Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Pig Rock Sausages

I admit it. I’ve only used pre-cooked sausages in my kitchen. And sausage only became part of my menu when I found them at Trader Joe’s. Little did I suspect that sausage – a word that in my house growing up implied non-Kosher sawdust swept up from the dirty factory floor stuffed into old pig intestines - came in such varied and delish forms.

This weekend I had a high-level Sausage 101 tutorial. At a neighborhood store that does curbside, I bought some Pig Rock Sausages with chicken, real maple syrup, and garlic. Yum. But they arrived all squishy and plump, i.e. completely uncooked, unlike the ones I get from Trader Joe’s. I started to sauté them but quickly realized that in truth I had not a clue what to do. I Googled and searched and finally called the company – their number was readily available – and left a message at the impossible hour of 6:00 Friday night: “Help! The sausages are cooking in a stovetop pan in medium heat. Is that right? How long should I cook them?” I also posted a message on their Facebook page.

A man called me back minutes later and talked me through (about 7 minutes on each side) while giving me the basic 411 on fresh, pure sausages. Pig Rock Sausages turns out to be a Boston-based company formed by Art Welch, a very special executive chef. The person who called me was none other than Art Welch himself. He also responded to my FB message.

The meat turned out scrumptious. It transpires that there are many types of additive- and preservative-free Pig Rock Sausages to be had – from Bratwurst to Sweet & Hot Italian and more.

Congratulations Art Welch on your amazing products, but even more on your willingness to spend some of your weekend explaining to a woman in her 70s who has never much learned to cook how to pamper her taste buds.

Do You Name Your Cantaloupes?

I don’t go indoors. Since March 11, I have not gone inside a store or salon or dance club or restaurant or, even more amazing, if you know me, a dollar store. I’m extremely cautious. I pay a shopper to get my groceries. She’s a sweetheart and shops for about 25 customers each week. She calls us, “My shut-ins.”

She’s been a shopper for several years. Before the pandemic it was just one of four jobs she had to support herself and her children. She lost the other three jobs as soon as everything shut down and has since beefed up her shopping business. She knows exactly where everything is stocked in every type of grocery store, so she’s incredibly quick. She is happy to add on other stops as well: she has picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy twice already.

One has to learn how to be a shopee as well. Once I asked for two Dole cups of cut-up peaches (before peach season) and she bought me two packages of six cups each. I had to donate all of it, after tasting one cup. One must be very explicit. If I order broccoli, I have to write a note to specify that it be fresh, not bagged. A shopee learns slowly but surely.

And because she is shopping here, there, and everywhere all day, when she spies something that is hard to get, she grabs supplies for all her shut-ins. Early on, when disinfecting wipes were unavailable, she was in Costco when a big shipment came in and, voila!, she gifted me a box of wipes.

She’s efficient, flexible, reliable, and conscientious, but we don’t really see eye to eye on fruit and veg. It feels quite hit and miss. Last week I asked for a mini-watermelon and a cantaloupe. That was my first mistake. I should have said: small melon. Because I like all melons. She texted from the store that there were no mini-watermelons, but she could get me a pre-wrapped slice of watermelon. I asked for a photo of my choices, and she sent me one and I picked. I did not, though, think to question its size. That quarter of a watermelon was so big that it did not fit in my fridge: it was longer than the fridge is deep. I had to cut it into cubes immediately.

But it was nothing compared to the cantaloupe! The size, easily, of a basketball. The minute I saw it and struggled to lift the thing out of the bag, I texted her: “What?! I live alone. This cantaloupe could feed an affinity group for a week.” Later I sent her a photo and she LOL’d me back.

Too much cantaloupe is a problem. I’ve never heard of cantaloupe pie or cantaloupe sauce or even cantaloupe juice – not that I’ve ever baked a pie or own a juicer. One friend suggested, since I live alone and only see one person, that I make a friend out of my melon ala Tom Hanks in Cast Away with his volleyball friend Wilson. I tried developing a relationship, but the cantaloupe is insufficiently warm and fuzzy. Every name seemed insulting, from Big Head to Bulbous to Melonia. Particularly Melonia.

