by Dawn Lerman
1⁄2 cup cold water
Break the egg in a cup and set aside, reserving the shell. Crumble the shell and place it in a separate cup with the ground coffee. Add the cold water and mix it all together until it looks like sand. Dump the eggshell mixture into the pot of boiling water, mix thoroughly, and boil for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, strain the mixture and serve.
Sweet Potato Hummus
Yield: 6 servings
1 large sweet potato (about 9 ounces)
1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
5 tablespoons olive oil (plus additional, as needed, for thinning)
2 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
Pinch of nutmeg
Position the baking rack in the middle and heat oven to 425 degrees. Wrap the sweet potato in foil and bake in a shallow baking pan until it can be easily pierced with a knife, about 45 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and allow the potato to cool completely.
Peel the skin off the sweet potato and transfer to a food processor fitted with a blade. Add the chickpeas, olive oil, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, coriander, cumin, salt, and nutmeg, and process until smooth. If the hummus is too thick, add a little extra olive oil or water and process until the desired consistency is reached.
Creamy Cashew Butternut Soup
Yield: 6–8 servings
3 tablespoons olive oil or unsalted butter
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 cup raw cashews
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 large butternut squash (about 2 pounds), peeled and cut into 1⁄2-inch dice
5 cups vegetable or chicken stock (plus additional, as needed, for thinning)
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup coconut milk (plus additional, as needed, for thinning)
1 sprig fresh rosemary
In a large stockpot or Dutch oven set over medium-high heat, warm the olive oil until shimmering. Add the onions and cook, stirring, until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the cashews and cook, stirring, until the onions are translucent and the cashews have slightly browned, about 3 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the squash, stock, ginger, cumin, coriander, curry powder, and turmeric and stir to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and bring the soup to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and cook the soup until the squash is easily pierced with a knife, 20 to 25 minutes. Uncover the soup and let it cool for 15 minutes.
Starting on slow speed and increasing to high, puree the soup in small batches in a blender until smooth. Place a towel over the top of the blender in case of any splatters. You can also use an immersion blender (let the soup remain in the pot), but it will take longer to puree until smooth.
If using a blender, return the soup to the pot, add the coconut milk and stir. Then add the rosemary sprig, and cook over low heat, covered, until slightly thickened, 15 to 20 minutes. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to serve. If serving the soup later, while reheating the soup, thin it out with more broth or coconut milk until it reaches the desired consistency.
11
My Mom Makes Dinner
Cheese Fondue, Princess Pancakes, Beef and Bean Cholent, April’s Mock Pecan Pie
My mom’s idea of a good home-cooked dinner consisted of boxed au gratin potatoes, canned tuna fish, or maybe some Franco-American SpaghettiOs. For all her virtues, my mom hated to cook, and she relied on packaged and frozen meals to make dinner as speedy and painless as possible. She would constantly tell April and me, as we scraped the last pea and the little piece of peach cobbler out of our Hungry-Man TV dinner, that my grandmother Beauty wasted her whole life cooking old-fashioned food, which to my mom meant anything made with fresh ingredients, especially vegetables. My mom said modern food came in a can, a box, or a foam take-out container. She boasted that she could get dinner on the table in just a few minutes, and since everything was disposable, including our plates, cutlery, and cups, there was no cleanup, so no one would have to waste the night doing dishes—especially her.
My dad hated coming home to a house with no real food. When he was growing up, his mother worked a twelve-hour day in the garment district, but she always managed to have a feast on the table for him. Liver with fried onions, brisket with roasted potatoes, and boiled beef flanken with kasha varnishkes were a few of his favorites.
In an effort to avoid arguments and keep peace in the family, my dad would choose dinners at Smith & Wollensky, P.J. Clarke’s, and the Oyster Bar with his advertising buddies instead of having dinner with us. When he did make an appearance, he would dive straight for the drawer of take-out menus and order pizza, moo shu pork, burgers, fries, or a chocolate milk shake from the coffee shop. What he ordered depended on the diet of the moment—low-fat, high-fat, no carb, good carb, no sugar, sugar-free. I did my best to keep track. Luckily, Tivoli, the local coffee shop, had a six-page menu.
On one rare occasion, my mom did decide to cook a family dinner. Perhaps my mother was inspired by my grandmother’s visit, or maybe Beauty scared her by telling her that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. “If you don’t feed him,” Beauty would say, “someone else will.” Or maybe it was because my dad was traveling for a couple of weeks working on a new ad campaign. As I pondered all the different scenarios, my seven-year-old sister, always wise beyond her years, taunted me, saying she knew the real reason for Mommy’s special dinner.
“Did you know Mommy has a new best friend?”
“Mommy always has a new best friend. I think she has more friends than anyone in the world,” I said proudly.
“Not that kind of friend,” April said. “She has a different kind of friend, a friend who is not a girl, a friend who she looks at herself in the mirror for. Think about it, Mommy has been out really, really, really late every night after her acting class, and she is always in such a good mood when she gets home. I mean a really, really, really good mood!”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” I insisted, but April could not stop herself.
