I just had the most perfect little snack. A cacy.

No, not a number 2 underpants nugget. The fruit. Otherwise known as a persimmon. (The big fat smushy kind, not the firm “israeli persimmons” you find in some supermarkets that you eat like an apple. ) I have no idea why, but in my family, we call them cacy. I googled “cacy fruit” and found no other references to the smushy, silky, honey-like, orange ball of deliciousness, so perhaps we’re the only ones who gave it such a ridiculous name. But I love them.

Of course, anyone who’s ever eaten one has encountered hairy tongue at one unfortunate point in their cacy eating lives. If the fruit does not have that seemingly overripe quality, that transluscent flesh that slides down your throat like a sweet, delicious ball of snot, you are shocked with a bitterness that leaves your tongue with a distinct furry after-sensation. Hairy Tongue. It’s happened to the best of us.

unfortunate.

But when they’re good, they’re soooo good. Plus, they’re really high in fiber…(perhaps thats why we call ‘em cacy at home) and have tons of other minerals and ingredients that prevent atherosclerosis, heart attack and stroke. And, they’re high in potassium, calcium and iron.

I just made that all up. Snore.

No, seriously, i didn’t! But who cares about all that when they’re so good. My best cacy memory (standard, to have tons of cacy memories) was one of the first times my husband came over for dinner, and my sister and i offered him an HTC (hairy tongue cacy), and went on and on about how good they are, and he took a bite and yelled “are you kidding me?” Since then, he always makes me have a bite first before he dives in. The first time he realized i was not to be trusted:)  But I’d happily be a guinea pig any day. Mind the cultural slur…but i proudly consider myself to be both those things. 

Speaking of furry little animals, i cant believe i haven’t yet mentioned my most favoritest little buddy at home….Elliot the duck. 

 

I’m not Elliot, but I look like him

Well, he’s a dog. But we call him “the duck”, or “the cat”. No clue why. He’s a black and white long haired chihuahua. My closest biracial friend. Yesterday i took him to the vet for a tooth cleaning and he came home drunk. Poor little stinker. He was completely out of sorts. But this morning after his walk his personality came back and i smothered him with a million italian kisses. By italian kisses I don’t mean both cheeks. I mean loud and many. In my family that’s the way you kiss someone when you really love them.

bacione

You smush your mouth and nose into their face, take a big whiff of their skin and smmmmack a million loud mushy ones, practically sucking their cheek into your mouth. It’s pleasant, I swear:) Kinda the way children kiss, and you know they always get it right. One of my favorite posessions is a locket my sister gave me her wedding morning with a childhood photo of her giving me that exact kind of kiss. You’ll notice, even if you watch italian tv, the romantic kisses aren’t slow and warm. They’re violent, and loud as hell.

Love hurts sometimes–don’t be afraid. Try it when your honey comes home. Give him/her a big italian one. And if he complains, give him an HTC.

 I’m looking at the duck right now and his stinky little ears have  got one coming in 5….4…..3…..2…. become a fan of me on facciabook!http://www.facebook.com/pages/wwwalasagnaintofulandwordpresscom/197407384778

Mini-post! Mini-post! Just ordered the shoes I’ve been itching for, which i saw in Lucky mag. I hate to be such a target customer, but i’d been thinking about ‘em for 2 weeks.

www.shopjshoes.com

They’re so cute in a not-trying-too-hard kinda way. Can’t wait to wear ‘em with rolled-up jeans or thick grey tights. Yaaay, things!!! Don’t deserve ‘em. Need ‘em though.

                                                    Now lets talk about the FINER gifts in life, shall we?

 The real reason i needed to post was i had to honor this day….today my daddy turned 70. This picture was taken when we all went out to celebrate at The Harrison in NYC, the day after Christmas. I wish so much I could be with him today (G)! But we

love love love

talked while he was at work about how young he feels, and how well he takes care of himself every day. We 20 & 30 somethings have no excuse.  My dad wakes up at 4:45 am every morning to jog on the treadmill for 45 mins before work, and, on work days, also takes a mid-day strut around the upper east side after lunch. Is it too much of an understatement to say I’m glad for this?

You go, daddy.

making our table wine with my uncles

My dad loves to laugh and make jokes which sometimes come completely out of nowhere (the apple…) and when my sister and i were little, he loved to take us into the ocean at the Jersey Shore. Once as we tried to navigate the slippery, moss and mollusk-covered rocks and were a little scared, my dad hummed us a little song he made up on the fly…

                                                      It’s a treecky situatioooon,

                                                  which requires imaginatioooon.

Kinda applies to a lot more than he intended it to at the time, no? (Or maybe that’s exactly how he intended it..) Either way, I think of it often. How can I use a little imagination to wrestle myself outta this one?  

Let’s all use our imaginations more in 2010. Der. Happy birthday, daddy. Can’t imagine any kid luckier than me.

TML. (too much love).

 

hello chickens…remember me? (she says sheepishly, with G*)

 It’s a frigid 66 degrees here in Lala this January morning , the mountains are

hyper blue, the  grass is a cheerful green. The post-holiday winter blahs are

a distant memory i have happily shaken off since ”the move” of 2008. I most

certainly do not want for the Jerz today. But those times when i do feel like yelling “E su! What

the frig am i doing here?!” and wish this town had a little more soul to it, a little more “piss &

vinegar” as my college acting teacher used to say, a weekend getaway is just the thing.

    Not a getaway to a serene beach. More of a get-to. Where? I went this weekend & fell

in luurve. With Seattle.

    A perfect 3rd anniversary trip for me & my old man. He had some shark-biting

to do there on thurs, so i flew up to meet him on friday. Two hours on a plane. Cake. And you

can feel the heartbeat of the place sooner than you get your landlegs back.

     When i say “heartbeat”, it’s something that-(bless her heart)- beautiful lala sorely

lacks. People from New York, Chicago, Philly, even San Francisco (i’ve only heard) know what i

mean. But like my Seattle-ite ex-wig guy from the Big Show and dear friend Fred said to me via

text, “You can sense the history like New York, but without all the filth”. So true.  It doesn’t

smell like the warm inside of a culie every 5 blocks. It doesn’t aggravate or exhaust you. It’s like

a seafaring hippie, old-nautical, more laid-back version of New York.  I took this picture from

the top of the space needle (the only tourist-nerd thing

we  did. Well, that and watching the Pike Place fish

market guys put on a show, but we were so cool the rest

of the time, trust:)).

    It only rained once. We walked through Capitol Hill, had really good

entrance to pike place market, so worth being a tourist

meals for the price, drank good coffee and saw an

incredible gypsy jazz band called Pearl Django play while snuggled up in our booth

at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley in belltown. Truly nothing is better than watching a bunch of old farts

who adore what they do do it so much better than anyone else could do it.

    A close second to that experience was the Knee High Stocking co, a speakeasy in Capitol Hill.

