Dinner Party Panic

“You know what this needs?  Celery seed!!” my friend, Cynthia, said with epiphany-like panic.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I wouldn’t know what celery seed was or tasted like if it bit me on the ankle.  But she was convinced, by golly.  Celery seed was our holy grail and we had none on hand for the meal we were preparing for our joint dinner party.   I hoped she would bounce back after the crushing blow to our hostess-hood.  I was fairly certain the meal survive without it.  Cynthia had her doubts.

Planning a dinner party with Cynthia had been an honest treat and at times hilarious.  She was shocked when I suggested we buy the meat, seafood, vegetables and other ingredients at one supermarket.  I suggested that our guests would be happy with cereal as long as there was enough white wine.  She smiled at me and I smiled back.  We both thought the other was joking. 

Secretly I coveted Cynthia’s relationship with food and cooking.  At the supermarket—I talked her down to two stops from four—she had a close and unique relationship with every ingredient we considered buying.  There was great debate over the cut of steak and much eye rolling over the corn.  I marveled at her suspicions.  Cooking seemed so complex and important to her, so personal.  It’s such a mystery to me.  My people are Nordic, so for me, cheese is the fourth element—fire, water, earth, air, havarti.  My mother’s meals tended towards the safe side of the pantheon of ‘50s staples, which is really saying something.  Every hors d’oeuvre she ever made began with a block of cream cheese.  Open faced sandwiches on pumpernickel I can handle, but the rest leaves me flummoxed.  I’m jealous of my friends who can whip up a meal in the same way I envy bi-linguists or innate musicians.  Food nourishes the soul.  We literally need it to survive.  No one would ever cling to my mediocre tap dancing on a deserted island.

Our dinner party was a success—celery seed notwithstanding.  During our post mortem, I asked Cynthia when her love affair with food took hold.  “My first solid as a baby was escargot,” she said.  “As a toddler, I couldn’t get enough of abalone.”  Where did you grow up?” I asked.  She said, “Atlanta.”  Of course, I thought.  America’s culinary hotbed.  “Our neighbors were Chinese and introduced me to dim-sum,” she continued, “My parents entertained-- at the age of six I could not get enough smoked oysters on Ritz crackers-- and they took me with them when they traveled.  One of my favorite food memories is of the Russian borscht I had at Boris’ Restaurant in the Yak & Yeti Hotel in Kathmandu when I was twelve.  It was like ambrosia to me.  I will never stop craving it.” 

Cynthia was able to parlay her childhood adoration for food into an adult profession when she became the tourism editor for AAA, rating hotels and restaurants in the Northeast.  I asked, “How did you take notes in restaurants if you didn’t want them to know what you were up to?”  “Sometimes I would pretend I was writing a letter and make all my notes on stationary.  Other times I would go directly out to the car and start writing.”  I asked, “And what is it like for you now that you no longer work in that industry?”  “I try not to be a pain in the neck at restaurants,” she said, “but I hold grudges.” 

“Does everyone have a food memory?” I asked.  I have a music memory and a dancing memory, even a fashion memory, but no lobe for food.  “Yes,” she said, “everyone except my in-laws.”  She continued, “I have a flavor memory, too.  I always know what’s missing.  I have a bank of flavors in my brain and I can pick them out.  Like an enormous store.  Everything is there in little boxes.”  I imagined Cynthia’s flavor memory like I would a scene in a Harry Potter movie—hundreds of wooden boxes as far as the eye can see, all with hand-written inked labels like in an apothecary shop.  My own flavor memory would fit in a shoebox filled with capers, Mallowmars and a jar of mayonnaise. 

I asked Cynthia if there was anything one shouldn’t put garlic on.  She answered immediately, “Dessert.”  I concurred.  She said, “Once I said to the waiter, ‘My tuile cookie is garlic-y.’  He went back to the kitchen, returned and said, ‘I’m sorry, M’am, you were right.  We stored them in the wrong bin.’”  I said, “What’s the most common cooking mistake people make that’s easily corrected?”  Right away Cynthia said, “Stop fiddling with your food in the pan.  Don’t touch it so much.  Leave it alone and let it brown.”  I said, “And if you could only take three seasonings with you to a deserted island?”  “Well,” she said, “I suppose I’ll be eating a lot of fish if I’m on an island.”  I hadn’t given that any thought whatsoever, but I supposed she had a point.  “Kaffir lime leaves, Beau Monde—it makes everything better—, and smoked paprika chipotle chili powder.”  “Are you kidding me?  I thought you would say salt, pepper and garlic.”  “Oh, sure, that, too,” she said.  I decided right then that I would get into her rescue boat if the ship were ever sinking.  Then I wondered, where’s Kaffir?

I said, “So, you must be one of those people who start thinking about lunch when you’re eating breakfast.”  “Oh, totally,” she said.  I confessed, “I think about dinner twenty minutes before dinner.”  Cynthia leaned in towards me.  Her passion was palpable.  “The thing is,” she said, “is to get your kids to like food, to pass on that joy and pleasure in eating food.  Let them see you loving it.” I nodded, fearing that I was too late with my son.  Maybe not.  I asked, “And when do you start thinking about dinner?” Cynthia’s eyes flashed.  “When I wake up.”