It is now 11 days later and I’m still consuming the cantaloupe. See the photo for the amount still remaining. I had to finish up the watermelon first – as it quickly turns to mush. But the cantaloupe just continues to hold up – bowl after bowl, mouthful after mouthful. I believe 2020 will be remembered as the year I had had enough.

My Drastic Personality Change

This summer I experienced a change to my character and behavior so fundamental that I’m surprised my friends recognized me. Let me first lay out the context:

Having lived in London for 10 years, I have maintained my bank account there and in that bank account are all of my pounds sterling. Because of Brexit, those sterlings are less sterling, and have lost a generous chunk of their value as punishment for the stupidity of the vote – 13% on just the day after.

When I arrived and started to understand what that meant – that a good deal of my very hard-earned money had evaporated without my consent – I remembered all the other times throughout my adult life that burst bubbles, stock crashes, and government perfidy erased the savings I am a chump to have worked towards all my life. And now the uncertainly of Brexit.

I could’ve succumbed to depression if I hadn’t decided to make lemonade out of lemons. Since I had just been ripped off of years of effort and modest living, I decided to live as if I weren’t Sue Katz, She Who Saves and Worries About Every Penny (only to be sucker-punched.) I decided instead that I should spend my money, not just surrender it without choice to sleazy financial and governmental bodies. I should add that I’m about to turn 69 and since I have saved and saved for old age, and since old age seems to be arriving for a visit of unknown duration, it is time to switch around and spend.

All of which is to explain why, contrary to a life’s habit, I ate where I wanted and what I wanted. As one friend said, I read the menu from the left instead of, as has always been my habit, from the right. I had eggplant stuffed with minced pork at an amazing Vietnamese restaurant and then went back twice for succulent cubed beef. I established myself as a regular at a neighborhood restaurant which, while the menu could only be called that unfortunate term Nouveau Cuisine, served the most scrumptious vegetable crepe and a damned good hamburger. I brought so many guests to this restaurant over the month that Kevin the gay proprietor squealed my name whenever I came in the door and seated me at the hidden back garden table for VIPs. And it’s no wonder: I was single-handedly paying off his mortgage.

Not pinching pennies – which can take both hands and half a brain – means I was able to luxuriously pass the time with one friend after another – at least one or two per day over a month – without a gnawing concern in the back of my head about whether this particular meal would mean that I’d have to die a week earlier in my dotage. Friends came to see me from Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Tunbridge, Whitstable, Bristol, and Brighton – not to forget south London – and I broke bread with each one without reserve. It meant that I could go to my favorite Turkish restaurant where “greasy grilled lamb ribs” does not begin to describe the orgasmic delight, and pick up the check without it giving me indigestion. It meant that I could go to My Old Dutch Pancake House and split not one but two confections with my buddy.

I broke down on my resolve to be a bigger spender many times, slinking off to the Pound Stores and the cut-rate supermarket, but then I’d shake myself out and saunter down to the – she says spitting over her shoulder – Whole Foods, which has followed the wave of gentrification into the neighborhood. There I bought the most delectable elite tea without bothering about the price at all – enough tea to sustain me during the month and to secret back into the States where a cuppa is sitting next to my computer as we speak.

Sitting, in fact, next to the pile of mail I have received from my London bank – surely credit and debit card accounts that I am unable to bring myself to open, now that I have returned to my scrimping real life. Perhaps one more cup of tea and I will buck up, stiffen my upper lip, and settle my arrears, putting that life of unfettered indulgence to rest.

The Pie, the Lawrence Strike, and the Pussycat with the Knife

I live my life by the saying “If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” but this time I got so much more than I ever anticipated. Not the least, I got a shot of human concern and kindness in a month filled with Orlando, Brexit, and vicious bombings. Here’s the story – but keep reading: the good part is at the end.

