I had no idea what to say. Finally, all I could get out was: “I’m glad you did.”
And then, because the hour was drawing so near: “I’ve got to get going.” And I tried to follow it up with a casual, “What else are you doing to do in Houston today?”
“Nothing,” Ryan said. “I’m driving back today. I really just came to see you.”
So it wasn’t just the tacos. And again, all I could manage was a short: “I’m glad you did.” A smile. Unblinking eyes, because if I blinked, the tears would spill over and I’d be done for. I couldn’t see Ryan’s eyes at all; he never removed his sunglasses all day.
And just like that, his door was open. A brief hug and promises of a future visit—this time with his wife—and Ryan was gone. Here was 10 years and two hours, gone. I drove out of the parking lot, unable to look back, and drank the last of the apple-sweet tamarind juice until it was gone and I was home once again.
I WON’T HAVE THE STOMACH FOR THIS
By Anna Stoessinger
From the New York Times
Native New Yorker, advertising writer, and self-professed gastronome Anna Stoessinger inspired floods of blog posts with this moving op-ed piece in the Sunday Times. In it, she answers a question few of us will ever have to ask ourselves.
I am a ravenous, ungraceful eater. I have been compared to a dog and a wolf, and have not infrequently been reminded to chew. I am always the first to finish what’s on my plate, and ever since I was a child at my mother’s table, have perfected the art of stealthily helping myself to seconds before anyone else has even touched fork to frog leg. My husband and I have been known to spend our rent money on the tasting menu at Jean Georges, our savings on caviar or wagyu tartare. We plan our vacations around food—the province of China known for its chicken feet, the village in Turkey that grows the sweetest figs, the town in northwest France with the very best raclette.
So it was a jarring experience when, a few months ago, at 36 years old, I learned I had stomach cancer.
I had only mild symptoms at first: a slight pain below the breastbone when I swallowed, discomfort that felt like nerves or indigestion. Two doctors told me it was nothing. “Take some Prilosec,” they said, which made sense. We had just returned from a trip to Italy. In Florence, we had eaten mounds of roast duck, crostini and rich fish stews; maybe I just had heartburn. But the feeling lingered, and the hypochondriac in me went to the gastroenterologist.
It was a tumor. We got the call early on Friday morning. My husband and I were still in bed, and it took more than a moment to register. At my age, I am not supposed to have stomach cancer. In the United States, it’s a disease that most commonly afflicts older, Asian men, and I am none of these. I have also parted with all my vices, save the occasional sugar binge. But after years of worrying that I might have cancer, years of, “Can you look at this? Is this a lump? What’s this right here? No, here,” I actually did.
I had only one thought about the possibility of death: the fear that I would have to part from my husband a half-century too soon. We had just married in October. We had just moved into a cottage in Connecticut. We had just discovered the simple pleasures of a happy routine. A calendar on the fridge. Roast chicken with leeks for dinner. Losing our life together was what death meant to me, and that, I think, is love.
Thankfully, my doctors assured me that death was a remote possibility. But I wasn’t getting off easily; there were things to lose. First, with three rounds of intense chemotherapy, I lost my appetite. But that was only temporary. Then my surgeon told me that I needed a total gastrectomy—I would have part of my esophagus and all of my stomach permanently removed.
With nothing but a small intestine left to digest food, my gastronomic future would hold only small, frequent meals, consumed slowly and deliberately, without my characteristic gusto. Without abandon. Without—there would be a lot of without.
“You can live without a stomach,” my doctor told me. I have often thought about what I could live without, if I had to: a savings account, an extra bedroom, the new Prada suede platform pump in burgundy. But a stomach never entered my mind. And food? It was so much more. As a little girl, sharing food with my mother was a solace, a joy, and a way of communicating. Sharing it with my husband has been as intimate as anything I’ve experienced. We fell in love one taste at a time: roadside cheeseburgers, bonito with ginger sauce, hazelnut gelato. After the first bite had lingered on our tongues, we’d say to each other: Wait for it. And then: Did you get that? The smoke? The spice? The texture? We always did.
And so, with just 10 days left with my trusted stomach, we set out to capture all that food meant—all the memories it conjured, all the happiness it brought. We were determined to eat as much and as well as possible. We made lists. What categories of food needed attention? Which meals did we want to recreate? We went from lowbrow to high, and everywhere in between. Peanut butter and jelly doughnuts, ginger ice cream, sashimi, grilled porterhouse, wild blueberries. We came up with a plan. Travel options were limited (health, timing), but we would go from Connecticut to Maine to New Brunswick, and finish in New York City three days before my surgery.
On the road, we ate candy in the car like kids. Then, at the White Barn Inn near Kennebunkport, Me., we ate a foie gras and fig torchon, which was velvety, buttery and dusted with pistachios; we ate butter-poached smoked lobster, the summery steam wafting up from the meat; and we tasted scallops with passion fruit coulis, thinly sliced disks of silky pleasure in a sweet, tangy sauce.