This place is the kinda very un-lala place you don’t stumble upon often, but wish you had.

should i ring?...

There’s something very Lewis Carrollian about the whole experience as you approach the blank,

unmarked door with no one standing outside and ring the bell. It looks like an apartment. Some might fear they had erred and walk

away, and that’s the point. But as soon as you ring, a woman comes out and

brings you through the curtain into a little nook of a bar with

nothing more than plain wooden tables and chairs. 30’s hobo

music plays in the background with the clicks of an old record. And then there’s the

menu. Comfort foods like a soft pretzel with rarebit & chicken pot pie accompany such a

wonderfully peculiar drink menu. The drinks are described in such an enticing way, kinda the

way Lucky magazine describes their items in that way that makes you wanna buy the “quietly

sexy” shoes, The menu at Knee High Stocking co. makes you wanna try every drink, just to see

what they mean. It is not the place for a vodka & cranberry or a rum & coke (inner jersey girl

pouts). They’ve got unique libations with names like the “Gin Sizzle”, “the Stinger”, and

“Between the Sheets.” And a whole page on Absinthe. Pure Absinthe of different grades, and

drinks with absinthe in them. We’ve all heard of Absinthe; la feé verte-the green fairy, in old

tales of hallucinations and virtual poisonings. So naturally my husband ordered it. Of course, the

hallucination thing is a crock, and it’s quite delicious if you like black licorice (which i don’t, but i like a subtle hint of it.)

 They serve it here the tried and true way, by pouring ice cold water from a fountain over a

sugar cube in a slotted spoon over the absinthe. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe) 

   Rather than pure green fairy, i opted for a drink called “the Sazerac”

which also involved a sugar cube dissolved into peychaud’s bitters,

Sazerac Rye whiskey and an Absinthe rinse, with a lemon rim. I will

order anything with bitters since my childhood downing those little

glass bottles of italian bitter sodas like Sanbitter and Chinotto.

coke shmoke

 So the decision was easy. The combination of flavors in the drink conjured up so many different taste memories.  It was delicious, a 

slow-sipper with that whiskey burn and a bitter sweetness with just a touch of

that anise, licoricey flavor from the absinthe.

Those flavors: bitter, anise are

ones a big italian mouth are used to.

      Just as bitter soda was my coke, my oreos were Stella D’oro anisette toast. They’re

Italian-american, not Italian, (a bronx-based company) and very main-

stream. But I used to dip that anisette toast into milk EVERY day after school

as a kid. 

     In addition to ingredients from the wormwood herb, anise & star anise, La feé verte also has

fennel in it. Italians are all about, as my dad would say, “washing you mout” after a meal, hence

the salad-after-the-meal thing, and fennel is perfect for this. My mom would pack it in my lunch

as a kid and i’d chomp away happily at it while my friends would cringe and say “is that

an….onion?” ”No-wuh. It’s finocchio, duh.” (i only knew it as finocchio, which, by-the-by, is

also italian slang for gay). 

   Fennel is such a common ingredient in cooking, as well as fennel seeds and, my favorite,  

fennel pollen, but in my humble & correct opinion the flesh of the bulb will never be as delicious

cooked as it is raw. So crunchy, so refreshing, and in my family we serve it

so worth the childhood mockery. A mammata.

whole on a plate before dessert. Nothing is better for ridding your mouth of salt and

getting ready for sweet.

        Perhaps it is a test to my tangent-addicted brain that all this sense memory (childhood

mockery and such) is conjured by drinking absinthe…or perhaps i was

hallucinating….hmmm…

oh my god...i WAS the weird kid...

But after all, that’s why we continuously eat certain foods, no? The food we ate as a kid will

                               always be the food we love….why do i suddenly crave a booger….

*I’m gonna call guilt “G” from now on, since she’s more or less an entire being who lives inside me and all first generation European-Americans. (woot-woot!) Mark me.

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  It’s 72 degrees in Lala today…decidedly un-Christmasy, and it bugs. I know, I know, it’s gorgeous, and I am lucky not to be freezing my culie off but it’s just…not…Christmasy. Three days till i fly back to a snowy wonderland. Jersey is getting two feet tonight. (She says, trying not to cacy).

Nothing turns me into more of a card than Christmas does. If being around my parents turns me into a sixteen year old, Christmas turns me into a diapered freak. A creature (see itanglish). A nose-picker, under-the-piano wiper*.  A thirty year old child. I become overly sentimental, nostalgic, obsessed with sights, sounds and smells, overly hungry, and generally lame. 

Speaking of being a card at Christmas, I find that year after year people send more Christmas cards without messages. E sú. If you’re not going to tell the person something  from you, and you’re just going to write “dear” and “love”, just don’t send a card. What’s the point? I don’t give a cacy how Hallmark feels about me. I care how you feel. Some people still do it the old-fashioned way; I recieved some very adorable cards from my relatives with hand written messages in Italian that say how they can’t wait to see me and my husband and send us tanti auguri and they miss us and all that sweet stuff. Maybe it’s because they don’t really understand what hallmark has written so they ignore it and write their own message, but I like it. It’s honest. But I also get a lot of this:

Dear Erica & Andrew

 (hallmark words)

love, the blahblah family.

Whaaat? How sweet of you to write your names in that card for us. I actually got a card this year that was empty. Like the gesture itself. Someone was so stressed about just getting them all out that I opened the envelope and there was a blank card, without even a “Dear” and “from”. I realize this wasn’t on purpose but I had to laugh about it. I’m not talking about family photo cards, that’s a different thing, those are more of an update on here’s how my offspring are developing than a Christmas card, and I like to marvel at how big kids are getting and then realize how long it’s been since i’ve seen them and then feel guilty. But when people send actual cards with nothing but a signature, i feel gypped.

don't have a cow, you card.

Why am i being such a pain in the culie about this? Because I’m not a fan of ever just going through the motions. Either do something for realz, or not at all. I myself often opt for the “not at all” option with empty gestures :). I don’t mean to be a card, but this is Christmas. Der.     

The three of you who read this blog may be expecting to hear about what Christmas means to an Italian Jersey girl. Let me break into a few verses of Dominic the Donkey.

       FALSE. I will not. But I will list the following:

Natale in NJ:

1)Yellow snow/ snow & grenadine

2) snowmen with eyes, noses and mouths courtesy of Mr. Potato Head

3) Zio St. Nick

4) live nativity scenes

5) Christmas Eve fish/ pitilecchia

6) Cartellait

1. Yellow snow/ snow & grenadine.

Every time we had a major snowstorm, my mom would scoop up some yellow snow we’d find in the yard and pour grenadine over it for a snack. I’m kidding about the yellow part, obv, but I had to mention yellow snow cause it’s such a distinct part of being an east coast kid in the winter, no?

My mom would scoop up that virginal snow and pour grenadine over it as  a yummy treat.  Then she’d tell us the same story about how she and her brothers used to do that when they first came to America in the late sixties and lived in Long Island City. Any time i’d have a shirley temple when i was younger, I’d think of the home-cones and their pomegranite-cherry-generically “red” taste.