I was in Maine for a vacation weekend and on the way back I made a special detour into Ogunquit to the Bread & Roses Bakery. When I was last in Ogunquit three years ago, I had a piece of their raspberry pie and I never ever forgot it. Despite the difficulty of finding parking, it would be worth having that taste in my mouth again, I believed.

It was late afternoon. The pie was on a display stand out in the open. There was an intact half pie and a couple of slices. I asked the kind woman at the cash register if the pie was fresh. She said it had been baked in the morning, when a few pieces had been sliced. Happily, she offered to cut me a slice from the middle of the intact half. She handed the pie to a man who was behind the pastry display where there was a work counter. He was large; his back blocked me from seeing what he was doing. Soon a different woman came from his work counter and handed me a closed box.

“Did you get the memo about cutting a piece from the middle of the half?” I asked her with a smile. She looked confused. The man loomed over her from behind. I could see a large knife on the counter. “It’s ok,” he growled. I had already paid. I was on vacation. I decided not to get into any confrontational thing with him.

At home I opened the box. The piece was awfully narrow. Had this man sliced off the edges of one of the cut pieces? I had gone to a lot of trouble to get this very particular pie at this very specific bakery. It didn’t seem right.

On Monday I called the bakery and got right through to the owner, Mary. She was horrified. She asked if she could put me on speakerphone so that her colleague could hear. She never challenged me, was never defensive, never denied. She was grateful, she said, for my taking the time because she was training new staff and not everyone immediately “gets it” about happy customers.

She insisted on taking my address. That was Monday afternoon. Today is Wednesday. I opened my door this afternoon and a large square cardboard box sat there. I opened the box and inside was a Styrofoam cold box. Inside that was an icepack swathed in bubble wrap sitting on top of a round piece of cardboard that covered a bubble-wrapped fresh raspberry pie.

Mary had included a beautiful handwritten card thanking me for taking the time to provide her with this teaching moment. And inviting me to come see her when I’m in Ogunquit. She included a postcard with the history of the Lawrence, MA, strike in 1912 of women and children textile workers in which they demanded Bread & Roses – a strike I celebrate every year. Bread & Roses was also the name of the first coalition feminist group in Boston around 1970 to which my collective belonged. The slogan on Mary’s card is “We believe in doing well by doing good.”

I have cut up the pie and frozen many, many pieces, and will treat myself once or twice a week to this amazing pastry.  I’ve already pigged out on today’s portion without restraint.  

The owner of Ogunquit’s Bread & Roses Bakery has treated me with extraordinary generosity and has shown great principle. The striking women of Lawrence would be proud of her. Go there. Tell Mary I sent you. The food is fabulous and I bet that by now she’s turned that big guy into a pussycat.

http://www.breadandrosesbakery.com/about-us/

My Lunchtime Three-way Goes Awry

Judy and Deborah and I have a culinary three-way happening. We meet up every few months to catch up. This isn’t the first time we’ve come to the, ah, well, let’s call it the X-Café. It’s located halfway between their workplace and my home (ie, my workplace.) There are tables outside, so we settle in. They have made me a few color copies of the cover of my book Lillian’s Last Affair (Deborah executed the cover for me; Judy was an early reader) and hand them to me in a manila envelope which we put down to hold the table while we go in to order.

There is the competent wait person and there is the incompetent wait person. No, they don’t have white bread for my BLT but they do have sourdough bread. No, they’re out of the brioche buns for the hamburgers, but they have chapati which, the incompetent one assures me, is identical to brioche. Once we all locate some things on the menu that they actually have, we return to our table where I find the envelope soaked in some kind of oil – salad dressing? – that had managed to escape the cleaning of the table that apparently never happened. I immediately look at the left sleeve of the red Chico shirt I just bought online, on which I had been leaning while waiting for my friends to arrive and yes, it too is spotted with oil.

This leads to flurries of suggestions from the competent, now very embarrassed, wait person. She brings me a wet washcloth, offers soda water, while the incompetent one says, “Soda powder. No soda flour.” Baking soda we say. That’s it. Judy and Deborah say, “Shout!” and I know just what they mean. We settle in to wait for our food.

