Filed under: Jon | Tags: breaking the rules, brooklyn, europe, Food, italy, library, memoir, pasta, rules
As I begin writing this memoir, it seems prudent to tell the reader my location – I’m on the first floor of the library at the College of Staten Island. I spend a lot of my time here, as half the time I’m here, it’s usually the best place on campus to study. Or, that’s how it used to be, last year. The situation in the library – that is, the bad behaviors exhibited by other library users – deteriorated somewhat quickly last semester, and as such, I don’t spend as much time in here as I used to, and am instead forced to do my reading, studying, writing, etc, for school elsewhere. Sometimes, I take refuge in the lounges on the first floor of individual buildings on campus (usually the classroom where my girlfriend’s class at that time is), though the situation there is nearly as annoying as the one in the library. Indeed, it’s always been worse – it’s just that the library was supposed to be a place of refuge, where we could come and study in peace.
So, what’s the problem, you might ask? I’ll tell you – a flagrant disregard for any sort of rules or social order. If you want an example, I’m more than happy to oblige. Let me describe the situation around me, at a table on the first floor of the library. There are signs every 10 feet or so reminding students they are not allowed to smoke (duh), eat, or drink in the library. This seems normal to me, as I’ve gone to libraries nearly my entire life, and these have always been the rules. No biggie. Then, of course, there’s the rule on talking. In a library, you talk in soft voices, lower in volume than the “indoor voice” you used as an elementary school student. In the CSI library, the rules allow for conversation at about this level, maybe a little louder, on the first floor. Then there’s the “indoor voice” second floor, and the silent level. On all three levels, you can find students speaking at higher volumes than they are supposed to.
Allow me to continue to describe my current surroundings, however. About three feet to my left, there is a girl drinking a cup of coffee, and in the next section of the room I can very clearly see a guy drinking a bottle of Vitamin Water. Neither of these things really bother me, as every so often I’ll get very thirsty and open a bottle of water to slake that thirst. Nor is the coffee a big deal – sometimes you just need that jolt of caffeine in the morning to get you going.[1] It does bother me, though, when a girl walking past the security guard with her cup of coffee gets through, and I am forced to either drink mine, dump it, or hide it (and thus break the rules). I don’t know that there’s really a lesson to learn there, as it’s very only sporadically happened to me that I’ve been told to get rid of it, and that’s only been with one particular security guard, anyway (who, by the way, I have not seen on campus since last semester).
The library situation gets worse, though. Sitting directly across from me is a student eating a breakfast sandwich from Dunkin Donuts. At least the coffee cup was closed, and presented little risk of spilling and therefore damaging things in the library. But this? No. This sandwich was producing crumbs. To the man’s credit, he did keep all crumbs on the wrapper, and promptly threw it out afterwards. But that’s not the point. There are a LOT of signs telling people that eating in the library is against the rules. There’s even a café in the library (or, a section of it) where students can go and eat, whether they buy food there or not. Or, eat outside! The weather is finally nice again, why not enjoy it? But, again, no. Students persist in their habit of eating indoors. Not only is this against the rules, but it makes me hungry. And quite frankly, I don’t like being hungry unless I have a guarantee of a delicious, large meal to come later in the day.
However, I understand the mentality that drives my fellow students to do this. Despite the reputation that my friends teased me with upon finding out that I’d go to CSI for my undergrad degree (“Victory Boulevard University!” “The College for Stupid Idiots!,” “The College for Stupid Italians,” etc.), CSI is a very good school with world-class professors who, like any good professor, give a great deal of work. And tests/quizzes that you need to do a lot of studying for. Also, many students at the college work or have prestigious internships throughout the city. Given all that, there’s not very much time for food, or to make a special event out of eating. And so, we do what we can to combine our tasks – eat while we study, and all that.
Seeing and experiencing this myself has supplemented an idea about life that has, most likely, been seeded in my head for years while only coming to the surface when I reached my junior year of high school. There I realized that life is something to be enjoyed, not fussed over and worried about. You can stress as much as you want and get good grades for it, but then all your grades get you is an anxiety about doing well that feeds into your stress cycle and eventually causes you to burn out. Or, you can simply not stress. Do your best (without killing yourself with stress), and you will be healthy for it (therefore living and enjoying life much longer than some of those around you).
This, like many other aspects of life, can be translated into terms of food. Here, we’ve learned that you must never skip a meal, whether you are eating by yourself, or (ideally) with other people, nor must you rush food. First of all, eating is a very intimate process (http://bit.ly/aNJqfR). Such a process should not be turned into a joyless necessity – a chore, as it were. Secondly, aside from the mental issues behind food, there’s the basic biological fact – you NEED food to survive, and though I’m no doctor, I can tell you that skipping a meal to study is no good. Then, you say, why not eat while you study? That, my friends, brings us back to the first point I just made – it’s hard to have that orgasm-for-your-mouth moment that nearly any food, if eaten in the right social conditions, can have if you have your mind focused on Newton’s laws of physics, or the biochemical composition of a field rat from Brazil, or whatever.