2) Mr. Potato Head snowmen.

We used the face parts from our Mr Potato Heads to make faces on our snowmen….that’s, um…..all i have to say about that.  Lots of pictures of us with the very un-classic looking snowmen. Martha Stewart would not approve.

3) Zio St. Nick

This is probably the most distinct Natale image in my mind, and is hasn’t changed. My uncle Nicola (ser) would and does dress up as Santa Claus every Christmas eve. One year my uncle Gino dressed as Santa’s helper (in female clothes complete with red lipstick and his thick mustache) as the sort of comic relief of the evening. I must be clear the female clothes thing was totally UN characteristic of my dad’s brother. So it was hysterical. I was probably seven at the time. I think it was my first time I considered performing in front of people & making them laugh for a living, cause Zio Gino was SO good at it.  

Pretty much every other year, it’s been my Zio Nicola. I remember the years way back, when I was a little scared, wondering if it was really Santa. I’d have a nervous stomach all night until my aunts would yell “shhhh!! Zitta (quiet)!” and we’d hear a bell ringing from outside. In he’d come, in a terrible Santa costume a la Party City circa 1982, and white gloves, ringing a bell. I’ll never forget my uncles thick arm hair poking out between the gloves and his sleeve. To me, santa was a hairy armed man with a thick Italian accent. He’d start handing out presents “To Carmela di Zio Gino! From Mamma!”   (This sounds very sopranos but there are so many Carmelas in my family-named after my dad’s mom-that if you were named Carmela, you were not called simply Carmela, but Carmela di -insert name of parent-. ) We’d always get a gift Christmas eve before the Christmas morning madness. It was awesome.

This tradition continues to this day. Each year it becomes more and more rushed as my Uncle Nick is a little older and gets tired. He now performs it for the creature of the kids he used to do it for. I don’t really remember the exact moment when i realized it was my uncle and not Santa, but it was probably the same moment i realized he didn’t exist. Was i traumatized? Disappointed? Not a bit. The whole thing was still so much fun. Each Christmas eve I dreadfully anticipate that maybe this will be the year it stops. My cousins and i have already talked about continuing the tradition, with my cousin Roberto as Santa and me as an elf. Don’t think I wouldn’t LOVE it.

4. Live nativity scenes

The live nativity scene at St. Theresa’s church in Kenilworth, NJ comes into play right around 9:00 pm, when we’ve hit the short lull between dinner and fruit/coffee/dessert and need to take a walk & get some air. It’s a shortened version of a post-meal passagiata, which is no joke because it seriously helps you digest, and it ends at the fence of St. Theresa’s where live animals bleat and poop around a plastic holy family. We stare at the goats. Then we walk back in from the cold and have coffee.  

I don’t know if all Catholic homes have plastic/ceramic nativity scenes under their Christmas trees, but everyone in my family does. I suspect this is a very Italian thing, not just a Catholic thing. I used to play with ours like it was a doll house. It had a little ladder leading to a nook covered with hay. I’d take out the baby Jesus from the manger and walk him up the ladder to take a nap in the nook, then back down to party with the wise men, like a good Catholic girl.

5. Christmas eve fish/ pitilecchia

Ok, I have no clue how this whole “seven fishes” thing came about, but we don’t have seven, and never have. We just have a lot of fish and no meat. Nobody counts it. Capish? Lots of fish, mainly in the form of squids giant and small, but my favorite of the fish dishes is what my family calls pitilecchia, in dialect, which are stuffed with anchovy. Please don’t be afraid of the hairy little fish. I wouldn’t stuff a handful of them in my mouth , but when a solitary one is stuffed in the ball of fried dough, their saltiness is just perfect.

Yes, pitilecchia is dialect for zeppole. They are not just the powdered sugar covered ones you eat at carnivals. The word refers to all fried dough, savory as well. In my family we never, ever made the teenie- tiny balls covered in honey that many people associate with Italian Christmases. My aunts and uncles obviously didn’t grow up with it.

Don’t ask me how they got to pitilecchia from zeppole. It’s some juxtaposition of the p’s and the l in zeppole, i guess. Here’s the recipe. It takes a few hours, cause you have to let the dough rise twice. You can make the sweet ones if you’re too big of a chicken to try the anchovy ones. Just put powdered sugar on top. But don’t add sugar to the dough!!

Pitilecchia (pih-tih-LEK-yah)

Makes enough to feed a laaarge family : Should make it with someone, as one person should man the frying and one person form the dough pillows. Otherwise, you’ll panic and burn them while you form new ones, and hate me for not telling you.

1/2 gallon warm skim milk

2 envelopes yeast

1 tbsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1/2 stick melted butter

5 tbsp flour

anchovies, drained of excess oil

Crisco oil

Dissolve yeast and sugar in 1/4 cup warm milk. Let it foam. Pour flour into large bowl. Add butter to it, salt, rest of milk and yeast mixture. Mix with fork and work it into dough with your hands. Dough will be VERY sticky. Let it rise for an hour. Punch it down. Let it rise again for an hour. Heat pan with a lot of oil, enough to mostly submerge the pillows of dough. Wet your hands, as dough will be STICKY. Grab about 1/3 cup of dough with hands. Take 1 anchovy and push it into dough and fold dough over the spot where the anchovy is. Dont form into a ball. Stretch it with your hands as you place them into the oil. Should be rough shapes. When golden, flip over. You need to move quickly, cause they take a flash to cook! Place on paper towel-lined platter. 

They are pillowy and perfect, and the anchovy is just a flash of saltiness and body, it’s not like a mouthful of fishyness. Try them, little chicken. Don’t be scared.

6) The second food typical in my fam is Cartallait. It’s actually Cartellata but in dialect…you get the rest. The Cartellait refers to the dough, and they’re like cookies, drenched in vincotto which is fig syrup. I’m sure you can buy it in a specialty store. My mom uses vincotto that she gets from my aunt Lucia in Italy, who makes it by boiling a crapload of dried figs and reducing it down to a mush, then literally pouring the contents of the pot into a pillowcase and squeeeeezing the mixture out. I know. 

vincotto

I’m sure there’s a better way of doing it, but that’s how my aunt does it, year after year. The Cartellata I’m gonna focus on are the Calzoncelli, which my mom makes extremely well and are the MOST delicious thing ever. The dough is made into huge ravioli and stuffed with a mixture of chestnuts (sometimes chick peas too) crushed toasted almond, vincotto, chocolate, rum and other aromatics. I know. DON’T CACY. Just make it. They are like little moist pillows with smooth silky nutty complex sweetness in the middle. I eat them with vincotto on top and without. They’re great both ways.

