Kurt Wallander is a Swedish detective in a series of books by Henning Mankell. [Say after me: "Vall-on-dr", and "Monn-kl".] [You will just have to put up with it: pronunciations attract me!]
It is a series of wonderful books and movies for TV; some in English, some in Swedish, with subtitles.
Anyway. . . .
The new prosecuting attorney moved into a house near Wallander's, on the Baltic seacoast. Kurt was noticeably interested. She invited Kurt to have dinner with her and her two teenagers. I think she said it was for "her famous lasagna". One of her kids said--in the style of unbearably honest kids everywhere--that it was the only thing she knew how to cook.
Ja vel. [Say after me: "Ya vell". You get the idea. You don't? Nei vel.]
"That it was the only thing she knew how to cook" is the much-disguised point I am trying to make. I have long admired the fact that some people, and some families, can almost be identified by the meals they cook. Each generation inherits meals they have often had; easily and often prepared, usually without the necessity of a written recipe. I do not have a single such recipe in my DNA, nor in my cultural habits. If I were to use a sports analogy, or a workplace analogy, I have no muscle-memory recipes. I am to cooking what an adult, who has never played soccer, is to soccer. "How do you do that, again?"
Instead, I have a boxful of recipes. I love cooking magazines, and I destroy them, page-by-occasional-page, cutting out promising recipes and dropping them into a box. "You should make that again!", Mari sometimes says, and a few times I have. Sometimes she does not say that. Most times. It is nothing personal: they are not, after all, old family recipes which I would, in principle, have to defend. No one in our family ever had to defend a recipe inherited from our mother. Those recipes have all been sent to a research lab at the American Chemical and Cremation Society with the question: "How is it possible that these compounds can have nurtured seven offspring, all of whom are still alive, well into their dotage?"
Just in case you wondered, the American Chemical and Cremation Society did respond, several years ago. Their letter said, in effect, that they were not particularly equipped to diagnose the charred causal relationship between extended cooking time and general crankiness, even though it was obvious, and that the samples of pork chops we had submitted as evidence were still as good as the day we had sent them, since the lab animals had refused to eat them; that they were being used as wind chimes.
And that does not, as I had intended, bring me to the happenstance I had in mind when I began. Nei vel.
Mari and I recently had breakfast at a delightful downtown Tucson restaurant: the Nook. That is what happens when you would rather eat out, anyway, for the reasons I have already given.
The man at the adjacent table, an amiable fellow whom I judged to be about my own age, agreed with us about the quality of the food, and said that he ate there often. As it happened, he also had been born in Tacoma, Washington, not at St. Joseph's as I had, but at Tacoma General. Not only that, his father, too, had been born in Norway, and that his Dad and Mom had been some of the people who used to drive out to see Gus and Jennie on occasional Sundays, for mid-day dinner.
He himself did not remember our parents, but he said that in their home they always referred to our mom as, "Wind Chime Jennie".
It is a series of wonderful books and movies for TV; some in English, some in Swedish, with subtitles.
Anyway. . . .
Ja vel. [Say after me: "Ya vell". You get the idea. You don't? Nei vel.]
"That it was the only thing she knew how to cook" is the much-disguised point I am trying to make. I have long admired the fact that some people, and some families, can almost be identified by the meals they cook. Each generation inherits meals they have often had; easily and often prepared, usually without the necessity of a written recipe. I do not have a single such recipe in my DNA, nor in my cultural habits. If I were to use a sports analogy, or a workplace analogy, I have no muscle-memory recipes. I am to cooking what an adult, who has never played soccer, is to soccer. "How do you do that, again?"
Instead, I have a boxful of recipes. I love cooking magazines, and I destroy them, page-by-occasional-page, cutting out promising recipes and dropping them into a box. "You should make that again!", Mari sometimes says, and a few times I have. Sometimes she does not say that. Most times. It is nothing personal: they are not, after all, old family recipes which I would, in principle, have to defend. No one in our family ever had to defend a recipe inherited from our mother. Those recipes have all been sent to a research lab at the American Chemical and Cremation Society with the question: "How is it possible that these compounds can have nurtured seven offspring, all of whom are still alive, well into their dotage?"
Just in case you wondered, the American Chemical and Cremation Society did respond, several years ago. Their letter said, in effect, that they were not particularly equipped to diagnose the charred causal relationship between extended cooking time and general crankiness, even though it was obvious, and that the samples of pork chops we had submitted as evidence were still as good as the day we had sent them, since the lab animals had refused to eat them; that they were being used as wind chimes.
And that does not, as I had intended, bring me to the happenstance I had in mind when I began. Nei vel.
Mari and I recently had breakfast at a delightful downtown Tucson restaurant: the Nook. That is what happens when you would rather eat out, anyway, for the reasons I have already given.
The man at the adjacent table, an amiable fellow whom I judged to be about my own age, agreed with us about the quality of the food, and said that he ate there often. As it happened, he also had been born in Tacoma, Washington, not at St. Joseph's as I had, but at Tacoma General. Not only that, his father, too, had been born in Norway, and that his Dad and Mom had been some of the people who used to drive out to see Gus and Jennie on occasional Sundays, for mid-day dinner.
He himself did not remember our parents, but he said that in their home they always referred to our mom as, "Wind Chime Jennie".
When my younger sisters married Hispanic men our Christmas meals (thru New Years Day) took on a Southwestern culture. For that whole week we feasted on tamales. What a wonderful tradition!
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