June 05, 2005
Thinking of home...and food
by Jeff Langstraat
I just returned from the annual potluck for a group I'm involved with. I took bratwurst from Schmidt's Meat Market in Nicollet, Minnesota. My parents ship a few dozen brats to me a couple times a year, and the Department Administrator at Tufts, who's also from Minnesota, goes in with me on these orders. The effort is worth it. You simply cannot find a good bratwurst in Boston, and no matter what anyone else says, Johnsonville is not a good bratwurst. These were, as usual, a huge hit. I'm still feeling bloated after two of them, and damn it feels good.
OK, for those of you not in the know, here's how to prepare bratwurst. First of all, toss 'em all in a deep pan with a bunch of sliced onions. Cover the brats and onions with beer. Bring it all up to a simmer, and sustain it at that level until the brats are just about to burst (some of them may split a little at the ends). Transfer them to the grill, and cook 'em 'til they're done. Serve on a bun (you also cannot find bratwurst buns in Boston) with sauerkraut, sweet relish, chopped onions, ketchup, mustard and a cold beer. It's also really good if you make a batch of German Potato Salad (note: that's my base recipe. I've been adding mustard to it as well. You'll need to play with the mustard and sugar levels (the recipe will probably need a bit more sugar to balance out the vinegar and lemon).)
I'm thinking about this because these cookouts make me a little homesick. In some ways, they remind me I am not of this place I'm currently living. Home is where the bratwurst are. And my parents' garden.
People in Boston are amazed that I've actually canned foods. I have several jars of potato-leek soup sitting on my shelf right now. Having grown up in rural America, though, canning seems much more a way of life, even if it also seems to be waning. I remember jars of cherries, peaches, pears, green beans and corn sitting in my granmother's pantry. I remember my mother canning tomatoes and pickles (later, I would take over some of those duties). The garden was always large enough to plant extra food, which would be preserved and eaten year-round. It was simply part of the rhythm of rural life.
As much as I love urban life, I do miss that rhythm (I will never go back to rural living, though). I also miss my parents. Hot August afternoons in the kitchen, putting up a batch of tomato sauce or dill pickels (with extra jalapeRos, thank you) with my mother are some of my favorite times. One year, they left me with 20 pounds of carrots to work with, and work I did: dill carrots, a sort of Indian-style pickled carrot sticks, apple-carrot chutney, carrot-onion relish, and carrot soup; couldn't stand the sight of carrots for about a year after that. If I'm there during tomato season, I'll inevitably run out to the garden to grab some grape tomatoes and basil, slice 'em up, and toss 'em with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and parmagiano. Nothing from the grocery store tastes as fresh as a tomato off the vine for 20 minutes....not even Whole Foods, folks. And let me say this, New England produce has nothing on Midwestern produce...or meat. (I'll give New England Seafood.)
As much as I love some foods from home, my grandmother's sour cream-raisin pie is another one, there are some things I can do without. Amanda's post at Pandagon got me thinking about this. I never want to see the odious seven-layer salad made with iceberg lettuce again! And if I ever see Rocky Mountain Oysters sitting in a bowl of salt water in the fridge again...well, it won't be a happy day. (Dad's a veterinarian.) And, I hate to tell you this folks, Applebee's and Red Lobster are not fine dining...they're not even very good.
It's not just regional foods I miss, though. It's particular dishes. I miss the wasabi shumai and ama ebi nigiri at Sushi Tango. I miss the pho and spring rolls at Kinhdo (although Pho Pasteur is quite good, and the Twin Cities have nothing like The Helmand.) The chorizo is different here, too.
I was at a conference in Minneapolis a month and a half ago. Wandering around the streets of downtown, looking for a bagel, I found myself muttering, "God, it's good to be back." As much as I love Boston, Minnesota is home. This was made even more apparent recently. My sister moved back to Minneapolis after speding four years in Italy and one in New Haven. There's a way of being in Minnesota--everywhere for that matter--that we grow up with. The lack of a horizon, the narrowness of the streets, the scale of Boston sometimes leaves me feeling a bit claustrophobic. I miss the sky. I miss the darkness of night, a dark so deep it swallows the headlights as you're driving. I also miss the brightness of night, when the Milky Way damn near makes headlights unnecessary.
The longer I live away from the Midwest the more I realize how much that region is a part of me. Most of my good friends around here are also Midwesterners. There are little things that we notice--the piss-poor quality of customer service, the way no one says "excuse me," the lack of friendliness--that remind us where we are not. We've all come to love living here, but there's something that reminds us we're outsiders in some small way. My height (I'm 6'5") stands out here more than it did in Minnesota. I'm more at home in my body there.