My mother made scallops like nobody else. Perfectly seared and turned in butter. Simple and divine. And she served them at her hugely popular, often impromptu, dinner parties. Watching her cook was what I imagined it was like to watch Jackson Pollock paint. She hurled salt and spices. Spun sugar like a sculptor. Emptied a bottle of rosemary onto a leg of lamb, massaged it with butter into the meat, and turned out a masterpiece. I surged with pride when the first guests arrived and remarked on the wonderful smells sailing out of the kitchen, to whose creation I alone had been witness.
My father was something of a tyrant, and every year my mother and I went to southern France to escape him. We were like war buddies on leave there, and we ate like queens. We drank tea out of giant bowls and picked lavender and stayed at wonderful old inns with names like L’Hermitage. There were cheese courses and pastries and the most delicious filet of sole I’ve ever encountered. There was also a deep and unwavering friendship between my mother and me, the tastes and smells of the food we shared overpowering even our worst memories of my father.
Those summers came back to me at our next stop: the Kingsbrae Arms in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, which had an exquisite dining room, gardens full of lavender and a chef who studied in the south of France. There we sat down to a wild boar terrine and Guinness vegetable soup with rosemary whipped cream. It was sublime and hinted of beef, celery, sweet carrot and earth. Finally, there was a warm apple and cinnamon tarte tartin—not too sweet, not too tart and not quite large enough. I ate mine and half of my husband’s as well, and yearned for more.
It had been a long time since I had experienced such satisfying fullness. There was comfort and exuberance, a familiar feeling like a long embrace, a coming in from the cold—that I fear I will not know again. I know I will mourn my loss. Because for me, food—and eating it with abandon—is about shared experience. It’s about love and memory and the capacity to conquer even the worst hours with something warm and wonderful.
But let me be clear: I am unspeakably lucky. Had my diagnosis come even three or four months later, my prognosis would have been much, much darker. I had the surgery two weeks ago, and thankfully everything went smoothly. Once I’ve recovered a bit more, I will be able to eat again. In the future, my meals will be little intermissions throughout the day. Overtures, not full symphonies. They will be small, but I will try to make them grand. Even if it’s just a spoonful of pudding. And I would give up all of my organs for the possibility of many more y
ears with my beloved husband.
We had our last good meal together—our last of the old meals—in Manhattan, at Le Bernardin. It’s the best place in the city for a final meal with a stomach, the best place in the city, arguably, for any meal. When I called the hostess for a last-minute table, I was told that the only seating they had was at 10:45. I pulled out the big guns: “I have stomach cancer, and this is literally my last meal with a stomach.”
“Well,” she said, irritated, “I suppose we can seat you at 5:30.”
What a town. And what a magnificent meal it was.
RECIPE INDEX
First-Boil Syrup, (from “Sweet Spot”), 51
Minestrone (from “How to Live Well”), 88–89
Homemade Mayonnaise (from “Still Life with Mayonnaise”), 96
Lasagna Bolognese (from “Lasagne Bolognese”), 105-110
Pot-Roasted Celery Root with Olives and Buttermilk (from “The Forager at Rest”), 114-115.
Walnut Cake (from “The Forager at Rest”), 115-116
Best Guess Wonton Soup (from “The Legacy that Wasn’t: Wonton Soup”), 234-236
Sneaky Whole-Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies (from “Curious Cookies”), 239-240
Coconut Cake (from “Sweet Southern Dream”), 253-254
Lemon Layer Cake (from “Sweet Southern Dream”), 255-256
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to all those who gave permissions for written material to appear in this book. Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders. If an error or omission is brought to our notice, we will be pleased to remedy the situation in subsequent editions of this book. For further information, please contact the publisher.
Shaw, Hank. “On Killing.” Copyright © 2011 by Hank Shaw. Used by permission of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Originally appeared on www.honest-food.net, December 7, 2011.
Jacobsen, Rowan. “The Gumbo Chronicles.” Copyright © 2012 by Rowan Jacobsen. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Outside, April 2012.
Murray, Erin Byers. “Serving Up Sustainability.” Copyright © 2012 by Erin Byers Murray. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Edible Boston, 2012.
O’Hagan, Maureen. “Kids Battle the Lure of Junk Food.” Copyright © 2011 by The Seattle Times. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Pacific Northwest, June 2011.
Cunningham, Brent. “Pastoral Romance.” Copyright © 2011 by Brent Cunningham. Used by permission of Brent Cunningham. Originally appeared in Lapham’s Quarterly, June 2011.
Graham, Paul. “Sweet Spot.” Copyright © 2012 by Paul Graham. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Alimentum, Winter 2012.
LeMay, Eric. “Snowville Creamery Has a Modest Goal: Save the World.” Copyright © 2012 by Eric LeMay. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Edible Columbus, Winter 2011.
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Mueller, Tom. “Olives and Lives.” From Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil. Copyright © 2012 by Tom Mueller. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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Adler, Tamar. “How to Live Well.” From An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Copyright © 2011 by Tamar Adler. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Eaton, Lorraine. “The Fried Chicken Evangelist.” Copyright © 2011 by Leite’s Culinaria. Used by permission of Leite’s Culinaria. Originally appeared in Leite’s Culinaria, June 26, 2011.
