Daddy brung home the bacon
July 26, 2006
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Jamón Iberico, oooh Mama!
If you haven’t been home for six weeks, there’s really nothing that screams ‘I love you, Mama!’ like a big fat ham. Especially when that ham was raised on acorns, rooting around under the dappled shade of oak trees in Southern Spain. I swear these animals lead better lives than we do. Just compare your potential career as a ham to travelling back and forth across the Puddle and to and fro from the Continent and you’ll understand where I’m going with this. So after six weeks of absence, Mama was pleased with the return of her ham-bearing man, but more importantly, it seems she has developed a talent for shaving off ultra-thin slices of the complexly flavoured meat.
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Mama ends up being a superb ham slicer
Only a few short days after his return, my parents arrive for their first visit, and nothing screams, ‘Welcome, crazy Jewish people!’ like a big fat ham. My family has its own funky brand of Judaism, ‘Jewism’ as Mama calls it, and we don’t let centuries of learned post mortem debate and culture get in the way at the dinner table. I’m certain that my porkatarianism stems from the forbidden fruit aspect genetically instilled in me by several millenia of inbreeding. Growing up, my folks would eat bacon and call it ‘veal’, giggling at each bite, like eleven year olds smoking their first joint.
debra at 10:42 | Comments (10) | post to del.icio.us
In Memoriam
Anna de Casparis
July 20, 2006
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15th August 1947 - 18th July 2006
Anna died on Tuesday evening. Her extraordinary, indomitable spirit was evident to the end. We will miss her as a comrade, mother, sister and friend, as someone who lived life with relish and brought great beauty and delicious tarte oignon into so many of our lives.
Okay, the tarte oignon was great, but her tortilla, the Spanish kind of tortilla, were really extraordinary. I guess you can’t put every dang yummy morsel into in an obituary, but while we’re remembering the culinary Anna, I’d like to also remember her tortilla.
Anna was among other things, the translator of a book by farmer/activist José Bové, The World is Not For Sale, and it is oddly because of Anna that I re-encountered Bové in the summer of 2002. José Bové, as you may know, is the roquefort farmer/producer who, in an eloquent expression of Yanqee, Git yer Ass off my Acre, dismantled a McDonalds’ building site in his home town of Millau. With his colleagues he then paraded the debris through the town as trophée, the bits of the McDo held high in whatever tractors use for arms, crowds lining the streets cheering praise.
Bové was sentenced to three months at the prison in Montpellier, which is close to where I was staying with dear familial friends, and where Anna lived upstairs. A lot of extraordinary Anna-centric things happened in just a few short days that summer, including a near-death experience involving dear Anna.
Because near-death experiences tend to involve a lot of waiting around worrying for the living, we decided to distract ourselves I mean do something constructive, by attending an event that Anna would have attended, had she not been half a nanometer from death’s door. This event was an enormous demonstration on the hills above Montpellier, on the occasion of Bové’s release from prison.
Life is one big fashion show, so the night before the ‘demo’, we spent quite some hours preparing a rather large banner painted with the words,
Fort
Bové’
The demo was held on a hill covered with wild thyme and other scrubby plants, which we attendees trampled and pulverised in the walk to get to the protest/celebration. I shall always remember this day for the feeling of release it gave our little group, to not only worry about Anna cum sui, but to start living again. I shall also remember this as the most aromatic political demonstration I’ve ever attended.
Thank you Anna, Rock Fort!
debra at 18:40 | Comments (3) | post to del.icio.us
Grow yer own dang biomass inadvertently
July 16, 2006
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Occitanian kitchen garden in May, as neat as you please
Way back in January, and then again in March, and again in April and May, I had big plans for my kitchen garden. Big and neat. Knowing that I would have to return from Occitania to the Polar Circle for two months of gainful employment, I alphabetized my seed beds and planted sticks for beans and gourds to climb up and a trellis for what I hoped would be groves of tomato plants, dripping with 4 sorts of fat tomatoes. I made a shockingly Dutch-looking irrigation system, so that when it came time to water, my neighbour, Sidi ElGouche could throw open the sluices and let er rip. And Sidi ElGouche being the sweetheart that he is, was not shy about making sure that in my absence, my kitchen garden got a goodly amount of water.
When I returned to my garden on the 14th of July, I encountered a solid plot of homegrown biomass.
.'))
Occitanian kitchen garden in July 2006, a little less neat, but inadvertently producing what will become a thick mat of biomass (Please read more… )
debra at 15:54 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