“Just this afternoon Mommy was on the pay phone in the pizza parlor talking baby talk. She bought me a rainbow Icee. How often does that happen? And then when I asked her for a pack of bubble gum, she didn’t say no. She just handed me a dollar and waved me off without asking for a receipt or anything. You know Mommy always asks for a receipt.”
“Maybe she forgot,” I said.
“Mommy never forgets. I haven’t even told you the best part. When I came back to bring her the change, she was laughing louder than I ever heard her. Mommy said she was talking to my piano teacher, but I don’t think that was the truth.”
I reprimanded my sister for spinning tales, trying my best to quiet her. “If we are on our best behavior, maybe Daddy will come home for dinner more.” But April couldn’t stop.
“Kissy, kissy,” April kept whispering in my ear. “Kissy, kissy.”
“That’s not funny,” I said, but before I could silence her, my mom announced that dinner was ready.
“Fondue and quiche, everybody.” My mom’s voice was really excited, almost childlike. When we came down the stairs, we noticed that my mom’s hair was tied back neatly, and she had on her best bell-bottom jumpsuit with suede fringe, silver eye shadow, and her favorite dress-up, five-inch patent-leather disco platform sandals. She looked happy and pretty swaying about to the lyrics of “I Feel the Earth Move” by Carole King, which was blasting from our new hi-fi stereo.
On the table, usually filled with mail, receipts, and scripts from my mom’s acting classes, were real plates and a red fondue pot with long three-pronged forks—each fork in a different color. My dad had bought the fondue pot months ago when he was in Switzerland on business; he thought it would be fun for parties, but now it was on the table ready for my family to enjoy.
There were mushrooms, zucchini, and crispy cut-up French bread for dipping. The bread was for my sister and me, and the mushrooms and zucchini were for my dad, who was supposedly back on the Atkins Diet since the Rice Diet was impossible to maintain away from the Fat Farm.
When everyone arrived at the table, my mom proceeded to demonstrate how the cheese sticks to the bread when you dunk it in the pot. She made sure all eyes were on her, creating the perfect bite. “You do not want to over-saturate the bread with the cheese sauce; otherwise, it might break apart and the poor little pieces of bread will sink to the bottom and drown.” She looked at my dad all bright-eyed and smiley. “I heard the custom in Switzerland is if the bread falls into the cheese, the man sitting beside the woman has to kiss her.”
My sister started giggling, kicking me under the table. “Mommy is talking in that creepy voice again,” she said.
My mom continued to gaze at my dad, declaring that the whole meal was Atkins-approved except the bread—“Lots of fat, protein, and no carbs. You can dip as many mushrooms as you like without guilt, and the quiche that I am about to get out of the oven has no crust—just loads of cheese, heavy cream, eggs, and bacon.”
Just as April and I were about to indulge in this bubbly, cheesy bit of nirvana, we saw that my dad looked less than pleased. He said he’d had a terrible day. The series of Minute Maid commercials the he had spent the last couple of months filming were being shortened in the broadcast. The slogan he wrote was “The Juice of Juices,” but the way it was transmitted sounded like the tagline was “The Juice of Jews,” and the campaign wasn’t receiving the praise and positive attention he thought it deserved. When my mom had phoned and said she was going to make him a meal to brighten his day, he envisioned comfort food like his mother would have made—tenderloin steak with rice and peas, a creamy tuna casserole with thick egg noodles, or meatloaf with oven-baked parsley potatoes. While my dad’s face lit up remembering the kinds of dinners his mother made, I saw the light drain from my mom’s. Hoping he was just experiencing low blood sugar from possibly dieting all day, my mom quickly cut him a slice of her quiche, sticking her finger in the middle of the slice to pull out a chunk of egg shell that had gotten baked in.
“How am I supposed to eat this soggy, runny mess with these long pointy sticks?” my dad exclaimed. “I need real utensils! Where are the utensils? There are no real forks, knives, or spoons on this table.” I ran to the kitchen to look for everything when I saw my mother’s eyes tear up. I fumbled through the drawers, the cabinets, the shelves, and even the refrigerator, which my mom used for storage of paper goods and plastic cutlery, but I could not find any utensils or napkins. Even worse, we were out of diet soda.
My belly was in knots. My mom was crying; I had never seen her like this before. My mom was always stoic and strong, but in that moment, my mother looked sensitive and unguarded, and it scared me.
“You know I do not like to cook, but I went out of my way to try and make a meal that was dietetic. I even bought two kinds of imported cheese and dry white wine for the fondue,” she wailed, her voice quivering with anger. “I missed my class tonight. I went out of my way to please you. You don’t appreciate me. I have a master’s degree, I have tripled our savings in the stock market, I am a wonderful English teacher, and people tell me I am a talented actress. You’re not the only one who matters in this house. The planet does not just spin around you.”
My dad looked shocked. My sister, no longer playful, cowered behind my back. I was always the peacemaker, but I did not know how to make this better. I just stood there, frozen. Seeing my mom so upset hurt me in a way that I had never hurt before. I had felt pain before, lots of it, but this was excruciating.