Perelman, Deb. “Lasagna Bolognese.” Copyright © 2012 by Deb Perelman. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared on www.SmittenKitchen.com, February 12, 2012.
Muhlke, Christine. “The Forager at Rest.” Copyright © 2012 by Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Originally appeared in Bon Appetit, March 2012. Reprinted by permission.
Kummer, Corby. “Better Cooking Through Technology.” Copyright © 2011 by Corby Kummer. Used by permission of Wrights Media. Originally appeared in Technology Review, July/August 2011.
Birdsall, John. “The Pastrami Dilemma.” Copyright © 2012 by CBS Intereactive Inc. Used by permission of CBS Interactive Inc. Originally appeared on CHOW. com, February 2012.
Levin, Rachel. “Passover Goes Gourmet.” Copyright © 2011 by Rachel Levin. Courtesy of Sunset Magazine. Sunset is a registered trademark of Sunset Publishing Corporation. Used with permission.
Clement, Bethany Jean. “The 2011 Dyke March Wiener Taste Test.” Copyright © 2011 by Bethany Jean Clement. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in The Stranger, 2011.
Anderson, Brett. “The Missing Link.” Copyright © 2012 by Brett Anderson. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in The Times-Picayune, 2012.
Nabhan, Gary Paul. “Foraging and Fishing Through the Big Bend.” From Desert Terroir: Exploring the Unique Flavors and Sundry Places of the Boderlands by Gary Paul Nabhan, illustrations by Paul Mirocha. Copyright © 2012 by Gary Paul Nabhan. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Texas Press.
Mariani, John. “Italian America.” Copyright © 2011 by John Mariani. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Saveur, December 2011.
Lam, Francis. “What Makes Sushi Great.” Copyright © 2012 by Francis Lam. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Gilt Taste, March 12, 2012.
Gordinier, Jeff. “Food For Thought.” Copyright © 2012 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. Originally appeared in the New York Times, February 8, 2012.
Stein, Joel. “Learning to Barbecue Helped Make Me A Man.” Copyright © 2011 by Joel Stein. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Food & Wine, June 2011.
Thompson, Wright. “Memphis in May: Pork-a-Looza.” Copyright © 2011 by Wright Thompson. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Garden & Gun, October/November 2011.
John Gutekanst, “Truffle in Paradise.” Copyright © 2012 by the Regents of the University of California. Used by the permission of the University of California Press. Originally appeared in Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture vol. 12, no. 1, (Spring 2012), pp. 66–71.
Duane, Daniel. “A Slice of Family History.” Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Duane. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Food & Wine, December 2011.
Edge, John T. “Barbecue Road Trip: The Smoke Road.” Copyright © 2012 by John T. Edge. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Garden & Gun, June/July 2012.
Kliman, Todd. “The Food-Critic Father.” Copyright © 2012 by Todd Kliman. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Washingtonian, February 2012
Chang, T. Susan. “The Legacy That Wasn’t: Wonton Soup.” A Spoonful of Promises: Stories & Recipes from a Well-Tempered Table. Copyright © 2012 by T. Susan Chang. Lyons Press: pp. 33–40.
Yuh, Eagranie. “Curious Cookies.” Copyright © 2012 by Eagranie Yuh. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Edible Vancouver, Spring 2012.
Clancy, Henrietta. “Chicken Brick.” Copyright © 2012 by Henrietta Clancy. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Fire & Knives, Issue #9.
Altman, Elissa. “Angry Breakfast
Eggs.” Copyright © 2012 by Elissa Altman. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared on www.poormansfeast.com, April 25, 2012.
Mims, Ben. “Sweet Southern Dream.” Copyright © 2012 by Ben Mims. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Saveur, March 2012.
Martin, Brett. “The King of Pop-Up.” Copyright © 2011 by Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Originally appeared in GQ, June 2011.
Hutton, Rachel. “Hot Plate.” Copyright © 2012 by Rachel Hutton. Used by permission of the publisher. Originally appeared in Minnesota Monthly, March 2012.
Frizell, St. John. “Austria’s Culinary Ambassador.” Copyright © 2011 by St. John Frizell. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Edible Manhattan, September–October 2011.
Wharton, Rachel. “Remembering Savoy.” Copyright © 2012 by Rachel Wharton. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Edible Manhattan, May–June 2012.
Leibowitz, Ed. “Appetite for Perfection.” Copyright © 2011 by Ed Leibowitz. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine, June 1, 2011.
Broening, John. “Supper Clubs in Denver: Informal, Spontaneous and Inexpensive.” Copyright © 2011 by John Broening. Used by permission of John Broening. Originally appeared in the Denver Post, September 14, 2011.
Nakano, Richie. “Why Chefs Sell Out.” Copyright © 2012 by CBS Interactive Inc. Used by permission of the CBS Interactive Inc. Originally appeared on CHOW. com, March 2012.
Pang, Kevin. “A Chef’s Painful Road to Rehab.” Copyright © 2011 by Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. Originally appeared in Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2011.
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