That being the case, I urge anyone reading this to slow down your food. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t eat fast food (though I’d argue against that for different reasons that I may not go into here), just that you should give food it’s own time. Don’t eat while you study. Don’t do anything but eat – but really, really concentrate on that food. Concentrate on the flavors, the contrasts, the things that blend together, the texture, and the feeling you get inside while you’re eating this. Close your eyes the first time you do this, and really concentrate hard. If you can, do this with a close friend (or spouse/lover/family member, etc) so that you can share this intimate moment you are having with your food with someone else. I’ll bet that if you do this, not only will even the simplest peanut butter sandwich taste amazing, but you’ll learn something about yourself, too.
And that’s what the purpose of this memoir ultimately is. Through several of my own journeys and experiences with food on those journeys, I’ve become the person you know and love today. Not only have I learned so much about myself, but I’ve learned a great deal about my friends and relatives, and countless other people who were around me at any given moment. In learning about those people, I’ve learned how to interact with the world at large. Such formative meals deserve to be chronicled, and I’ll do my best to do justice to all the people and places involved. If, somehow, I don’t, I apologize. However, their names have been changed for my purposes here, so they should be saved of that embarrassment anyway. That being said, let’s begin.
Childhood Adventures
My first conscious meal took place approximately 17 years ago, when I was three years old. I had been staying with my grandparents at their home in Brooklyn. My aunt Sophia also lived with her parents at that point, as she was only dating my now-uncle John. Anyway, they both had the day off, and wanted to go out for lunch. Aunt Sophia, who was watching me that day, took me to meet John, and together the three of us walked up and down 86th street in Bay Ridge, doing some shopping and just generally browsing. Somehow, the three of us decided on McDonald’s for lunch. Maybe it was the cheapest thing available. Maybe it was the easiest, or maybe I was just a very fussy child and not willing to eat anywhere else (I’ve since learned to love the little Greek restaurant across the street from that McDonald’s – home of a very excellent gyro.). Whatever the reason was, that’s where we ended up.
My aunt ordered her food, and John ordered his, then the lady at the counter was nice enough to ask ME what I wanted. I was really proud of that moment – for the first time I could remember, I got to order food for myself! This was a big step for a three-year-old, no? After thinking for a very short amount of time, I ordered the same thing I always got in those years – a Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal! After we got our food, we moved upstairs, as there were no seats on the first floor, and there were plenty up on the second. My aunt, enforcing my mother’s (and her own, too, I suspect) rule, made sure that I finished my nuggets before moving on to my fries. I dutifully obeyed. When I got to my fries, however, I saw John eating his in a way that I had never conceived possible before – he ate two at a time! My child’s mind had told me that you could only eat one at a time for my entire life up until that moment, so I was incredibly amazed.
I learned that people could eat things in a way different than I did. I had to accept other people’s habits, and embrace them, and even allow them to transform the way I did things myself. That is, you must keep an open mind to things different from your own way of doing them. As it happens, this was only within my own culture, with a food that was familiar to me, so perhaps it didn’t open my eyes as much as later events in my life would. But this was a first step (a three-year-old’s great leap) forward, and set a great foundation for a life of tolerance. Hell, it set me up for a life of adventure with food. My experiences and experiments up to the fourth grade will testify to this, but my love for trying the food of every culture I come into contact with has been, perhaps, the greatest manifestation of this experiential mindset. And to think, all of this began with my uncle John eating his McDonald’s fries two at a time.
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Earlier that year (all stories regarding this part of my life will have taken place during “that year,” as I’m not sure as to the exact sequence of events, though they all happened around that time.), I was staying at my grandparents’ house for Saint Patrick’s Day. It had to have been a weekday, as neither of my parents was able to watch me, and those were the only days they had me spend the day in Bay Ridge. Or maybe it was a weekend. I don’t know. (I just checked a calendar. It was a Tuesday.) It doesn’t really matter what day it was, though, as that doesn’t really change the story. My aunt was enrolled in NYU at that time, and was a very serious student, dedicated to her studies. She even got one of the first computers I’d ever seen, so that she could type her work and submit it via an ultra-primitive form of the Internet (or so I’m told) to her professors. (Does anyone else remember Windows 3.1?) Anyway, she was very busy that day with her schoolwork, but she came out of her room to watch TV with me after breakfast (which was, inevitably, a small bit of Nutella on toast, or maybe an egg). The news anchor said something about a recipe for making Irish Soda Bread, since it was St. Patrick’s Day. I begged my aunt to do this with me, as she was the chef of the family (at least, the one that was home). She said yes, taking a great deal of care to write down the recipe as the chef on TV was telling what it was (this was long before the days of DVR), and going to the store to get the ingredients. I wasn’t really very much help in the kitchen, but my aunt Sophia made one of the best soda bread’s I’ve ever had. Maybe it’s nostalgia that adds the taste to it, or maybe she’s a great baker. Either way, looking back now, it just goes to show me the sacrifices that family members sometimes make to keep children of the family happy.
