About ten years ago, after a painting that she’d been working on disappointed her, my mother dragged the canvas out onto the front lawn. Still in her painting clothes, she proceeded to rip it apart with a small hatchet, reducing a 3 by 5 foot work of art to an abundance of 3 by 5 inch works of art. A few weeks later, she sent them, without explanation, to her friends and family for Valentine’s Day. (The whole thing was a little “Vincent’s ear”, and the parallel did not escape her: she did a series of Van Gogh’s disembodied ear the next fall. She also set fire to a couple of those, and then did a painting of them on fire. And yes, I was an anxious child.) The canvas scrap my mother sent to me that Valentine’s contains the original painting’s full signature. Of all the fragments of her destroyed work, each one a tiny relic of perfectionism and mania, I got the one with her name on it!
Receiving the portion with her signature, the veritable corner piece to the puzzle of her insanity, really means something to me. I can see how, when other people opened their valentines that year, they might have felt a vague sense of reproach, instead of the more common Valentine’s message: affection.
My little brother came home from a bar mitzvah with a dazed look in his eyes and a henna tattoo across his arm that read: 'Nikita.' He told me it was fate. He was standing in the middle of the dance floor and announced to his friends that the sexiest name in the world was Nikita, and within moments a blonde sauntered over to him and said, "That's my name. I'm Nikita."
Usually, pound cake is a Spring thing for me. I make it each year around Easter and maybe again a little later when fresh, locally-grown strawberries are ready to pick. The sweet berries with their bright juice are a perfect companion for pound cake. But in the midst of my almond paste frenzy, my apricot brandy pound cake seemed like a logical place to try to add almond paste. So, I did. And I was right. Brandied Apricot-Almond Pound Cake is the result of a match made in heaven.
As a little girl, my favorite candies were Twizzlers and black jelly beans. Every Easter I would pick all the black jelly beans out of the bowl and leave the rest for everybody else. Though I rarely eat jelly beans any more, I love to cook with fennel, which has a distinctive licorice scent and flavor.
