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In this supposed age of leisure, we find ourselves flying against the calendar, looking back at July, wondering if it really happened. Stuck in the midst of deadlines, social appointments, family demands, laughter, tears and general incomprehension, life feels like a multi-layered sandwich, the pressed kind. Somewhere in the middle of that sandwich, we have to find time to eat. Food writers tout takeout food as the new trend, a way to feed yourself and your family food that is nutritious and interesting, a little indulgent. But I think it’s always been an option, though perhaps without the name. My mother contended with five of us—Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, carpools and the parent-teacher-observation-nursery school. Somehow we sat down to dinner every night. I set the table. Mom cooked. Or, sometimes, she loaded the heavy bottom to her pressure cooker into the station wagon and headed over to La Hacienda, the fancy old-school Italian restaurant, where she bewitched the chef into selling her his veal and spinach ravioli out the back door of the kitchen. Through the car window, the menthol of eucalyptus blended into the waves of simmering marinara. At home, she slid the ravioli into a white stoneware dish next to the salad bowl and the sourdough bread. Dinner was served. |
Summers, picking up my brother at a Kerrville camp, we stopped by the Ingram locker plant to buy pounds of thinly sliced brisket smelling of smoke and pepper, and wrapped in white butcher paper. No one trimmed the fat from that brisket, and the warm, smoky sweetness of the meat stayed with us to the Guadalupe River where we sat in cypress shade, our feet in the cold, clear water, eating brisket with onions and pickles and soft white bread. Visiting Japan, many years ago, I found my hostess, who was usually in the kitchen, sitting one evening, bathed in silk sipping plum wine in her living room. Tonight, we have sushi. Through the night, slick as obsidian with rain and shimmering neon, came the bell of a bicycle. At the kitchen door stood the delivery boy with boxes of impossibly fresh fish on vinegared rice cakes. My hostess smiled, beckoned us to the table. Takeout food. Take a deep breath. Eating is good.
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