Semper Fi, Daddy

Daddy died on Valentine’s Day. Considering how much he loved my mom, that’s a bittersweet thought.

Sadly, for the past decade or so, and especially after the stroke in 2000, my parents and I have been mildly estranged, but I understand my mom’s been under a lot of stress. She managed to reconcile with sisters and brother Lonnie this last Christmas, according to Aunt Patty the Catwoman.

Mama lost Aunt Margaret sometime the first week of February. Margaret had been waiting for a lung transplant. She’s survived by John, her second husband, her daughter Kelly, Kelly’s twins and her son Glen. That’s all I know about that.

Daddy is survived by Mama, myself, you kids, Elisabeth and her two children, Isabelle and James, Valerie, her son Daniel, and Sarah. He is also survived by his sister Mary Darlene and his youngest brother Anthony George.

But they are both so much more than those plain dry facts. Daddy was a bad ass marine. Margaret ran away from Missouri and became a successful commercial real estate broker in Dallas.

I am so grateful my father is no longer stuck in a wheelchair. I’m so glad Margaret gets to leave her oxygen tank behind. I am relieved that my mom can finally go home.

And I miss them all.

Kind of Blue - a birthday wish

This week’s dishes are Vegetarian Pizza and Sweet Rice Krispy Sushi. A little background on why I chose these dishes.

Because it’s Brian’s birthday this week.

I met Brian in eighth grade, because we were both involved in a talent show. I don’t even remember what talent I supposedly had, but Brian played the piano. A Scott Joplin rag, I think. Maybe it was his stand offish air. Maybe it was his musical ability. Maybe it was the puffy blue jacket. I haven’t a clue. I just knew that even with all the other Eighth Grade Drama being played out, I really liked this guy.

I am not a subtle woman. I wasn’t a subtle child. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I know that about myself. I don’t know that I gave him a choice: he was my friend. I was desperate to know more about him, so I gave him an application to sit at “our” lunch table. Yeah, yeah. I know that was slick, wasn’t it? He was gracious enough to play along. As I recall, he listed his address as “I know a cave in NE Tanzania”.

And, no, I never made anyone else submit an application to have lunch with me. Maybe I’d have been better off if I had!

We grew up; he went to Colorado, I had Tony. We both ended up in Vista in 1980. We started hanging out again. He’s Tony’s godfather, as a matter of fact. When I left California, I met your father, and Brian and I drifted apart.

Last summer - poof! He was suddenly back in my life. I found him on Facebook of all places. As you kids know, I haven’t kept in touch with friends from my childhood, and Brian was a huge part of my past. He was our Josh, when I was growing up, the kid who was always around, along with Jamie, Elisabeth’s friend.

I ended up in the Midwest, and eventually the Southeast. He ended up in Chicago. After all these years he is still dry, erudite Brian. Turns out we share a love of jazz, and Miles Davis in particular. My sepia tinted childhood memories are now supplemented with bright shiny new ones. And that makes me glad.

So, why vegetarian pizza? Well what else did Catholic teenagers eat on Friday nights? I mean, really, it was a very big deal when the Pope repealed the whole Fish-On-Friday thing. I have a memory, just a picture really, of myself, Brian and Teresa Lopez at NY Pizza out on East Vista way, getting pizza. It was a cold clear night with a black velvet sky and diamond stars. How good it was, how happy – how content I was in that moment. I can’t figure out why the hell the three of us were together, and certainly the location on East Vista Way was in no way a place we would normally be. I just remember a cool starlit night, a hot pizza with stretchy cheese and great company.

And the rice krispies are because Brian cruelly told me that the very last batch I made when I was 16 would have made EXCELLENT paperweights had they been any heavier. Hmph. Okay, I admit they did suck, but he did not even TRY to be nice about it.

But now, I am, ahem, more mature, so I started thinking: I will show him!

I will make Rice Krispy Treats, and he will have to acknowledge I rock! But I still think they suck (what! They taste like “sweet”!). So I found a way around that. I am making Sweet Rice Krispy Sushi.

Oh, and Brian has told me he is now a Vegetarian (nothing with a face, baby), so the menu makes even more sense, doesn’t it?

Happy Birthday, Brian. You can make fun of my cooking any day, especially if you can duck really fast.

Still crazy, after all these years…..

gil

Random Thoughts

So, I hope that you guys are actually reading this, and have noticed the changes. I spoke to FP yesterday, and I go back to work on Monday. I’m told that I will be wiped out by Tuesday. Works for me: I need structure!

With a return to work, my time to cook will obviously be curtailed. I’ve been stockpiling recipes and pictures, and have realized that I probably won’t be doing a “cookbook” like my mom did. That what I am doing is recording a year in my kitchen, hence the change in the tag line.