So, what's the point of all this. In some sense, it's about belonging. I don't know where I'm going to be living after the next academic year. My sense is that it won't be Boston any more. By then, my PhD should be pretty much finished--committee willing. In this city, PhDs are a dime a dozen. The academic market is a complete crap shoot, particularly when there are certain areas I quite simply will not consider living. I wonder about this sense of belonging, though. Where will I find it? Will I find it? One of the hardest things about moving to a new place is finding a community, a sense of belonging. Our mobility can be invigorating. The displacement can also be troubling. From trying to figure out the new vernacular or habits of life, to fitting it physically, to finding the right kinds of food, feeling at home in a particular place can be a daunting. Thank god, at least, for next-day shipping; the bratwurst are never that far away.
Posted by in Culture, Ephemera, Food, Life
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Say it loud, say it proud!
If you ever want a little taste of home, hit I-95 and head north for about an hour and 15 minutes. Once you get into Portsmouth, New Hampshire, exit I-95 on the Portsmouth Traffic Circle and hit Rt. 16. Follow that to Dover (about 15 minutes,) and walk around once you get downtown. We don't have brats like Minneapolis, but the customer service rocks, people will smile at you and say hello as you walk by 'em on the sidewalk, (and even say excuse me if they get in your way!) You can see the sky and feel the space around you stretching out a bit. You can even see stars at night, once you get out of Dover's downtown! We're technically a city, but it's got a cosy small town feel. People garden and can -- I've got tomatoes, carrots, basil, beans, zucchini, pumpkins, and spinach started alongside my house as we speak -- and hell, some of us are even known to make our own fruit and/or veggie wines. I've got a friend down in Cambridge who comes up my way as often as he can; he says that even just a few hours up in my area is very therapeutic.
Aaaah, Boston. Right now I'm thinking of the last time I visited there, and I'm trying to laugh quietly so I don't wake anyone. After two blocks of walking, having counted three different instances of one car cutting another car off complete with horns honking, middle fingers flailing, and shouted profanities, I turned to him and said, "My, what a -friendly- town! Look at that nice man over there, saying hello to his fellow drivers. Is that one-fingered wave a regional thing?"
"Yeah, there's a whole elaborate assortment of them, really. So many cultures coming together in one place; it's nice to see everyone being so friendly with one another and learning each other's greetings." ::A bicyclist cuts off a driver, nearly smashing up on the car's bumper as the larger vehicle squeals to a stop. The driver shouts "ASSHOLE!":: "Oh, do you hear that? There's another one! So -very- friendly."
Okay, maybe it's funny in that "you had to be there," kind of sense, but in all seriousness -- you rarely -ever- see any of the Boston brusqueness, disregard for traffic rules, rudeness, etc. where I live. It's only an hour and a half, maybe an hour and 15 minutes away, but it may as well be a whole other world. (But yet, I still love Boston and enjoy my visits there -- even though I still don't understand the "drive through the Walk signal, walk through the Don't Walk signal" rule of the crosswalks.)
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Comment by: Jeff at June 5, 2005 11:47 PM
It's funny, I love the chaos of the city. I'm a terrible passenger (I always feel like the person driving is going to get us killed) but can do just fine driving myself. The chaos has its own rules. Figuring them out can be a pain, but once you do things go ok..and I've been known to toss some of those fingers. I was talking about this with a friend today and we agreed that if everyone started following the traffic rules tomorrow the city would become more chaotic because no one would know how to drive any more.
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Comment by: Ron O. at June 10, 2005 10:44 AM
Jeff,
I moved back to my city, Chicago, after 4 years away after college. I used to make visitors bring me pierogis and sauerkraut. My mother's people were rural and my father's were poor, so I grew up in a family that gardened and canned. You can grow a lot even in small urban plots and pots. My fiance grew up in the Plains states. For her, nothing beats an Iowa pork chop.
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Comment by: Jeff at June 10, 2005 06:26 PM
Iowa pork chops...god, could I use one of those. There is nothing like good meat, particularly pork, from the Midwest.
It's funny, whenever I go home, Dad insists on grilling salmon (it's even fairly fresh, especially considering where they live). We both love it, and Mom refuses to eat it, so Dad only gets to have it when I come around. Next time, I may have to have some pork chops. Schmidt's also makes some incredible smoked pork chops...now I'm about to go into a Homer Simpson drool.
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Comment by: Kim at June 5, 2005 11:42 PM