Out comes the incompetent one. There isn’t sourdough bread after all. What about 7-grain? Me, I’m a white bread girl. Period. I’m flexible about a lot of things, but I want my bread white. I go back into the restaurant to reorder. In the end I go for a Greek salad.

Food arrives. Judy picks up her wrap sandwich and it explodes in a waterfall of tomato colored juice splattering down the front of her lovely white blouse. That’s two shirts we’ve lost to lunch. Deborah’s grilled veggie sandwich eventually arrives, with an incongruous side of mashed potatoes – which is, in the end, the tastiest morsel on our table (not counting Deborah and Judy, of course.) The owner comes out to make sure everything is okay. We say, fine, fine. The competent wait person brings me back the money I paid for the BLT. No charge today.

And then the bees arrive. One. Two. More. Around the food. Under the table. They summon their friends to come swarm. Judy starts clearing away the plates. We can take a hint. My friends invite me to come to their office to make a photocopy of something I’ve mentioned. We’re laughing over the disaster in their office when Deborah suddenly clenches her stomach and says, “Oh, no”, charging for the bathroom. The bees may have gotten our leftovers, but Deborah has clearly brought home something to remember the lunch by.

Where Have All the Lemons Gone?

Last week I decided to go out of my way to shop in the newly-reopened Market Basket, where an odd and riveting labor action just ended. I had the distinct impression that the Market Basket prices were higher now than before the action that closed them down for weeks and weeks. I got to the lemons, which had always been two for $1.17 and they were now 99¢ apiece. I bitched about the hike in price. Afterall, I use about a lemon per day because the only liquid I drink is black tea with lemon - all day; every day.

I was in another supermarket where the lemons are usually 69¢ – up to 99¢ there too. They were lousy specimens as well – thick, spongy outer skins, minimal juice. I was on the phone with a friend. I said, projecting a fantasy nightmare, “The next thing you know something cataclysmic will happen in the agricultural world and Trader Joe’s won’t have any lemons.” That’s really where I buy my lemons: they have always been 49¢ each.

My nightmare came true. At Trader Joe’s yesterday there were no lemons. They had limes. They had citrus fruit. No lemons. I asked a helpful employee and he told me that they are unable to line up a producer or distributor of lemons. He cited two factors. One: There has been a significant drought in California and Mexico, so the crop is shockingly weak. Two: The farmers in Mexico are being convinced to grown corn instead of lemons for use in something industrial that I can’t remember.

Okay, okay, this is definitely a First World problem, but even for a person like me who leaves the environmental work to others (we all have to specialize, no?), this is a moment of note. Lemons are one of the basic foodstuffs in my world. Free the lemons!

The Traveler Restaurant: Food and Books

Anyone who’s driven on I-84 by Union, Connecticut has seen a tempting sign hovering right off the highway that says “Food and Books.” This week I finally stopped to have a meal. But not only a meal…

Founded in 1970, the restaurant adds to dining two other goals: to encourage people to read and to recycle extra books. When you have a meal – and the food is basic hearty American grub – you get to choose three free books from the shelves lining the dining room.

So why did they start doing a book give-away? In 1983, the owner wanted to thin out his personal collection, so he lugged a couple of boxes to the restaurant and passed them out to his customers. They now handle about 100,000 books (or 50 tons they say) per year. The books come from libraries getting rid of their surplus, from flea markets, and from donations. I picked up books by Anthony Trollope and Anita Brookner as well a short story collection from a writer I don’t know named Joy Williams. My companion got the original scripts from the movies Pulp Fiction and The Matrix.

The waitress called me away from the stacks when my food was served, but no one rushed me afterwards as I continued to browse. There is also a store downstairs called the Book Cellar that features, its leaflet says, all sorts of “reasonably priced” and “unique and hard to find titles.” I didn’t go downstairs, but it certainly looked intriguing.

It is such a winning combination – food and books – one many people experience in their own homes, that it is doubtful that I will ever drive I-84 again without stopping in and have a bite and a browse.

Photos courtesy of Barry Hock