stuffed Brisket Meatballs (panko-coasted and deep-fried). Seriously – how could he? I fell asleep listening to him extold the meatballs ("this is money, man") and the sound of the sizzle on the restaurant flat top grill).
(stayed tuned to Chapter Two)