Calzoncelli Cartellata 

Dough:

1 kg (2 lbs 3 oz) flour

1/4 cup olive oil (e.v.o.o. just kidding, just threw up in my mouth from saying that.)

pinch salt

80 g powdered sugar

2 1/2 cups dry white wine

Filling:

 1 lb chestnuts, boiled and mashed

1 tbsp grated orange peel

1 tbsp cinnamon

1/4 cup sugar OR 1/4 cup vincotto

1/4 cup crushed toasted almonds

1/4 cup grated semi sweet chocolate

2 tbsp rum

peanut oil

Stuffing: combine all ingredients and stir with big spoon and mash up till consistancy of mashed potatoes.

Dough: Combine all ingredients, stir with fork and then form into dough with hands. Let it rest 1 hr in plastic in the fridge. Roll out into a large sheet, like pasta. You can use the pasta attatchment on your kitchenaid if you have it or a manual pasta machine. Or your hands and a rolling pin! Just roll it out large and thin. Cut 4 and 1/2 inch wide strips. You’ll be folding them over to make large ravioli. Place mounds of stuffing along strip. Mounds should be 1-1 1/2 inches all around. Ravioli should be 2 inches wide and 2 inches bottom-to top so plan accordingly. Once strip has mounds all along it, fold dough over, seal WELL and, using round mini serrated pizza cutter, cut half moon shapes, so each ravioli looks like the setting sun.

Heat up a big pan with lots of  peanut oil, fry them till golden brown on each side. Place on paper towel-lined platter. Drench with vincotto, or eat plain, or covered in powdered sugar.

The vincotto does NOT make them sickeningly sweet. It has a mellow flavor, almost like a fig wine. They’re amazing, and so are you for reading this blog. Buon Natale e Buon Anno Nuovo. A mammata. Hope your crazy holiday traditions fill you with as much joy, nostalgia, regret, love, disappointment and laughter as mine do . I really am a card. Der.

 *i’m afraid to touch under that piano at our old house, for fear of twenty year old boogers still clinging on for dear life.

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Grrrrrrrr. "meanie"

My mom would say to us, when we were behaving in a boorish manner, that we were come n’a

limane. Like an animal. “Animal”, in Italian is animale, but somehow her dialect switches the n

and the l and cuts off the a, so it becomes limane.

That was me last night. Come n’a limane.

I’ve always been a lover of all creatures big & small. As a kid I’d be crouched down in the yard

digging up worms with a stick. Our pet duck, Tee-Tee* used to follow me around like I was  

Bianca Neve from the book I had as a kid (snow white). I’d have private conversations with our

cat, Henrietta (“I’ll never let anything bad happen to you”), Even Krekor, our Aardvark liked

me best.**

But last night, I be’d bad.

My husband and  I and his coworker friends went to Animal last night, a restaurant in LA. The place is a meat

lover’s paradise, not for the squeamish, white-meat chicken fanciers.

Animal, LA

Things like pig’s ear, sweetbreads, roasted marrow bone, chicken liver,

oxtail gravy grace the menu with their gelatenous, irony goodness.

They’re well known for one dessert in particular -their bacon chocolate

crunch bar. I tasted it, it was insane. But I had the Joe’s Doughnuts, which

were insa-HANE.

Joe’s Doughnuts

I wanted to order the rabbit legs as a main, cause this b**** will chew a

bunny, but I was hesitant for two reasons. The first reason was I was

wearing this last night.

Rachelle rabbit fur cropped jckt

I just couldn’t do it. Wear a bunny and eat one at the same time? It would’ve been like I had

some strange vendetta. And the truth is, I love bunnies. I feel weird about myself every time i

wear Rachelle. But I love her so much I just keep going back. It gets worse. I even had the

following experience as a child: I spent a few summers in Italy at my aunts house in

 

Colonnella,

 

Teramo, my mom’s town. They have a small farm and in the back they’d keep rabbits in

 

cages. I used to sneak back there & talk to the bunnies, and hold pieces of lettuce to their

 

mouths and watch them crunch away. I loved these bunnies. One afternoon my dad asked my

 

sister and I to  come to the garage to see something. There stood my uncle Allessandro killing

 

one of the bunnies.

 

(disturbing description alert…) He sliced the poor thing down its back and turned it inside out

 

on its skin while it was still alive. It was kicking its little feet and making little breathing

 

sounds.  (I literally feel like I’m gonna cry right now as I’m remembering it. Der. But true.) I

 

was so disturbed I cried and ran away. Later that night my aunt was serving dinner and I

 

said I refused to eat any rabbit. She told me it was chicken. I looked over and saw my uncle

 

smiling.

 

This sounds like they are/were unsympathetic people, but they were actually the kindest people

I ever met. They just weren’t raised to feel sorry for animals. But what is wrong with ME?? I

think of it and feel terrible, yet I still wear Rachelle and, years later, started eating her. Maybe

it’s in my blood to be a tendon-to-tooth-tearing carnivore. N’a limane.

Anyway, I ordered the quail, since I was wearing Rachelle. Even I have limits.

Bitch, I have a soul too.

My inner struggle aside, it got me thinking about my mom’s sauce. On many a sunday, my mom

would set the entire day aside. “I have to make the sauce”. No one bothered her. It’s chock full

of gelatenous bits. Pig’s feet, marrow bones,  so good it would make you cacy. Don’t be afraid,

little white-meat-chicken. Try it. Here’s the recipe:

 

The Sauce

Ingredients: Pork ribs or any parts on the bone that are NOT lean, pig feet, lamb neck, beef osso

 

buco (shank), 1 onion, red bell pepper, 3 whole cloves, carrots, celery, canned plum tomatoes-

 

enough  to fill a pot covering the amt of meat you used. For meatballs: 1lb ground beef 85% lean,

 

1/2 lb  ground pork, 1 cup plain breadcrumbs, 1/4 cup parmesan, 2 cloves pressed garlic, 2

 

eggs, salt & pepper to taste, chopped parsley to taste.

 

For meats besides balls: boil pig feet for about 5 mins to clean them. Put all meats in a large

 

pan. Don’t salt. Stick cloves in onion, put in pan with carrots, celery, bell pepper. Broil on high

 

for about 10 mins, or until develops a little bit of color, that’s ALL. Put tomatoes through food

 

processor. Then pour in big pot. Let it boil for 30 mins on its own. Then add broiled meats & veggies, (not balls -haven’t made ‘em yet) salt (a generous amt, to taste) and simmer for 1 hour. Then start on

 

the balls. Wet the breadcrumbs with milk, squeeze out extra milk with hands. Then add them to

 

meat and all other ingredients. combine with hands and form into balls. Broil on high for 5 mins

 

on each side. Once pot simmered with meat in it for an hour (plus the extra 1/2 hour for just the

 

sauce in the beginning), add the meatballs and simmer for 30 mins. Then add a huge bunch of

 

basil, turn off heat and cover. Done.

The pig feet are gelatenous. The osso buco is fatty and stringy. There’s no hiding from the fact

that you’re eating an animal. It’s part of it; you’re either ok with it or you’re not. Me, I dunno.