I realize that I spend a lot of time thinking about food. Part of that is a no-brainer. Duh, I’m diabetic. Talking to a friend, I realize that my approach to food is different. Food = Love in our family, and I’ve done my level best to love y’all to death! That’s right, come into my gingerbread house, Wendy. I am trying to fatten you up, dear. But I am also trying to edumacate you, as Homer would say.

Diabetes is a reality each of you needs to look at. Two grandparents and a mom means that the odds are greater you will find yourself with some sort of medical complication. Add in the Cholesterol Curse and Heart Disease and frankly you guys aren’t much better off than me or your father. But you can certainly be smarter and head off the worst of it.

I don’t go out to eat as much as I did because food is a series of land mines. What’s in this? What will it do to my sugars? Yeah, I drive through McDonald’s way too much, but at least I know what’s in it (more or less). I know how my body will react (badly). But I also try to do more things at home. I got real macho one year and even got a tortilla press and made my own tortillas - which, by the way, are just as bad as white bread, carbwise.

I have picked up skills and techniques and learned, learned, learned. At Christmas Cook’s Illustrated sent me an offer I couldn’t refuse: half off a membership to their incredibly awesome website. I discovered the Awesome Power of RSS last year, and have so many cooking and food blogs syndicated that I am actually breaking them out by category, because I am just Super Geeky that way.

BTW, you should be syndicating this site, so that when I update you will be automatically notified. I’ve been using Google Reader and Bloglines, plus I’ve been watching my site in Thunderbird. Yesterday I switched to FeedDemon on Lifehacker’s recommendation. I’m still getting used to it, but it looks pretty good. If interested, lemme know and I will hook you up, cuz I’m just awesome that way.

I have a lot of plans for this site. It’s tough being so far away from each of you. I was almost apologizing to a friend for my, er, obsession with food and all yummy food related topics with a “well, food meant love in my family”.

He said “There are worse ways to show love than food.”

Made me feel better, because it’s true.

xoxox

mom

Willkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome. C’mon in.

My name is Gillian. I am nearly 47 years old. I like to cook and bake. I come from a long line of cooks and bakers.

This blog is for my children, who are known for standing in grocery store aisles, calling me for advice:

• I can’t remember what else I need for won-ton? And how do I make it?
• Mr X likes meatloaf, how do I make it?
• What’s the best kind of rice? And how do I make it?
• What do I need to make the special dipping sauce? And, oh, yeah, how do I make it?

Truly, I get more food related calls from them than anything else. It’s a Duran thing. I remember calling my parents, because I had to ask my dad how to make something. My mom told me he was refusing to talk to me - and my sisters, because we never wrote anything down. Like mother, like child, I don’t think any of the kids have written a thing down.

My ethnic background is pretty schizoid. My dad is half Filipino, quarter Spanish, quarter Native American Indian. Born in Oklahoma, raised in California, a career Marine who spent time in SE Asia and Japan before settling down with my mom. My mom, the really white lady from SW Missouri. Her background is WASP, WASP and for good measure, more WASP.

My childhood was a battleground for Cultural Supremacy. My dad would be gone, and my mom would fry up taters, make us eat beans and cornbread, and entertain us with stories about growing up in the Ozarks. My mom the reporter would be covering a school board meeting, a city council session, and Daddy would make fish and rice. He’d beguile us with stories of San Francisco and play jazz records.

Throw in the whole military brat thing and growing up in San Diego county, California in the Seventies, and well, it was an interesting upbringing.

I have four offspring: two sons, two daughters. They were well fed growing up. I fed them like my father fed me; I baked for them the way my Grandmother baked for me. Neighborhood children gathered in my kitchen on a regular basis. Friends and family usually go straight to my fridge to look for leftovers.

As you might imagine, I am very opinionated regarding food. My dad’s father was a farm worker in the San Joaquin Valley. I know what fresh produce is supposed to look like, feel like, taste like, smell like. Bottom line: if God had wanted me to eat fruit from WalMart, I’d have been born in Wichita, KS. Since I wasn’t, I don’t believe in settling.

I find myself eating seasonally, because I don’t care if it’s summer in the southern hemisphere, it’s still shipped an ungodly distance and it still sucks. Fish is problematic, because the Asian in me longs for it, but fish in the Atlanta metro is iffy at best. Sadly, I live too far from the Dekalb Farmer’s Market. I’m in Cobb, it’s in Decatur and my truck only gets about 12 miles to the gallon, so there you have it.

The plan is to post a recipe a week. I’ll actually make it, photograph it and have it posted sometime between Saturday/Sunday of each week. First up, a signature dish, as decided by an informal poll I took about a year ago.