lyz – Eat Me. Drink Me.

Author Archive

Explaining Holidays or How to Plan a Dinner Party without Furniture

We argued about Squanto for a while, some of us positing that he had been integral to the first Thanksgiving, others that he wasn’t a real figure to begin with, sounding too much like a bad and somewhat culturally insensitive joke. Squanto, however, as the internet verified a few glasses of wine later, was real. He had been kidnapped as a child and taken to England and taught English. After a journey of intrigue and backstabbing, he traveled back to his native America on John Smith’s ship to discover that most of the new England tribes had been wiped out. It’s a heartwarming story, but not part of the Thanksgiving myth. The debate continued.

There were thirteen countries, twelve of which don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, represented at Thanksgiving this year, so there wasn’t much corroborating the North Americans could do on each other’s version of history. It seems we each had slightly varying versions of the First Thanksgiving. We considered performing dramatic retellings to the assembled guests and letting them vote for the most entertaining, and hence, definitive story. That seems to be how history works, anyway. » Continue reading this post...

Making Home: Won-Ton Soup

The view from my new kitchen window is a giant swath of salmon wall. On gray days, it’s the color of a salmon slab that’s been sitting too long in the fridge. On sunny days, it’s that flash-frozen pink of a fresh fish pulled from the river and slit open. The windows are uniform and white, and in one window box there’s a slightly infuriating lavender plant that bobs and bobs and bobs in the wind like mesmerizing purple tentacles.

I love my new apartment, but I have the feeling I’m going to grow to hate these inner courtyard walls. I turn my gaze inside. When the sun shines, our apartment is bathed in light. It glances off the lacquered wooden floors and paints the walls a brilliant white. When it’s gray out, and let’s be truthful, in Berlin it’s often gray out, I light all the candles I impulse bought at Ikea, and I am glad for that acted-upon urge.

It’s easy to forget how much work it takes to move. You think that once you’ve carted your personal effects up and down hundreds of flights of stairs, and thrown yourself upon the mattress lying in the middle of the floor that the hardest part is over. But after you’ve bathed your sore muscles in a bathtub filled with water boiled on the stove (because of course the hot water isn’t working yet), you realize that somehow, all of these things must find a home.

So you go to Ikea (again), and buy a Hemnes for the clothes and some other things you’ve never had to buy because you’ve always lived with roommates who’ve had these things. (Shower curtains and hot water kettles, cutting boards, a bath mat.) Suddenly, you are very grateful for the set of silverware that caught your eye two years ago and that you just had to have, even though you didn’t know what to do with it, so stored it in a box. » Continue reading this post...

Smells Like Fall: Uncle Richard’s Apple Cider

Apples (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

It is one of my last evenings living in Neukölln, and I’m feeling prematurely nostalgic about the scratch of car wheels roughing up rain outside my ground floor window, the headlights shining in through the curtains, the soft glow of lights in my little room, and the way it’s always cold no matter how much you wear. For that reason, and because hot drinks are so well suited to nostalgia, I’ve warmed myself up a cup of homemade apple cider and am sitting here at my desk researching moving truck prices and trying to figure out what Kbpi/s means.

I made my first batch of homemade apple cider last week, listening to soft music and letting the warm smell of cinnamon waft through the apartment. A few weeks before that, my uncle had sent around an email with his recipe for apple cider.

My uncle, who lives in West Virginia, is an avid and experimental cook, reconstructing his favorite dishes by taking them apart and building them back up again. I store the recipes in an email folder, saving them for a rainy day or an alignment of the proper stars. I have yet to try the French onion soup, Moroccan-style boneless pork ribs, and Pho broth, but this fall in Berlin has been gracious, and that’s enough stars to spend a day with a pot of cider simmering on the stove. » Continue reading this post...

Cornucopia: Thai Pumpkin Curry

Roasted pumpkin seeds (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

Berlin seems to have taken a step back to acknowledge my favorite season. Walking through the streets, there’s the slow, steady fall of leaves. In my neighborhood, they are the yellow of barely ripe bananas and small like babies’ palms. There’s a chill in the air that makes you want to snuggle deeper into your coat and your scarf, and the wind blows past the old brewery, wafting the lingering yeasty apple smell of fermenting beer through Neukölln.

The bins in the Turkish grocery stores along Karl-Marx Str. and the rogue Russian grocery on the corner are full of apples, root vegetables, and piles of pumpkins. Fall has always made me feel like building a cornucopia, a shrine to beautiful burnished things, crisp fallen leaves and chestnuts, acorns and other nuts, colorful squashes that look like warty witches’ noses, frost-edged sunflower leaves, apples with matte pink and green skins, tiny beveled pumpkins.

Garden-grown pumpkin (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

A few weeks or so ago, I was given a pumpkin, homegrown, heavy and green-skinned. It has been my table decoration for weeks, next to the wicker basket of fruit, the pitcher cum vase from the flea market that never seems to be full of flowers, the tea cup full of sugar – reminding me on my harried travels here and there that no matter how much there is to do, there’s really no rush; a pumpkin will wait for you.

I love that in the midst of the chill of fall, the quickening dark as winter comes closer, nature presents some of her most brilliant colors. That’s some sort of a reminder too. The inside of a pumpkin glows like two halves of sunshine. It’s so enticing, you almost want to eat it raw. But the pumpkin likes to wait, and to convince it to open up to you, you must promise it your time. » Continue reading this post...

City of Memory

In the Louvre (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

“Paris is a great blind love, we are all hopelessly in love, but there is something green, a kind of mist, I don’t know.”

–Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar

I remember eating snails for the first time. I was fifteen, in a dim small bistrot in the Quartier Latin, and the waiter laughed to see the foreign teenager eager for garden pests. I remember scooping them out with a little fork and slurping the salty flesh, the dusky mouth feel of butter, garlic, and herbs. The bistrot was split over two levels, and I sat with my family on the upper level, looking down on the heads of the Parisians below. Young and golden-haired girls. I don’t know why that made such an impression on me. The table was darkly wooden, worn smooth by elbows and swipes of the kitchen rag and the whole place was dark. Deep red tapestries on the wall and strange, small knick-knacks powdered with dust on wooden ledges. Every now and then, the grit of sand between my teeth.

I feel beautiful in Paris. As if the cobblestones kiss my feet, and the wind blowing up the green Seine smell is a caress along my cheek.

I remember once, sitting in a café in Montmartre, before I went back later and it all seemed forced, sitting there with friends and a carafe of wine and a basket of pain, feeling very old. Paris was fresh, wrapping me up in its magic cloak, and of course the wine was bad and the checkered tablecloth covered in tannin spots and bread crumbs, but there beside our table were the artists with their thick trompe l’oeils of the Eiffel Tower, the Lautrec posters I bought by the ream to later hang in my college dorm room, the cafés the cafés the cafés with tiny tables and even tinier wickerwork chairs. » Continue reading this post...

Tradition Looks A Lot Like Chocolate Cake

Sachertorte (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

I didn’t eat Wienerschnitzel in Vienna. Even though it’s where Wienerschnitzel was born. Even though it’s something you’re supposed to do. When you only have three days in Vienna, sometimes the schnitzel falls by the wayside. And though I shall live, I feel as if I’ve missed something important. A part of history, a tradition.

Tradition and tourism are two things that don’t often end well together. Rarely do locals hang out where the tourists do. I’ve been to Times Square numerous times – but never while I was living in New York. In Berlin, taking visitors to see the Brandenburger Tor is like being a tourist myself, since there’s really no other reason to be in that part of town. Food for tourists is usually bad. Food for tourists is usually traditional (or Pan-Asian, why is that?). Ergo, traditional food is usually bad.

Aida (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

Detail inside Paul's Church, Vienna (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

In Vienna, tradition and history infuse the city, from its tourism to its local life. Of course, tradition is a bit hard to avoid in a city where a marvelous monument or palace or church graces every other corner, where the buildings lining the streets sport corniced gables or hidden frescoes and other finely-wrought details. Vienna is a city that takes its past as a cultural capital seriously. Even today, there is music and art everywhere.

One lovely part of Viennese history is a tradition of elegant cafes and pastry shops serving afternoon coffee and cake. From outside, the cafes emit a honey glow, inviting the cold and the tired inside with the promise of whipped cream and jam, marzipan, macaroon, hazelnut – and of course, a strong cup of hot coffee with just a splash of chocolate liqueur. Inside, confections, cakes and sweets slumber in sticky-sweet stacks behind polished glass.

At Hotel Sacher, we tried one of Vienna’s most famous desserts, the eponymous Sachertorte. » Continue reading this post...

Seven Second Lunch: Chickpea Salad with Dill and Red Onions

chickpea salad (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

Sometimes, you don’t want to stop watching television on the internet at the same time as you want something delicious to eat. You’re lying on your bed, foetally-curled into a blanket, thinking about how far away the kitchen is, how arduous the effort to open the drawer and draw out the knives. You want someone to magically turn up at your door with a tin of cookies. You want the delivery guy you didn’t order to end up at your apartment and not realize he dropped a fragrant tikka masala off at the wrong door. You want someone to cook for you. You want a maid. And that is almost certainly something that you are not going to get.

Some days, you just want so many things. And while most things you may want, might just be out of your reach, some are not. Lunch is not. Especially when you’ve got a not-completely-empty pantry and the knowledge that lemons and garlic and shredded parmesan can make you feel like all of your dreams really have come true.

It might not be a maid, but a can of chickpeas could save your life. Or at least give you the strength to hit the play button on the next episode, while you lie, foetally-curled up in bed, snuggling a bowl of fresh chickpea salad, soothed by the verdant smell of dill.

dill-icious (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

» Continue reading this post...

Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful: Dark & Stormy Cocktails

Dark & Stormy (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

Please forgive me if I’ve already started humming Christmas carols… I get the feeling that in Berlin, the weather goes from summer to winter without even a nod to my favorite season. This is not a city that does chunky sweaters and burnt sienna trees. It’s a city that does all leaves/no leaves. Tank top/parka.

And you wonder why this isn’t a country that has apple or pumpkin pie. They don’t even have a season for it. What do you expect?

Not so long ago I was in Bermuda. Now there’s another night/day contrast we can talk about. A brilliant, beating sun, pink sand, water so blue it seemed unreal. A perpetual sunburn on my skin, cold drinks on the deck of a ship. Somebody please remind me why I left.

Beach in Bermuda (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

While you can’t always take the island sunshine with you, there are some tokens of the beach that fit in a small bag. Gosling Black Seal Rum and ginger beer for one.

Dark & Stormies are simple, highball cocktails made with ginger beer and Gosling’s rum. And apparently yes, to make real Dark & Stormies you do need Gosling’s, as the drink is trademarked by the company, whose base is in Bermuda. It stands to reason then, that along with the Rum Swizzle, the Dark & Stormy is Bermuda’s national drink.

A Dark & Stormy is a beautiful drink. Sparkling, golden ginger beer topped with a jigger of rum that floats above the soda like a storm cloud. » Continue reading this post...