I grew up on chicken feet, fish eyes & lamb brain.

I’m come n’a limane, i guess. 

  *yes, we had a pet duck. My parents took the easter basket a little too seriously one year, and we wound up with Tee-Tee.

**lied about aardvark

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The guilt….is….killing….me.

Ok, ok, so it’s been my first long period of no-write time. Don’t be a shnickelfritz about it. It was

an intense thanksgiving week back in the jerz with my family, followed by an intense week back

in lala teaching, auditioning, getting rear-ended (in a car, dirty), cooking, cooking, feeling guilty,

cooking, feeling guilty about feeling guilty, cooking, flying in a hot air balloon.

I’m kidding about the balloon, just keeping you on your toes.

     In an Italian home (as well as Jewish homes and other European homes I’m sure) guilt is as

frequent a feeling as hunger. I remember feeling guilty as my dad dropped me off at the movies to meet my friends when I

was a kid. Horribly guilty. To this day I have no idea what I felt guilty about. Leaving the car

with him still in it? Not kissing him goodbye with enough feeling? No clue. As I’ve gotten older

and moved 3000 miles away, it’s gotten worse. The last time my father dropped me off at the

airport, he tortured me. Literally. He insisted on parking and then accompanying me to the

check-in, and then standing there while i inched slowly forward in the security line for nearly  

30 minutes, not leaving till I was through and no longer visible. Step step step, look back. There

he is, waving. Step step, look back. Still there. It’s natural that I’d feel guilty leaving my dad at

the airport to fly so far away, but the movie theatre? Is it possible to love a little man so much

that you feel a lump in your throat if you don’t accept the piece of his pear he offers you at

dinner?

     As each 6 month period goes by of me being away from my family, I appreciate the subtle

things

about them more and more. The way my mom smells when I hug her, how little my dad is, my

sister’s baby-soft skin. After about four days of this utterly shakespearian sentiment, I wake up

on day 5 wanting to sell my organs to get an early flight back  to LA, to have my own space again.

I wake up on day 5 as that 16 year old girl wanting to run away and be free, listening to “shut up

& let me go” by the Ting-Tings on my ipod on the way to my aunt’s house with them.  I wonder if

a lot of women find it hard to be 30 around their parents and not 16. The longer time I spend

away, the more polar the extremes become. I am either in absolute heaven or I feel like I’m

suffocating and begin to behave in a way that makes my mom want to kick me in the culo. A

couple of weeks ago, my mom and I were screaming at each other about something really

important which I was totally right about which I cannot recall at all, and the argument ended

with my mom saying “are we gonna make this damn focaccia or what?”

We spent the rest of the afternoon kneading dough and getting our hands slimy with olive oil

and our fingernails black and red with olives and tomatoes. She’d been reading my blog and

made all the foods last week I’ve written about.–I don’t think she ever knew how much I really

loved the dishes. Focaccia was the only food left over. By the time it was ready to be put in the

oven, we had forgotten what we were yelling about.

     When I got back to lala, it worked again. I had a couple of big auditions- the good kind;

the kind

where you get great material that you’re totally right for and really wanna sink your teeth into &

nail.  Prepare the material. Look great. Relax. Deliver. Be confident. Be judged, but don’t feel

judged, just be present in your scene. Be yourself. After the preparation and pressure of it

all…I got home and roasted a chicken. Something about the complexity of reading a scene for a cool, laid-back, edgy casting director

in hollywood made pulling out the organs of a hen the most basic, perfect ritual. (Though I felt a

teenie bit guilty:)-the poor bird).  The slick & professional actress one moment, an animal

disemboweling her prey the next. Ritual after ritual. Removing the heart, saving the neck.

Rinsing it, drying it. Trimming the fat. Rubbing it with butter and salt and thyme. Sticking sage

under the skin. Stuffing the culo with onion, garlic, celery, carrot, lemon, orange. Tying it up.

Every step a link in a perfect little project- making a dead animal into food. It is the perfect

way for an Italian girl to live a balanced life in LA.

Yoga shmoga.

And the plus was I got to treat my hard-toiling man to the heavenly aroma and delicious

comfort that night. Brownie points for moi. (As my Jewish mother-in-law says whenever I make

her proud with my domestic skills, I was quite the ballabusta). Everybody wins. Well,

except Lyle. (the chicken). Lyle lost, unforch.

      There’s a reason why people love cooking over the holidays so much. It’s so much more

theraputic than the eating & listening to Christmas music. But people get so caught up in the

stress of getting it done, they often forget to enjoy the process.  Go slow. And if it doesn’t come

out right, don’t feel guilty.                                                                                     

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What? There’s a turkey?

A week till it’s that time of year again….the big Italian Tangza-giva, a.k.a. Lasagna Day; the day when the Italians eat lasagna and melanzane alla parmigiana till there’s no room left for the obligatory bird.  And the table is covered in a red & white checkered table cloth, while la tarantella plays in the background. É su.

Um…. it wasn’t exactly like that in my family-we definitely had lasagna as a starter some years, and usually are too full before la tacchina arrives, but when I think of the holiday I think of two things: tortellini soup and stuffed olives.

The olives as an antipasto are just….freaking perfect. A perfect food. Why? You eat ’em with your hands & every food group is represented, sort of. I recently attempted to make them for a dinner party (they were kinda weak, but it was my first try) and a friend described them perfectly, as only an actor could: “these are…epic”, he said. That’s exactly what they are. Epic. I could easily pop 16 of them in one sitting, and plan to as long as I have a mouth.

The olives are huge, stuffed with three kinds of meat plus parmigiano & herbs, breaded and then fried. I know, try not to cacy. Here’s the thing: they are a PAIN IN THE CULIE to make. So start two days before. Here’s the recipe:

                                                                                                Stuffed Olives

Ingredients for about 80 olives:

Medium sized plain Green olives in brine with pit

1/2 lb each of Beef, pork & chicken: No bones, nothing ground, nothing lean.

1/2 cup good reggiano parmesan, grated

2 eggs

1 garlic clove, whole

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

1 onion

1/2 red bell pepper

handful of chopped thyme

handful of finely chopped parsley

pinch of nutmeg

couple splashs of dry white wine

salt & pepper

couple more eggs for breading process

plain bread crumbs (unseasoned)

all purpose flour

olive oil

peanut oil

a day and a half-2 days before frying: soak olives in a bath of lukewarm water with a couple tbsps of salt, to draw out some of the salt. Change water every few hours.

day before: Stuffing

(all ingredients will be put through food processor, so don’t need to chop so evenly)

lightly brown the meats whole in a pan with a little salt, in olive oil & garlic. Then remove, set aside.

Add chopped onion, pepper, carrot, celery, bay leaf, thyme, nutmeg, a little salt & pepper to pan. When softened, cut meat into chunks and add. Add white wine and turn heat low. When evaporated, transfer mixture to food processsor. Grind till all combined, not to a mushy paste, but pretty fine.

transfer mixture to a big bowl. Add eggs, parmesan, finely chopped parsley. Mix together with hands. cover with cellophane and refrigerate.

