1st Communion: a night of memories and building intimacy

What a night, what a night! After a lot of last minute work which included rolling out fresh pasta as well as setting the dining room, Jacob, Lisa and I had almost everything ready, except my makeup, by the time our first guest arrived. This first communion was a little different than I'd intended: only one of us was a stranger to the rest. Out of ten invited guests, only three rsvp'd; the rest were foodie friends who'd volunteered as understudies. So, the atmosphere was more of a themed dinner party than the social experiment I had planned. Given the pun of having it be a "first" communion, I decided the overarching theme would be about our childhood. I thought it would be appropriate to explore how the kids we once were informs the adults we are today.

We started off with a purée of eggplant soup, a dollop of basil goat cheese, and a round of everyone's earliest, or most poignant memories. Amazingly, a lot of them included a body of water, but most included a trauma, or a distressed feeling. Feelings of betrayal by parents who'd promised they'd catch us, and didn't. Feelings of desperation when we were in some sort of medical emergency. And then, there were the memories which we couldn't recall, but we'd inherited. It led us to ask: what makes a memory, or rather, a childhood memory? A lot of us remembered an early moment, as early as being three or four, that most of us can't really remember, but have had imprinted on our consciousness by the adults who witnessed the event.

Second course: my broiled chicken with an olives, lemon and bread salad, along with tales of what did we want to be when we grew up. Baseball players, taxi drivers, seamstresses, models, mad scientists, absolutely nothing, or a variety of things depending on the day. What drove our desires was an interesting exploration: can girls be smart, and can they invent a time machine? What are boys supposed to be? Is reaching adulthood even a possibility? The social contexts and the gendered expectations of our desires were a good topic of conversation: what does city dwelling, single parent households, suburbia, queerness, or being an only child do to how we develop desires or long term goals?

Third course: homemade tagliatelle with Jacob's lamb ragú, and stories of our thirteenth birthday. A lot of us didn't remember that specific year, but could remember a few years before or after. My 13th birthday was February 4th, 1992, which in Venezuelan politics is the day our current president, Hugo Chávez, tried a Coup-d'état. A very primal resentment sprung out that day when my birthday party was canceled due to a state's curfew. I think that is the day where I became conscious of a being a political being, or at least living in a grander political context.

Good thing that by the time our fourth course was due, everyone had had plenty of wine. The topic: first crushes and early heartaches with melon and lime sorbet. Funny thing was, the full names of strangers buried away by decades were being shouted out at the dinner table. Detailed descriptions of that tight knot in one's chest when being broken up with, or that guilty feeling when breaking up with someone. Some stories of first sexual experiences came up, like the Norwegian woman in Sri Lanka getting her way with a thirteen-year-old, or the gift-wrapped condom for a seventeenth birthday.

Our cheeseplate was comprised by a Roaring Forties, a tasmanian cow's milk blue cheese that was both dolce and stinky, and a Sottocenere Perla Grigia, a soft piedmontese cow's milk cheese, with my perfected batch of walnut raisin bread and a trio of apricot, fig and pear jams. We discussed our first drunkenness, but you'll have to forgive me, dear readers, since the only detail I remember from that conversation was that I myself was now really drunk, and was contemplating the irony of having to recount my first drunkenness amidst my most recent.
Thanks to my friend e.m.a.e.l, the perfect closing prompt asked diners to fill in the blank: I want more of [...] in my life. Adventure, consistency, fun/honesty/money, simplicity, intimacy. The best one was not written on the menu, but rather scribbled onto the table, hidden away by breadcrumbs, candlewax, and water stains: CONNECTION. I feel like the intimate stories and memories we shared did just that, build and strengthen the connection, intimacy, and honesty among us at the table.
Next Communion is Tuesday, September 8th!

going back to bread and back to childhood

I remember when my mother would make bread when I was growing up. She would make these "buns" (and would call them so, in all its Anglo pronunciation) that were perfect for sliders. She mostly made them of whole wheat and with lots of oat bran, but sometimes they would be sweet, glazed with butter and sprinkled with sugar, como un pan dulce.
I remember when she would make a table with the buns, ham, cheese, mayo and other fixings, inviting us to make our own snack. She was one of those mothers who, despite having a really protective streak and watchful eye, never really over-mothered us. We (my siblings and I) would not have anyone to blame but ourselves if our laundry was not done, or if we didn't have a snack at school, since she did teach us how to use the washer and would provide everything we needed to make lunch. But I digress. Back to the buns, I would make myself two or three small sandwiches, filled with jamón, tomato and mustard. When I'd unpack my lunchbox at school I noticed two things:
1- the other kids who ate sandwiches had square white bread.
1.1- the other kids eating white bread would blatantly make fun of my weird looking bun and call my family 'poor' for my mother having to bake us bread.
2- the rest of the kids' lunches were made of masa: arepas o empanadas, staples of venezuelan street-food breakfasts.
I gotta admit I felt self-conscious and conflicted because I wished I was eating either the white bread or the empanada, for either way, I would have escaped the scrutiny of my peers. But I wouldn't have wanted my mother to stop baking because I liked it when she did: my sister and I would help her roll of small pieces of dough onto a tray to let them rise and she'd let us eat the bread right out of the oven. I know now that baking was one of my mother's most intimate ways to show us her love. (Kudos to my mom for not stopping baking despite us telling her that her buns made us social outcasts.) I don't really remember when I finally got over the shame of bringing homemade bread to school, but I'm sure there is more here to unpack that merits a session with a therapist, not on a blog entry. But the two things that are clear for me here are that, one, bread has huge emotional associations for me, and two, kids are cruel.

Despite having been raised by a pretty dexterous cook and baker (my momma,) I've always felt iffy about baking because it's more of an exact science, with less room to maneuver in case of a screw-up. But in the last few months I've been playing with quick-rise breads, no yeast necessary, loads of butter, aromatic and a final consistency that dances between being bread and cake. I've played with zucchini (since i had lots leftover after making the zucchini white bean stew), banana, carrot. I've been overall pretty pleased with the results, although I have taken note of colleagues' comments on the effects of over-kneading and over-baking.

My challenge this week was a sweet, yet savory, nutty bread that we could serve with the cheese course for this week's Communion. I got this recipe off the Bon Appétit Cookbook: Walnut-Raisin bread. Despite using yeast (which made me a little nervous) it was super easy to make, and delicious: it calls for wheat and rye flour, oat bran, cocoa, toasted walnuts, raisins, butter, milk and honey. After a couple of hours for the dough to rise, it took 45 minutes in a 400 degree oven, and voilá! Soon the whole house was permeated with that baking scent, bringing me back the memories of my childhood.
After I cut two slices of the slightly black/brown bread, I took notice of that homemade feel that commercial breads will never attain. It reminded me again of those buns my mom used to make, with their dense consistency and grainy texture. I made myself a ham, tomato and mustard sandwich, like the ones I fixed myself when I was a child, and felt myself getting filled by nostalgia and regret. Nostalgia, for I missed being on the receiving end of such a loving gesture; regret, for ever having felt shame for eating a sandwich that was so good.