Food on the Page

Of all the things I loved about the Carson McCullers biography The Lonely Hunter, one passage made me giggle, retch and realize that her whims and oddities inhabited the kitchen as much as they did her notoriously well-appointed bedrooms:

… to cap the night’s activities, a pregnant cat had slipped unbidden into the house and given birth to a half-dozen kittens downstairs. Undisturbed by the clutter in the house which greeted her, Carson volunteered that she would be very comfortable sharing the bed with the litter of kittens…

Ah, wait, this isn’t the place for my cat and clutter fancy. That actually comes right before the relevant part, which is this:

Carson suggested that they go out immediately and rent bicycles so that they might ride to the beach and stores. Soon they were cycling about the island shopping for food, liquor and flowers. Carson also bought flowered paper curtains for the windows, and red-and-white checkered oilcloth and candles for the table. “We’re going to eat fancy,” she said. If Carson had ever played the role of kitchen prima donna in the past, it was abandoned that night and for the duration of her stay. She cooked more during her month at Nantucket than she had cooked since the early days of her marriage. Among her culinary skills that summer were homemade mayonnaise, which she admitted was really her mother’s speciality, clam chowder, canned green pea soup enlivened with small chunks of wieners, and a unique dish which she labeled “spuds Carson,” made with creamed potatoes, ripe olives, minced onions and grated cheese.

Uff da! To be fair, if I were imbibing a few tumblers of whiskey per day, I might come up with something similarly misguided. In fact, I don’t need whiskey to get lost in the kitchen.

Another delightful bio of sorts, Patti Smith’s Just Kids, described a tasty little breakfast:

I rolled out of bed and noticed it was late. I raced through my morning ritual, going around the corner to the Moroccan bakery, grabbing a crusty roll, a sprig of fresh mint, and some anchovies. I came back and boiled water, stuffing the pot with mint. I poured olive oil in the open roll, rinsed the anchovies, and laid them inside, sprinkling in some cayenne pepper. I poured a glass of tea and thought better of wearing my shirt, knowing that I’d get olive oil on the front of it.

Turning the time machine way back, this passage from Don Quixote got my mouth watering:

“…But all of this in due course; look and see if you have anything to eat in those saddlebags, and then we shall go in search of a castle where we can stay the night and prepare the balm I told you of, because I swear before God that my ear is hurting a good deal.”
“I have here an onion, and a little cheese, and I don’t know how many crusts of bread,” said Sancho, “but these are not victuals suitable for a knight as valiant as your grace.”

Assuming there was crusty bread and cheese widely available, I think I might have been able to pull through in 16th century Spain, even if I had all the looks and none of the strength of Dulcinea of Toboso. Even the raw onion sounds good.