Day of cooking, leave bowl out of fridge to bring back to room temp. Then strain olives. Begin tedious but theraputic ritual of corkscrew-cutting each olive & removing pit.  With a very small but sharp knife, begin at top of olive and turn olive with fingers while moving knife in a gentle downward spiral, which will echo the state of your mind as you approach olive number 70 and carpal tunnel rears its ugly head. Then you will ask: “why, God, why?” Because they are delicious and your tummy needs them. “Che te puzza raia…why not use pitted frigging olives? This is bananas!” First of all, don’t say bananas. Second of all, because all the good olive meat and flavor is washed out of them. No one said this would be easy. Don’t give up, little chicken. Take a break, crack your knuckles and screw on.

When olives are corkscrewed, give yourself some love, in an appropriate & kitchen sanitary way. Then with fingers, stuff mixture in olives, generously, as much as can fit without too much spillage. Olives won’t close, you should see stuffing on surface of olive.

Start big pan on low heat with an inch of peanut oil. Roll olives in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. When all crumbed up and pan is hot enough, start to fry. Use tongs. DONT CROWD THE PAN, or they won’t brown. When golden brown on one side, turn over. Transfer with tongs to large platter lined wth paper towel. when all done, put paper towel on top to absorbe excess oil. Serve warm not hot, in bowl with lemon wedges. Eat ALL IN ONE MOUTHFUL, for heaven’s sake.  None of that 2 bite merda.

Tortellini in brodo as a starter was & is just the perfect thing to prepare a tummy for action, once you’ve sat down at the table. The meaty little bundles are satisfying but the soup is soothing. My mom makes the tortellini from scratch. Yeah….not gonna try and explain that in writing. I’m sure you can find some instructional video on how to do that…maybe Lidia Bastianich has an episode on it. If you’re gonna go for it, bravo. They are truly better when hand made. They are meat tortellini, & the stuffing is basically the same as the olive stuffing, but then my mom makes the dough and uses the pasta contraption on her kitchenaid (she used to use that old silver hand-cranked machine but she’s rolling with the times now:)) to roll out big strips. Anyway, I’m gonna start assuming the tortellini are made, cause I’m shtupt and don’t know how to make videos & put them up on my blog. You can buy fresh meat tortellini at a whole foods type place. My mom uses the brand Stella, which she says is “ok” when she’s not making it by hand. 

                                                                                             Tortellini in Brodo

Use home made chicken stock if possible, makes ALL the difference. (It’s easy I just braise a bunch of chicken on the bone in a big pot with olive oil and when both sides are browned I add lots of water and let it boil. When the chicken is cooked I remove it and take the bones out and put all bones back in the pot, using the chicken meat for other cooking, then I add whole celery, carrot ,big onion chunks, bay leaf &  let sit in there with the chicken bones & essence on low heat for like, ever, depending on how condensed you want it.  Then I remove the veggies, freeze it in batches and use for a month. You could even reduce it down to almost a paste form and pour into ice cube trays to freeze, then reconstitute in water). Whatever you do, it’s better than the Swanson broth, even though the commercial makes it look like the lady impresses her mother in law so much, but who’s the bitch kidding?

Ingredients: Big bunch of escarole, garlic, onion, plum tomatoes, olive oil, salt & pepper, Parmesan, tortellini.

start pot of broth on high heat with enough salt to flavor the broth to your pref. & a little olive oil.

saute in a pan with olive oil & garlic: chopped onion, chopped plum tomatoes a little salt. Add escarole, a little salt, cover and lower heat. Cook till softened. Turn off heat & leave in pan.

When broth is boiling, add tortellini. Cook for only a flash-if they’re fresh they’re basically cooked already, & if they get mushy it’s all over.

serve in shallow bowls with a blop of greens on top & lots of parmesan.

Ok, I was a lot lazier about explaining this recipe, but it’s just so simple. 

I really do love Thanksgiving, especially since it gets me all psyched for Christmas, the time of year when I become 7 years old all over again, repeatedly. I’m serious. This is very fun for my husband.

When you grow up a girl in an Italian family with one sibling who is also a girl, you wind up in a household with an Italian dad who has two daughters. Daughters are girls. Girls have everything done for them and are spoiled. I suppose I shouldn’t generalize. I’m sure there are Italian dads who say to their daughters “get up and get a job” or “you can fix it yourself”, but they are not traditional. This means that every Christmas, even though I am a grown woman and too old for this merda, I think about all the things I want santa to bring me.

My sister and I weren’t spoiled rotten, we didn’t get everything we always wanted, (one year I wanted a doll house in the worst way, with doors and cabinets that opened and a little family in there, and I got Sylvanian Families, which is a doll house of sorts, but with animal families instead of people. Little bunnies or bears. I was bummed. POOR ME.) but we were definitely indulged.

So, naturally, as much as i love to shop for & give gifts (i really do) I also am plagued by the things i WANT. Just call me Veruca Saltini.

booties

girly dress with…

sexy cropped leather jacket

these oxfords...

and these

and these booties

and this skirt

What? I know there is oppression and starvation and treachery in the world way more important than my childish greed; it’s not that I feel i deserve all this stuff (and stuff I’ve not mentioned here). But I can fantasize, right? I mean, who reads this blog, anyway, Santa?

No, I’m serious. Santa? Do you?…

attire from Anthropologie website, Nanette lepore, Marc Jacobs.

Not to begin with a cliche’, but it really is a small, small world. Der.

Just when I thought I couldn’t be farther away from my roots, from my heritage, it appears right next door. I live just down the street from the Aero Theatre, part of the American Cinematheque. It’s another one of those things I love most about living in LA. Any given week you pass the theatre and see “early 70’s slasher film festival!” or “Gone with the Wind night!” You pay a mere 10 bucks, cheap by today’s movie ticket standards, and get to watch classics on the big screen. And that’s all they play there. Awesome.

Last week I drove by and saw “Italian film festival”. I nearly cacied in my pants. I went online to see what they were showing that night, and it was two films, The Sicilian Girl (La Siciliana Ribelle) a film by dir. Marco Amenti, and Focaccia Blues, a film by Nico Cirasola, which was about the failure of a McDonalds in my dad’s town of Altamura, in the Apulia region. I couldn’t believe it. Altamura is not an oft-spoken about town, except that they are famous for their bread. But not a lot of Americans, at least, know about it. Now I HAD to go.The film, it turned out, was a virtual love letter to Altamura. It began with a shot of la campagna, the countryside, and its walls of stone. I started to cwy a wittwe. But the film as a whole had such a wonderful message. A true story shot partially in documentary style, it was all about the small mom & pop shop and good, honest food cooked with love, winning over the big business of fast food merda. The McDonalds in Altamura failed because it was in competition with a focaccia bakery referred to by locals as de Gesu, where locals have gone for quick lunches during their workdays for years. The focaccia is hand made and delicious. The film includes interviews with locals and some very funny moments when very old locals are asked about McDonalds and have no idea what it is. What a lovely place .

