Stories

There were no more than 300 students in grades 1-12 at Baker Academy and I graduated with pretty much the same 17 people I started 1st grade with. Needless to say, I knew these people quite well and knew exactly what I wanted their mother's to make when I came to visit. Lisa's mother, Ms. Martha made an 'apricot nectar cake', Susan's mom "Ms. Betty" made a 'peach pie' and the list goes on. My mother has many of these recipes saved in a nice little recipe box after her Baker Academy cookbook was reduced to shreds.

The "Baker" cookbook was the first one I ever used. It's a compilation of the best recipes from all the families I grew up with. I wish we would have been more gentle with it as was typed on plane paper and bound with spiral plastic; no doubt a project a group of mother's took on, probably 'assembly-line' style in the school lunchroom. 

Several years ago, when my grandmother died, guess what we found? An old Baker Academy cookbook. The cover is missing but it's in pretty good shape. I'm thinking about making copies of it and giving them to all my friends, who ask me for the same recipes that I always ask my mom for that come from the Baker Academy cookbook.

It came to me in a flash: sell the house. After my husband lost his second job in eight months and after my agent stopped returning my calls. It was the solution to all our problems. We hired a realtor – a young energetic woman called Jen – and made a plan. We would sell our three bedroom home and move to a loft in downtown Los Angeles. We would be downsizing, but it would be chic.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, selling the home that we had lived in for twenty-one years and raised our children. But really there was no alternative to our diminished earning capacity. Added to the embarrassment of having a ‘For Sale’ sign planted on our front lawn and explaining to all our inquisitive neighbors why and where we were moving. What I had failed to take into account was the effect that this momentous decision would have on our eating habits. What nobody tells you when you are trying to sell a house is that cooking in your home becomes virtually verboten.

In these tough economic times if you want to sell, you have to ‘Stage’. When you live in the film capital of the World, people want to buy houses that look like movie sets. This requires cramming every personal item you own into a closet and making your house look like nobody lives in it. But at the same time it has to look like Martha Stewart was your interior decorator.

This is been a TERRIBILIS AUTEM SABBATI (aka a really bad week)... a lot of pain - all over the world. Cautious moderate thinking seems utterly incapable of solving the problems, as we have moved into a communal state of FIGHT OR FLEE. For a moderate middle of the roader this is awkward. So while my point is serious, I now move into a wistful moment of humor. I am offering two options each on fight or flee.

Fight: Slim Pickens riding the bomb from Dr Strangelove and Brunhilda from Wagner's Ring Cycle, (photo©Nancy Ellison Photography).

Flee: IZ - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and his youtube video of Somewhere Over the Rainbow - the sweetest most personal rendition ever, and finally my personal favorite - the White Cosmo that I just had at Cafe Boulud for brunch today....

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The Flee choices are short term. The Fight choices are rather permanent.

Leftovers! Even our dog, Buzz, won’t eat anything stored overnight in the fridge. Usually, when we give him some yummy leftover steak, he goes to his dog dish, looks at it, makes a pass at sniffing its aroma, drops his head, and with a heavy audible sigh and plodding gait shuffles away yet once again betrayed by the owners he so dearly trusts. Once, in exasperation, I whined, “but Buzzy, these are Mario Batali leftovers!” He looked at me with a why-didn’t-you-say-that-in-the-first-place shrug, and returned to his dog dish to enjoy his prize. (True story)

There are leftovers and there are leftovers! A thought that made me reconsider of an old cookbook – MICHAEL FIELD’S CULINARY CLASSICS and IMPROVISATIONS: Creative Leftovers Made From Main Course Masterpieces.

When I have the time, I love trekking through the dust of old cookbooks. I have some books that go back to Depression cooking – with such titles as GAS Cookery Book and The Progressive Farmer’s Southern Cookbook. (One never knows when a tasty recipe for Raccoon will come in handy when guests arrive unexpectedly: "First you shoot a raccoon…")