Bad news begets Brie

            Yesterday I got a bit of bad news. Our landlord dropped in to tell us that in the Fall the rent would rise by a nominal percent, and she’d be moving into one of the bedrooms. After she, the bearer of bad news, left, one roommate immediately pulled a bottle of wine from a kitchen cabinet and the rest of us debated if we were still hungry enough for dinner. The first words from my mouth were, “I could stress vomit right now, if I needed to,” and then wondered if it were actually about to be an involuntary reaction. The stress stayed down, but dinner was forgone, just in case.

            Today I woke up, pulled on my clothes and sneakers, and hiked down to the grocery store immediately. I was on a mission for Brie cheese—it just seemed like the right thing to do. Perhaps being buried in delightful food memoirs for the past few days, homework for my most recent food writing class, with florid images of MFK Fisher and Angelo Pelligirini modestly spreading cheese on bread to pair with their afternoon meals, I knew that a bit of Brie and some fresh toast would make the day more palatable.

            I’m not sure where my love of Brie comes from truly, though I associate it with my maternal grandmother’s house where I imagine we ate it in large quantities during childhood visits. Other delicacies consumed with Fifi (that’s what I called her) included chocolate milk and those little boxes of cereal that you open on their sides and pour the milk directly into. I always ate the Froot Loops first. Likely, these gastronomic delicacies, never allowed at home, were more influences of my Uncle who traveled with us than my Grandmother who I remember as a remarkably classy woman. My love of Brie might actually be inherited directly from my own mother who baked it to gooey perfection for nearly every dinner party she threw when I was still a child. Brie remains deliciously happy in memory.

            That’s the thing about food and memory; the two are inextricably linked and therein make for the best stories. Food memoir has long been my favorite genre, I suppose there is just something so easy and joyful about tucking into a good meal and a good story together. Still, I think often, probably too much so, about my own story. Though I aspire to be a memoirist myself, after plowing through pages filled with rogue chefs in the seedy, culinary underbelly, or pastoral gourmands who fell in love with exotic persons and cuisines in some distant land, I worry that my story is, frankly, a bit boring. My history of drug and alcohol abuse is terribly pathetic, mostly because I tend to fall asleep after a single glass of wine, my parents never owned a farm, and I did not meet the love of my life in a summer cottage abroad, nor do we live blissfully, stuffed to the gills with fresh farmer’s cheese, in said cottage now. My boyfriend currently lives in a tent in Montana, actually, while I live in Boston and we share meals by snacking in separate time zones, audibly obscuring our words with full mouths through an already iffy cell-phone connection. If I were to write a food memoir it wouldn’t be about Michelin starred bravado, nor my quaint flat on the Rue de la something-or-other buried deep in the heart of fabulous, French cuisine. It would be about frying noodles in the back of a Ford short bus on a very temperamental camp stove, and that bottle of Sriracha chili sauce that has moved now to three apartments and has accumulated a sizeable ring of crusted on condiment, expanding around its squeeze-top much like the rings of a tree grow each season; a visible marker of its past.

Today, I opened the kitchen cabinet to search out lunch and saw the bottle of Sriracha. “Well,” I said to it, or to no one in particular, I’m really not sure which, “we’re moving again,” and then I sat down to a lunch of arugula salad, a poached egg, and a bit of Brie cheese, lightly melted on fresh, hot toast. I will move again, and it will be fine, I crunched to myself. I will finish graduate school and eventually end up with a career, I reached for the napkin. I will write my food story, and somebody other than my parents will actually read it, I slurped at the dregs of some watered down wine. I will finally throw out the Sriracha, I paused. Maybe.

Lunch for sometimes optimists

A bowlful of baby arugula greens
Several lean string beans, raw, split in half lengthwise and then widthwise
A few fresh basil leaves, torn over the bowl

Salt and pepper to taste
A drizzle of olive oil, tossed evenly over the greens
One egg, poached, and laid on top of the salad
Fresh wheat bread, homemade is delightful but any hearty, decent loaf will do
A schmear of Brie cheese, lightly melted on the toast

Prick the egg to begin your meal, the still runny yolk is the perfect dressing for the greens, and oh so delicious when mopped up with the last corner of bread and bit of Brie. Lovely as is, but also pairs well with a little white whine, and then, perhaps, an afternoon nap.