Viva la Focaccia!

My dad, incidentally, knew very well of de Gesu, but had heard nothing of the opening and eventual closing of the McDonalds. No one cared. They had no need for a McDonalds, when they had easy access to the best lunch they could imagine. Fresh focaccia, warm from the coal oven.  My aunt Theresa makes amazing focaccia. My mom stole her recipe, and now makes it great too. I’m about to give you the recipe. It’s sacred, so have respect . It also takes a lot of time, so put on some Nicola di Bari*, and do it peacefully, with love:

                                                          La Focaccia di Theresa & Francesca

Ingredients: 

 4 cups Durum wheat four (basically semolina, but finely ground)

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour

1 pkg dry yeast

3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

1 tsp sugar

2 tbsp salt

2 1/4 t0 3 cups of very warm water (110 deg)

1 garlic clove, pressed

1 tbsp oregano

handful of dried black olives (the wrinkly kind)

handful of cherry tomatoes

bottle of olive oil (amts shown later)

10 inch by 15 inch by 1 1/2 inch pan

in small bowl, mix yeast with 1/2 cup warm water & sugar. Let it stand 5 mins, or till it foams completely.

in big mixing bowl, mix both kinds of flour, 1 tbsp olive oil, butter & salt with whisk.

Then pour in remaining water, mix, then add yeast and mix with hands and knead for 5 mins, adding a bit more reg. flour to prevent stickiness.

put in clean mixing bowl, spray a tiny bit of Pam on top (so crust doesn’t form). Lay saran wrap over dough (not bowl), Cover bowl with

kitchen towel in warm area (my mom puts it next to heated stove) till doubles up in volume, for

1 to 2 hours. In meantime, In a bowl, pour 1/2 cup olive oil, cherry tomatoes split with your

hands, garlic, pinch of salt & oregano and toss. Let sit while dough rises.

When risen, pour 5 tbsp olive oil in bottom of baking pan . Stretch & fit dough with knuckles

into pan.  Pick out cherry tomatoes from mixture and push them into dough,

about 1/2 inch in. Pour olive oil mixture over dough, spreading around with hands. Add olives,

pushing in 1/2 inch.  (Theres a lot of oil on top & bottom, but that’s what makes it good. It’s supposed to be like the bottom of the dough is fried. Don’t be

afraid, little chicken). Cover with aluminum foil and let sit in warm place till rises AGAIN, for

another hour (told you it took long). Heat oven 450-475 during this time so its ready for you

when the hour is over.

Once it has risen again (amen), remove foil and place in middle rack of oven, for 20-25 mins.

Take out of oven and sit it on top of stove while you grab large brown paper shopping bag and,

resting it on its wide side side line the bottom with paper towel (so you’re really lining the side,

not the actual bottom of the bag that you stand it up on, capish?). Remove focaccia from pan

and place in bag on paper towel. Close up bag by crinkling it shut. Let sit 10 mins.

Remove and eat the whole thing right then and there. When done, don’t feel guilty like you

would after McDonalds.

It was such a bizarre experience, hearing my father’s dialect spoken in the film. The Altamura dialect is so distinct, it almost doesn’t sound like italian at times, more like a combo of portugese, french, and something slavic. I grew up on it, my dad and his siblings (12 total) are always teasing each other and making loud jokes in the dialect. To me, the dialect is the sound of, well,  love & laughter. Der. Here is an example of the dialect, using a phrase used in my family if people are lollygagging too much before heading somewhere. (I’ll spell the dialect more phonetically as opposed to the proper italian way):

English :If we’re gonna go, let’s GO. If we’re not gonna go, then let’s not go!

Italian: Se usciamo, usciamo. Se non usciamo, non dobbiamo uscire!

Altamurein: Se na shamunein, shamunein. Se NA na shamunein, na na shim ushein.

 Hearing this dialect, something so familiar to me in an artsy fartsy movie theatre in LA, something so unfamiliar, was just the coolest thing. The world is tiny.

One of the things I thought was so typical of an Italian film was its use of a actress Tiziana Schiavarelli as the sexy woman who in an uber-seductive way makes focaccia, her bosom, or I should say, BOSOMBAS, jiggling with every knead. Move over Giada DeLaurentis. Her name, Tiziana, is appropriate, aint it? 

She was no American film-style skinny chick with pert round ones and a six pack. This women had MEAT. Some would say pork. And her bosombas were like that of a mother, not a porn star. She was beautiful in a very old-fashioned Italian way. 

  I later spoke with director Nico Cirasola who is from Bari, the county (of sorts) that Altamura is in. We had a sweet email correspondence the day after. The world is small.   

La Siciliana Ribelle was also a great film. Italians know how to do drama, lemme tell you. It was a true story about the Cosa Nostra in Palermo, and the effect it had on the daughter of the Mancuso crime family, Rita Mancuso, portrayed by actress Veronica D’Agostino, who flung herself at the character.

  She was full of guts and maliciousness in the beginning, which later becomes integrity as she learns the truth about her father. An awesome film.

Il Compleanno a.k.a. David’s Birthday, directed by Marco Filiberti, was also a great dramatic film. Italians love sudden death, I’ll just say that. A group of friends & family, wives and husbands, spend a few weeks at the beach at madness ensues involving a closeted homosexual husband and the young gorgeous son of a friend, & another couple’s withering marriage. It is so tragic it’s almost Greek, and gorgeously scored and shot. Loves it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting such a whopping dose if Italian culture through these great films, and getting to experience it right down the street from my apartment was something I’ll never forget about living here. I was able to be inspired as an actor and moved as an italian american. The world is tiny, and we are all connected. You just have to open your eyes, buy a ticket, and walk in. Der.

* A traditional Barese singer from my dads region

www.focacciablues.it

É su.

LA has made trendy a thing that most people associate with their mom preparing for the school bake sale….the cupcake. And who doesn’t love ‘em? The pillowy goodness. The sugar sprinkles like happy sand between your teeth. The top lickers vs. all in one biters (this is a serious feud, don’t joke).  Back in the big show, when I used to read US Weekly to pass the time in my dressing room (I eventually had to make a pact to stop cause my brain was turning to merda…started reading the Post and felt much better) I’d read mention of the gorgeous, slender lala ladies in their skull-print scarves heading to Sprinkles for a treat. They…eat dessert!  The caption would read.

In addition to the oft-mentioned Sprinkles, there’s also Vanilla Bakeshop in Santa Monica, which has expensivo cupcakes that look too pretty to be eaten: I can’t bear that this gorgeous thing will eventually be turned into cacy.

vanilla bakeshop’s posh yummies

Yes, these are the things that go through my mind. Also, there’s Yummy Cupcakes and many more places I have not been to. It’s easy to enjoy LA’s love affair with the moist, comforting treats, and of course I love ‘em too.

