I made chicken soup today in consideration of all the sick kids in this family.
What food reminds you of your childhood?
Olives! Bread! And some other things, let's see.
We lived what seemed like out in the country, to most people. The big town was about 15 minutes away, and the city was about 30 minutes away. And driving up to where my mom grew up, in the original Italian part of Kansas City (I think most of them live north of the river now) took closer to an hour. We would go there to shop at a store called Scimeca's, on Independence Avenue. Or if we visited Grandma and Grandpa Spano, who lived on a street called Askew Avenue, we always made a stop at Scimeca's.
Scimeca's was an old store, and when you walked in, you were hit with the strong, sharp, warm scent of Romano cheese. It was too pungent for me to eat back then, but I loved that smell. It's a very deep memory now. We would head around to the back by way of the packaged meat section, to the butcher counter. First my mom would choose some sausage. I always begged her to buy it without fennel seeds, because I thought they were horrible bitter rocks, but she never would. There was no "hot" sausage there, as far as I can recall, the way there is here in New Jersey; just with fennel or without. And it came in one long roll instead of separate links like they often do now.
Then we went to the back of the store, where there were usually a few and sometimes many people waiting to be served. When it was crowded, there was a buzz in the air that I can still recall. It made me feel comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. More on that some other time. If it was crowded, I usually had time to poke through the aisles while my mom waited. There were cans of imported tomatoes, big tin containers of olive oil, a few specialty foods, and plenty of ordinary groceries. There was, of course, an aisle filled with packaged cookies and candy. Sometimes we'd buy Stella D'oro anise cookies for my Grandpa. I always wanted to like those, but the anise was too strong for me. I buy them once in awhile now, in his memory.
There were only about six aisles in two sections at Scimeca's, and I don't think I realized this was just how all grocery stores were during a certain coming-of-age time. I was used to supermarkets, nothing like we have now, but still vast and bright compared to the older self-serve markets. I thought Scimeca's was unusual, yet it was perfectly typical of an older urban grocery store, aside from the focus on Italian products.
When it was her turn, my mom always bought Genoa salami, very thin. They would slice it so thin it was nearly translucent. It's hard to get it that way now, but it's much tastier. Several thin slices is better than a couple of thicker ones. There were some deli salads there as well, but she never bought those. They put little sweet peppers in their olive salad, and also carrots. That seemed very weird to me, as Mama never bothered with all those extraneous parts when she made it. She did buy the olives there, though. They were stored in great big jars on top of the deli counter, and she always pointed out to me the wisdom of buying large green Italian olives, and small black Greek ones. When I buy olives from the olive bar at Wegman's or Shoprite, I always have this in the back of my mind.
I loved watching the man wrap all the purchases in paper. The salami was wrapped in white butcher paper, which he tore off a long roll, and then he would close it with a piece of paper tape, and write on it with a thick black pencil. The olives would be scooped into a little paper tray and then wrapped with the paper.
It seems, in my dim memories, that my mom would sometimes argue with the man behind the counter. I know they knew each other; they may have gone to school together. Everyone from that neighborhood knew each other. I also know that many men found my mom attractive, so for all I know, they could have been trying to flirt with her as well. Sometimes there were two men working back there, of course. If they weren't very busy, they would say hi to me or ask me a question, and of course I always answered awkwardly and shyly. I don't know what made me so shy. I'm glad I am not so anymore.
After she got the salami and olives and whatever else I wasn't paying attention to, Mama would picked up some plastic tubs of spices like oregano and dried parsley, a chunk of Romano cheese, and some ricotta, which we never said the way you do, or the way most people say it here. In fact, the pronunciation of Italian food and other basic terms that everyone knew was very different in Kansas City than it is here. They never dropped the vowels completely off the ends of all the words, for one thing. And they did a and o differently.
Anyway.
Next was the bread. It came from Roma Bakery, up the street a few blocks (they've both moved north of the river,) except during this one period of time after the bakery "mysteriously" caught fire and had to be fixed up. Sometimes the bread was still warm from a recent delivery. Then we'd check out with all these purchases, plus a bottle of Coke, which my mom loved, but I couldn't really stand.
Now the best part of the trip. That store smelled so good and made us so hungry, we would get in the car and open the olives and bread, sometimes the salami, and Mama would have her bottle of Coke, and we'd sit there and snack before driving back home or to Grandma and Grandpa's house.
I don't think my kids understand how important it is to me that we share some Italian bread on the way home from the store. I should probably tell them why.
Mangia! But don't forget to first lavi le mani, si?
Ben and I went to the Mets game last night, with tickets Livvy got him for his birthday. She got them for about half face value, at StubHub, which I do not link to because I'm feeling lazy. It takes too long to put together a simple post here now. I'll come back and fix that. I have to figure out how to make my time at Vox work better so that it's not so time and energy consuming.
Testing mobile blogging again.
Tomorrow's Tax Day. Have you done your taxes yet?
Nearly three months ago. If you are owed a refund, it makes no sense to put it off, letting the government collect interest on what they owe you. But if you "owe" the gov't, of course you should wait until the absolute last minute.
It's not hard to upload them to Vox, but once I get to this window, all bets are all off. Let's try a bit of html, shall we? If it works, you should be able to click on the photo below to see the rest of the Easter photos.
Remember that? It was on the Saturday Night Fever movie soundtrack. I have it on my turntable right now.
What do you think is the greatest pop song of all time?
It's a good thing I didn't see this question until today, a day when I have virtually nothing important to do.
Because my brain just exploded. I can't get it narrowed down and yet somehow am compelled to keep trying.
I mean, just, mmhm.
I think I'll share music stuff today, though. I was already planning to.
I've always felt this is a strong "greatest" contender.
There weren't any good videos, though.
Hey, it only took about 45 minutes of intermittent spinning beach ball to do this, and only one of these:
Follow along here: Miss J. A— The regular Twitter me is in a link to the right of this window.
The semi-illicit privilege of downloading the new Depeche Mode album three weeks early for only $1.56 was not wasted on me. I quite like it. And when it is officially released I will (somewhat) cheerfully buy the package they've put together in order to lure people into paying the usual amount for these things. Apparently there's a book and a lot of photos, etc. along with the disc.
