That Would Be Me (dot net)

My mother had several things that she considered treats, things that she parceled out to us as if they were diamonds. Lox was one. If you are unaware of this rare gem, it’s sort of a marriage between smoked salmon and salmon sushi. Good lox, the best lox, melts on your tongue like sweet, smoky butter and at that time was only available in good Jewish delicatessens in New York or Newark. (Now you can get a fair quality lox at Costco, for goodness’ sake. Times change.) Mom rarely made the trip into the city from our small village in northern New Jersey, but when she did, she always bought some lox, usually a pound. She’d bring it home, pull one slice from the block, cut it into small, bite-sized pieces and give each of us one piece on a cracker. The rest would go in the freezer for special occasions.

One afternoon a friend was visiting and mom pulled out the lox and some crackers, cut a small slice, put it on a cracker and offered it to her friend, who was skeptical, but tried it.

“Oh, my God, what is this?”

She liked it. So much so that she went through the entire pound as they sat there in the kitchen chatting. Mom watched in horror, not willing to be so impolite as to take it away or tell her how much it cost or how difficult it was to get. Her only solace was the thought of the woman going into a deli to buy some and seeing the price of it and turning pale. Thinking of that moment usually made mom chuckle.

Another of her treats, also purchased in delis, was halva. Halva, however, was just puzzling. It is a confection made from sesame seeds and always tasted to me like sweet sawdust. Some halva was plain, some was swirled with chocolate, some had pistachios in it. It all tasted like sawdust. But mom loved it and whenever she found it, would buy some and cut small pieces for each of us. She considered it such a treat, was so delighted by it, that I would never dream of turning it down and she gave us each such a small piece that I was always able to force it down without much of a grimace.

Many years later, after my mother died, I was having dinner with a friend in a deli in Los Angeles. In the display case by the register they had halva for sale. I told my friend how much my mother had like it and bought a piece for each of us. It still tasted like sweet sawdust, but I savored every crumb.

“Yuck,” my friend said. “How can you eat this?”

He was only eating halva. I was eating a memory.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

My mother liked extreme foods. The tea she liked was smoked. I have no idea what the brand or type was, although I have a vague memory that it was something British. It came loose in a tin and my mother would put well over a teaspoon of it in a tea bell, put it in her large coffee mug and pour boiling water over it. Then she would let it steep for hours. Literally hours. Some days she’d make her tea right after breakfast and it would still be sitting on the kitchen counter in the late afternoon. The water would have cooled by then, of course, and there would be a dark grey-brown ring on the ceramic just above the level of the tea and the musky, smokey aroma of it would permeate the house. Tea should not be smokey. Scotch is smokey. Which, of course, is why I prefer a good Irish. Steak grilled over hickory chips should be smokey. Not tea.

Once my mother got her tea to this tepid, almost viscous state she would put a little more hot water in to warm it up, pull the tea bell out, stir it a few times to mix all the tannins evenly and contentedly sit sipping the venomous brew. I was sure the bowl of her spoon would dissolve while she stirred, but it never seemed to.

She also enjoyed Limburger cheese. Not the pot of mildly fragrant cheese you find at your local greengrocer, jar cheese that spreads smoothly across your rye cracker. This cheese was a gently aged block of runny offal that had legs. And feet. And armpits. I used to say Limburger smelled like dirty socks, but that’s not quite accurate. It smelled like athletic socks that had been worn for eight days on a forced march across a burning desert by a very masculine man who suffered from severe athlete’s foot and profuse sweating, then stuffed into moldy sneakers and left in a damp basement for a couple of years. It actually singed the hairs in your nose. Mom would store her chunk of precious matter in a small, tightly sealed Tupperware container in the fridge so that it could marinate in its own essence to its most piquant fullness. (I recently read that the bacteria that is used to ferment Limburger is the same found on human skin that causes body odor. So, in essence, if I wear the same tee shirt two days in a row, I’m a delicacy. Who would have imagined?)

She liked her Limburger in a sandwich, but not just any sandwich. She would cut two thick slices of bread which, I assume, was rye or pumpernickel. She just called it “black bread.” Then she cut a thick slice from a Bermuda onion. Then a couple of hacks from the cheese, put them all together and once again sit down to her special treat. She rarely made these sandwiches while we were around, from fear of Child Services, I suspect, but I would know she was indulging when I turned the corner at the end of our block on the way home from school. Something in the air would quietly whisper, “go visit someone for an hour or two.”

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mother. She introduced us to some amazing culinary delights such as lox, pickled schmaltz herring and pasta con pesto so strong you sweat garlic for three days. And she never forced Limburger or smoked tea on us. It was there if we wanted it. We didn’t.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

As a young boy in the remote New Jersey town called Flatbrookville, I hated peas, those grey-green orbs piled on my dinner plate threatening to roll over into the mashed potatoes (a favorite) and pollute Grandma’s wonderful pot roast.  They smushed on my tongue into a slimy mess that tasted unnatural with an undercurrent of vaguely chemical sweetness.  And heaven defend us when they appeared surreptitiously in an otherwise wonderful beef stew, nestling among the carrots.

I was not a picky eater.  Both my mother and grandmother were wonderful cooks and I liked almost everything they made, except fish (more to do with small bones than flavor), Brussel sprouts (everything wrong with a cabbage, condensed) and, of course, peas.  I ate everything put before me, I was, generally, a well behaved child.  I have fond memories of most meals: pasta with summer sauce, home-made ravioli stuffed with spinach and cheese or luscious Italian sausage filling, corned beef, venison, al olio, pasta con pesto.  The simple mention of these staples make me salivate.

But occasionally my dinner plate was offended by peas.

One morning when I was, perhaps, eight or nine, I “lost” my breakfast and had to stay home from school.  My mother had planed at day trip to visit our Aunt Lou, a two hour drive in each direction.  The other kids were in school and Grandma had the business to run, so I went along for the visit.  Shortly after we got there, it became obvious that I didn’t have a typical flu and Aunt Lou insisted we visit her doctor.

It was acute, gangrenous appendicitis.  I was rushed to the hospital and prepped for emergency surgery.  I was told that my appendix actually burst in the doctor’s hand as he removed it.  I’d been twenty minutes away from major complications or even death.  But I was kid from a large Italian family and all I knew was that I was getting individual attention from doctors, nurses, and even my mother and Aunt Lou.  It all seemed a fair trade.  

A day or so later I was lying in bed, one vestigial organ lighter, when the doctors started me back up on solid food.  The vegetable in my first dinner was peas.  But they were unlike any pea I had ever encountered.  They were bright green, almost shiny, a pat of butter was melting on top of the small pile, its edges taking on the contours of these tiny marvels.  I tasted one.  No smush!  No slime.  It actually popped when I bit down on it.  And the sweetness.  The wonderful sweetness.  I pondered this for some time, then finally asked my mother.

“Well, they were probably frozen,” she said.

Frozen.  We didn’t get frozen vegetables at home.  We either got fresh (corn or green beans from a neighbor’s garden) or canned.  It was a different time.  Even my Italian grandmother used canned vegetables.

I haven’t allowed canned vegetables in my house since I moved out on my own.  And peas are still my favorite meal-time treat.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend