From ER to Budapest
I'm not going to go into all the gory details here, but I landed in the ER with good cause and having to do with glands the size of overfed hamsters. And you gotta bless those steroids!
I was well taken care of, and after 4 hours of various drips sent into my body for pain control, rehydration and shrinkage of said glands, I was back home, where I spent the day alternating between bed, Istanbul, Oxford, Harvard and lately, Budapest.
I'm reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It's a magnum opus - 642 pages of historical mystery surrounding the life and afterlife of Vlad Tepec - Vlad the Impaler. It's intriguing on a lot of levels, but the one that has drawn me in today is the various travels that the main characters take along the way.
My friend Anno discussed in her blog, www.laundryvixen.blogspot.com, that a good meal can be life changing. I would counter that a good meal in a culturally foreign setting can be even more life changing. There are many descriptions in this book about important conclusions made over tea or local specialties or in the warm setting of a Turkish home.
It has taken me back to some of my own life-changing meals.
In no particular order:
A truly great Parisian restaurant with my art historian father and some colleagues of his. It was a favorite of Yves Montand's, which was attraction enough for me, but I was also treated as an adult, perhaps for the first time, by my overprotective father.
The three meals, taken successively on November 7th during my exchange term in the former Soviet Union. I thought I had no plans for this important holiday, but I was swept from living room to living room, plied with all the bounty of a late harvest, Russkaya Vodka (a watered-down Soviet sedative), and the best that my hosts had to offer until I couldn't do anything else but join in with the raucous singing that took over at the end of the day.
Sunday coffee with Margareta and Clemens, and tasting the deliciousness of nothing to do but relax on a German, small-town Sunday. Another continent away, in a lovely sunroom, I felt as if I were with true family.
Waking on a Dutch houseboat hotel and going on deck to find a delicious spread of rolls, cheeses, fruits and meats. I was alone, truly alone in a foreign country for the first time, and I had been lulled to sleep by the rocking of the boat. I had exciting, solitary plans for the day, and grabbed a plate, sat down at a table near the bow and was soon joined by an Australian couple who thought my plans sounded so good, that they decided to join me in those, too. Traveling never has to be solitary.
The astonishing meal that our talented friend Madeleine prepared for my father and I in her Parisian suburbs house. It went on for hours and included all the classics - soupe a l'onion, duck a l'orange, mousse au chocolat while we perused her beautiful collection of handbound books.
Driving far up to the mountains in Martinique when I was nine, and taking part in a 14-course meal, where I was expected to behave like an adult, but I wasn't treated as one. That left many impressions on me.
Dancing the merengue with our friend Barney West and his partner over cocktails (a Shirley Temple for me) and hors d'oeuvres on their concrete conch shell terrace, high on a hill on St. Croix.
Eating at a wonderful no-stars bistro with Dave that merited the fabulous reviews we had read. We sat at a long table that spanned the length of the narrow Parisian restaurant and eating and discussing bits of this and that with our fellow diners. Dave began his lifelong love affair with Crotton Poivre.
How these have changed my life, I couldn't say. And these just touch the surface. But each has left an indelible impression on me and even with my post-forty memory, these are memories that will stay forever.
What's Cooking
I've been making something between a vanilla pudding, a blanc mange and a nutmeg custard the past couple of days. This has been very soothing for both my throat and psyche.