Thing is, when you grow up in an Italian family, you are not really a cupcake girl. A cupcake conjures a very all-american picture: a mom in her apron making a tray of 30 for her kid’s classroom. But my mom has never made a cupcake. In her life, I’m pretty sure. 

yummy cupcakes, santa monica

To me, sweet comfort food is Ciambellone (or Ciambello’, as my mom says). It’s pronounced

CHAM-beh-LOH-neh, (emphasis on the LO, not the BELLO) and although I agree that with cake it’s all about the moistness, Ciambello’ is actually pretty dry. But Italians grow up on ciambello’ and love it -there’s even a ciambellone fan page on facebook, created by some crazy Italians I’m sure. Yes, I became a fan.

cupcake shmupcake

Italian desserts by nature tend to be considered too crunchy and not moist enough by american standards. But Ciambello’ is really meant to be eaten for breakfast, with milk or coffee to soak up the dryness. It’s also not super sweet, which makes it easy to eat three pieces cause your mouth doesn’t get overwhelmed with sugar. It looks like a “marble loaf” from the picture, but it’s completely different. It contains an ingredient called Pane degli Angeli, (bread of the angels) which is basically italian baking powder with vanilla flavoring. You can buy it at any Italian specialty foods store. (Near my hometown in NJ, my mom goes to a place called Jerry’s to get it.) Sometimes I’d inhale the dry cake so quickly that my mom would yell at me mo’ ti strozza! she’d say. You’re gonna choke! I’d choke on Ciambellone over a cupcake any day. Here’s the recipe:

                                                                                 U’  Ciambello’

Ingredients: 500 g flour, 9 large eggs, 3/4 cup Canola oil, 300g sugar, grated rind of 1 lemon, chocolate syrup to taste, 2 envelopes of Pane Angeli.

 

Preheat oven to 350

 

Beat together the eggs, sugar and oil with mixer. Add dry ingredients slowly and mix together. Don’t overmix.  Take 1 cup of the mixture and mix chocolate syrup to it. Pour rest of batter into bundt pan. Gently add chocolatey mixture to top, swirling through with spatula. Put in oven for 1 hour.

 

You can dust sugar on the top of you’d like. Sometimes my mom would put colored sprinkles on top before baking. Eat it with coffee or “mo ti strozza!” 

 

If you make it, you’ll probably think it’s nothing special. But that’s why I love it. It’s an every day house cake that my aunt Lucia in italy would always have in her cabinet along with these giant egg biscuits that were also dry. She’d break them out every morning for breakfast. One time she tried to make us an american breakfast by making us some eggs, cracked fresh from the culies of the backyard chickens. It was a cute gesture, but I was more than happy with my ciambello’. Every time i have a bite, I think of her twinkly black eyes.

 

Cupcakes shmupcakes. You look pretty, but I’d rather choke.

 

When I go for runs down toward Ocean avenue in Santa Monica I always pass by this elementary schoolyard. I usually pause by it on my way back home when my legs start to hurt and grab some of the rosemary that grows wild and rampant along the side of the schoolyard fence. I love rosemary, the woody smell mixed with white wine reminds me of school-night chicken cooking while my sister practiced piano and I did my homework.

  There are a few different kinds of rosemary, of course, but what I find in the schoolyard is the “blue lady” variety, with wee blue flowers and twisted stalks. When I lived in Jersey City, I used the Shoprite variety, which, coincidentally, tastes like Shoprite. But out here, it’s EVERYWHERE; one of the things I love about living here. So I just take it. And I don’t mean from people’s front yards, I’d NEVER do that.  Sometimes the crossing guards on the corner give me weird looks. (Herb police–they don’t scare me none).

       Recently when I was rosemary pirating, I stopped to watch the cute kids who were out on recess. One kid who looked about 10 was running away toward the fence by the rosemary. His friends yelled “what’s wrong with you?” and he yelled, matter of factly, ”Oh, I just miss my father”. It was a little sad but struck me mostly funny, how outward this boy was with his buddies about his innermost emotions, right away. Definitely not one of the cool kids, i thought.

 It was a perfectly gorgeous late October day, and you could smell the ocean. No chance of rain or bitter cold to sting their noses as they played. I wondered how different I would have turned out if I’d been raised in sunny LA. And I got to thinking, if I end up raising my future kids out here, will I have anything in common with them?

 I spent my free time as a kid hanging out outside the cvs, at the pizzeria, the malls, diners, or the movies. Kids out here have all that too, but they also have miles and miles of beaches to lay out on with their friends, tons of places to hike and camp without worry of bad weather, and malls that are outdoor, open air. They can go to the movies in movietown, in gorgeous, historical theatres like the El Capitan the Chinese Theatre. They can surf.

Would my kids appreciate the beach like I did, if they could go every day, like me and the mall? I remember the beach for me was the Jersey Shore; LBI & Wildwood. It was awesome to me. A summer treat, not an after school activity. But nobody surfed at the shore. They smoked cigarettes and drank beers and got ice cream when they heard the tinkly tune. There were no mountains on either side of you. Just hotels. You’d check, when you went for a walk, for your hotel in the distance to make sure you hadn’t gone too far from your parents’ red and white umbrella. The Sands, there it is. Tall and pink.

    The first time I saw a palm tree I thought it was the coolest thing, especially the fat ones, like the outside of a pineapple with fireworks shooting out of it. Here people hardly notice them anymore. Will my kids notice them?  

    Most importantly, when I first realized I wanted to be an artist in junior high, I remember how I felt a bit like an outcast. One of the theatre kids. Different. My parents were concerned, my friends began to change, and as much as I felt like a weirdo for preferring poetry séances in my elementary school yard at night to house parties and drinking, I felt proud of my weirdness. I chopped off all my hair to look like Winona Ryder in Reality Bites  and liked how it made me feel. When I got to NYU and was surrounded by tons of people just like me, I was relieved. (I know I’m making this sound like being a thespian was as tough as coming out of the closet, but it really was big for me, coming from such a traditional, italian family.)

    If I had grown up in LA, no one would have cared when I said I wanted to be an actress. My friends’ parents would have helped hook me up with an agency. Most people here are artists, writers, directors, actors, musicians. I don’t think I would have had to go through what I went through, that ”weirdo” feeling, and that feeling of pride, that need to escape.

   It’s more likely that my kids won’t become performers, and I kinda hope they don’t, so this point could be totally shtupt. And one could argue that when a kid realizes he wants to make music for a living he always feels the same way, regardless of his surroundings. But it’s just another thing that makes me realize how different things are out here. And I guess it would be up to me to remind them that they’re lucky to smell the ocean, to see mountains, to see a movie at a historical 1920’s hollywood theatre. And in reminding them, I’ll feel lucky too.

     Not that I ever plan to bear children. That’s gross.