MARY CLOSNER
Rants & RAVES
Mary Closner lives in Northfield, making bad decisions so you don’t have to. Reach her at 1964minx@gmail.com.
Food, glorious food
I
was thinking of the way we associate food with certain special times in our lives. I have a strong sense of smell, so all my memories seem to be associated with the scents of cooking or baking. Growing up in a small town in Upper Michigan, I have fond thoughts of the bakery on the main drag. It always smelled so amazing. Like years of sugar cookies, chocolate and freshly made bread. They had the world’s best chocolate chip cookies they put in a white box and tied with string. I loved carrying the box for my mom and dreaming of when we could devour them for dessert. The local specialty in my hometown is pasties, due to a history of feeding Cornish miners back in the day. Big, starchy hand pies made with a lard crust filled with potatoes, beef and rutabaga. They have a rare spice blend known as salt and pepper. Once you eat them, you immediately have to take a nap. I still love them to this day. When we were little and didn’t feel well, we had “Graveyard Stew.” This is basically just cubes of buttered cinnamon toast with hot milk on top. Nothing like a few tombstones to cheer you up when you feel lousy. And it’s funny that I still enjoy graham crackers, as I normally only ate those to get the taste out of my mouth after taking liquid medicine for motion sickness. I was a real treat to sit next to in the backseat during long car trips. It took me until adulthood to realize that we had an extraordinary number of parfaits growing up. I just figured this was how folks ate. Tall, beautiful glasses filled with layers of stuff between Cool Whip. I now understand that ev-
ery time Mom made something that didn’t set, was raw in the middle, looked terrible, or fell on the counter while coming out of the pan, it became a special treat known as a parfait. My dad had weird food connections too. He would only tolerate grilled cheese if it had peanut butter on it and would only eat limeflavored Jell-O with cold milk on top. These were heavy Jell-O years in the Closner family, and we had it in many forms with an assortment of canned fruit floating in it and a dollop of Miracle Whip to dress it up. My mom has always hated raisins, as they were given to her as a cure for acne as a child. My brother, Dan, is afraid of peppers, and my brother, Paul, loves those weird, bright-red spiced apples that come in a jar. My sister, Beth, lives for peanut butter, and my sister, Jennifer, adores fruit but won’t eat any of it if it’s been cooked. And don’t think for a moment that my brother, Pete, won’t try to serve you a cheeseball made with smoked white fish and that liquid smoke crap. I went to a small college in St. Paul. Need I say anything more than hot hoagies (I miss you, Davanni’s) and ice-cold Grolsch beer in the fun green bottles? What about the endless cheap delivery pizza in the middle of the night? Pizza has never tasted that good since. Oh, and my education was pretty decent too. Another fond memory is a college trip to a tiny spot in the Cayman Islands with my folks. You couldn’t drink the local tap water, so I was forced to drink icy cold Heineken beer at every meal. So many of those that my Dad mailed me the bar tab (with the total bottle count circled) after I returned to school with the simple message, “Please Pay This.”
I sometimes dream of the time I spent in Boston during my later college years. I miss the meatball subs at the dumpy Italian place I used to hit up while I was doing my laundry at “The Laundromat of the Stars.” I had trouble imagining John Lennon bleaching his whites there (as the plaque on the washer professed), but that sandwich made dragging my laundry all over town worthwhile. In the winter, my thoughts drift to Tucson, AZ and all the years I spent there. Do I miss the weather? Sure. But I really miss the frozen lemonade (Thank you for showing me the love, Eegge’s), the champagne mustard and the amazing green corn tamales that came with a bowl of teeny Mexican limes. Speaking of food memories, who could forget my Father lecturing me, “There’s no free lunch,” only to discover my first day at my fancy Resort job, that there was free lunch… every damn day. And not just lunch lunch, but left-over-from-the-5-star-dining-room-oh-myGod-this-lobster-and-prime-rib-is-astonishingare-they-outta-the-souffle-sorta lunch. Working late one eve as the MOD (Manager on Duty), the head of Room Service called with an emergency in the employee cafeteria. When I arrived, all the lights were out and a single silver candlestick with a white taper illuminated a linen-covered table. One red rose and the most beautiful plate of warm raisin scones with clotted cream and fresh raspberry preserves. He had prepared that with a glass of expensive champagne as a late-night treat for me. I pledged my undying love to him right then and there…which I’m sure his wife didn’t appreciate. It still brings a tear to my eye when I re-
member working an event at a luxury resort in Phoenix, AZ. Jalapeno fry bread with honey butter and chocolate dessert tacos filled with some sort of mousse made by the Gods themselves (Bless you, Wigwam Resort). Oh, how I miss those days of having an expense account and 24/7 access to a gourmet dining room. As my career progressed into the corporate world, I learned that anything you make that didn’t come out correctly should be brought to the office. People at work will eat anything. Sure, you might have mixed up the sugar and the salt in your cookies. It doesn’t matter, just set them in the employee kitchen. Leftover gross Halloween candy (like Circus Peanuts) will be gone in minutes. A stale gingerbread house you used for display all during the holidays and the dog may or may not have licked, bring it in. As my Dad used to say, “People at the office will eat broken glass if it has enough chocolate on it.” Ah, what about those summer tradeshows in New York City. Sure, there was always a garbage strike going on and most of the city smelled like a urinal, but the fresh buffalo mozzarella sandwiches (I love you, Cossi) & street vendor hot dogs made the trip worthwhile. And who could forget those perfect bitter cranberry martinis at that exclusive gay bar that didn’t have a sign so only the cool kids could find it? My friend found the place but I lost him on the way home as I poured myself into a cab and miraculously located my hotel. I have to go now. I’m scraping the burned top off the gingerbread I baked so my sister can take it to work.
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