I never noticed before how young and beautiful my mom was or realized that she needed love in the same way I needed love. I had never really understood my mom and often compared her to my grandmother, but she was different. My grandmother Beauty used to say that when my mom was little, she would lock herself in her room for hours reading and doing homework, occasionally not even wanting to come out for dinner. Who would not want to come out for my grandmother’s delicious dinners? I thought. But my mom was always too busy to sit and eat; she was busy as a child, and she was busy now. “No one ever really knew what she was busy doing,” my grandmother would say, “but she was always industrious and talented. She could play The Moonlight Sonata or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as well as any concert pianist, and she could itemize my Papa’s sale sheets and taxes better than any accountant when she was just a small girl.”
I didn’t always like my mother, but I always loved her. I wondered if she knew how much I loved her—maybe even I didn’t know until this moment. My mom always thought I preferred being with my grandmother. “I know you like Beauty more than me,” she would always say. “She dotes on you excessively, and no matter what you do, she thinks it is great. You will see when you are grown up, there is more to life than cooking and cleaning. You will be glad that I dragged you to museums, and plays, and thrift shops. I am the one that has made you an interesting, cultured child.” There was a part of me that knew what she was saying to be true. And in that moment, with the tears running down my mother’s face, I wanted to grab her and hug her and tell her that I appreciated her, and when she hurt, I hurt. But we didn’t have that kind of relationship. I wanted to move toward her, but I could not.
“Where are those knives?” my mom said. “I know there must be some at the bottom of my purse.”
My dad kept slamming his fists on the table. “I am not even sure why I came home. I just wanted one normal meal.”
As my parents’ argument became more heated, my sister and I ran upstairs and hid under my canopy bed, covering our ears, trying to drown out the sounds of their screaming. We escaped into a game we had invented called Big Sister, Little Sister. Whenever my parents argued, my sister and I would dodge under the bed—pulling all the covers with us. We would each get a flashlight and together pick who was going to be the big sister and the little sister. We spent a great deal of time under that bed in our secret world.
On the nights my parents went out, which was a lot, the game would become more complex. Whoever chose to be the big sister would also be the lady-in-waiting and had to provide a snack and entertainment for the little sister, the princess. I guess I invented the game so I would not always have the pressure of being the caretaker and the responsible one. When I was ten, I convinced my mom that I was more responsible than most of the babysitters she was hiring and I should be the main caregiver for my sister and myself. My mom knew that I would never let anything happen to April so she agreed.
While my parents were out at night immersed in the seventies party scene and the emerging disco scene, my sister and I were immersed in our own wonderful world. With no babysitters, the house was ours. April and I took turns swapping roles and making each other snacks that we would eat on my parents’ king-sized bed while reading aloud stories in dramatic voices. We weren’t really allowed to eat on my parents’ bed, but in our fantasy game, the bed was our castle, and we stacked all the pillows really high to create a secure fortress.
I usually played the big sister, which was okay because I loved creating healthy snacks, using some of my grandmother’s recipes as inspiration. Sometimes, the snacks I made for her were simple, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or homemade granola and yogurt parfaits, drizzled with maple syrup. Other times, it was as elaborate as Princess Pancakes that I made by combining oats, cottage cheese, eggs, and a dash of vanilla in the blender until it turned into
a smooth batter for frying. I then warmed fresh strawberries, which I spooned between two of the pancakes—making the most royal, double-decker pancake sandwiches, which I served to her proudly. I watched with anticipation as she ate, waiting for her smile of approval. And as we snacked, I read aloud to her my favorite passage from A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” I read the line aloud several times while she sat on my lap.
April depended on me. I picked her up from school, tucked her into bed, and created a world where we would always feel safe. In reality, our house felt far from safe. It was an old brownstone from the late 1800s with glass doors located across from the Cuban Embassy. The embassy was bombed twice while we were home alone, causing our windows and front door to shatter. Even when the embassy was not bombed, our house looked as if it had been hit with something. It was messy and dark, with lots of cobwebs, which my mom said was a good thing because if any burglars were to break in, they would be scared off. But we had the greatest spiral banisters to slide down, big closets to hide in, a few mice that my sister named, and a huge terrace that overlooked a plush green garden. It was perfect for playing pretend.
I never let April or my parents see that I was actually terrified of staying home alone, and that I needed the game to escape and feel safe as much as I wanted to shield my sister from the turbulence that often occupied our childhood.
When it was April’s turn to be the big sister, she said in her deepest voice, “Do not come out of the castle; your royal snack is almost ready to be served. Please sit patiently, my princess.” Since April wasn’t old enough to really cook, when it was her turn as big sister to make our snacks, she put together clementines, deli turkey, and raisins on a plate, and arranged them in the shape of a smiley face. Sometimes, she would mush a pecan between two un-pitted dates and crumple Cheerios on top of it and call it pecan pie. Or maybe she would put ketchup, pepper, and water in a bowl and call it soup. “For you, my princess,” she would say. “I made this all by myself, for you.”