*
Then, of course, there’s the infamous-within-my-family dumpling story. I don’t know why it’s so well known, because it’s really just a simple memory. But nonetheless, it’s a memory that must be told!
My entire family (on my father’s side) was gathered at my grandparents’ house in Bay Ridge. Though I believe it had to have been a weekend, as logic dictates that we would not have gone to their house on a school/work night, I’m not sure of the exact day of the week it was. Perhaps at that point it would have been a Saturday, as we all lived within ten minutes’ driving of each other and Saturday-night gatherings were not hard to come by. Anyway, all the adults except my aunt Sophia were in a different part of the house (probably the basement, now that I think about it, or the living room), while my aunt, my cousin Theresa (Sophia’s sister’s daughter) and I were in the kitchen. My aunt was treating us all to her world-famous Chinese dumplings! At least, that’s what my cousin and I called them; we were little, and it hadn’t occurred to us to just call them “dumplings.” Anyway, my cousin and I were helping my aunt with dampening the dumpling shells and putting the meat in the center, and were insisting on being pains in the ass about making our own little shapes of them. If that hadn’t been testing our aunt’s patience, then the simple fact that as soon as they were done cooking, we ate them, did. She didn’t yell at us, though, only asked us to slow down, and we did (but not much).
This, looking back, is one of the first instances in which I learned the value of patience, especially when dealing with little kids. They don’t really know what they’re doing wrong, but if you explain it to them, most will stop. What’s more, I think I also learned to not let kids help me in the kitchen unless I’ve explained what NOT to do to them. J
*
Finally, later that year in that very same kitchen, my cousin Theresa and I were awaiting slices of my grandmother’s fresh-out-of-the-oven bread. However, after she cut the first slice for me and my cousin got a larger slice (as it was a round piece of bread, this was bound to happen), I demanded a larger slice, and was given one. Then my cousin got one. Then I got one. And so on. My grandmother was laughing about it, but we really were being little jerks. Eventually, one of our mothers came in and told us to stop, that we were being ridiculous and that we were making nonna work more than she should have to. Since that day, I’ve felt bad about making my grandmother do anything. I’ve felt bad and apologetic in asking for anything from most people, but specifically older people and other family members. What’s more, I’ve learned to just take a piece of bread, and not complain about the size of it – I can always get a second piece later if I really want it.
My First European (Italian) Vacation
I spent the entire month of July 2005 in Italy with members of my family that live there. I ate a lot of food, and had a lot of fun in a lot of different places, and many of them have been mixed up in my mind. Some of them, however, have remained distinct, and it’s those that I’ve put into this memoir. Hell, I could probably write a whole book or at least a chapter in a book about these memories… but for now, I’ll give you the greatest hits.
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The first memory that comes to mind is of the meals we ate on the beach. The family unit I stayed with has a beach house in a certain Italian beach town, where we spent approximately 2 of the 4 weeks that I was in Italy. Before leaving for the day, we’d eat a smallish breakfast, and then my aunt (though she wasn’t my aunt, per se) would make us all cold cut sandwiches and pack them into a cooler along with drinks and fruits. The sandwiches were delicious, but it’s the fruit that sticks out the most in my mind. There were yellow plums, which I had never seen before. Being adventurous, I tried them, and loved them. I didn’t know what to do with the pit, however, and was a little shocked when my uncle (not his actual relation to me) told me to just bury it six inches deep in the sand. But that’s what we did. I later learned that this did not harm the environment, as the pits were biodegradable and would eventually help the earth in some way.
Then, of course, there’s the ice cream. My cousin Didi and I would walk down the beach to the clubhouse every day, and every day I would order a pre-packaged ice cream cone with a solid block of chocolate at the bottom. I loved this, and it only cost me a Euro a day. It was a sweet taste on my tongue, made all the more sweet by its cool temperature in the hot Mediterranean sun. While we were there, a fat man who worked at the clubhouse would ask Didi a question every time, and attempt to talk to me, too (we’d trade a few words in English and Italian, neither of us really understanding the other) before he’d go away. It was explained to me that no one really liked him, but he was nice, so everyone was nice to him.
Finally, there was the Coca-Cola. It was delicious, and in the original contour-shaped glass bottles of America’s yesteryear.
*
Speaking of Coca-Cola, I went to eat at a restaurant in Italy with the family unit I was staying with and some of their friends (who may or may not have been relatives [I can’t really recall]), where we ordered a 1-liter bottle of Coke. It was a very large version of the glass bottle that we all know and love. I was amazed, as I’d never seen something like this before, and I considered myself somewhat of a Coke aficionado. I kept the bottle when we finished it, and carefully wrapped it in a sweatshirt in my suitcase when I came back to the United States.
*
As any discussion of culture eventually leads to, the discussions between my cousin Didi and I eventually turned to Italian food customs. I was shocked to hear that she “could not imagine a day where [she] did not have pasta.” I knew that we had it every Sunday (in America), but the reality of eating pasta every day had just not hit me. Sure, we had learned about it in Italian class in middle school, but I had never come face to face with this fact until I visited the country. Different cultures, different practices, I know. But there’s a difference between knowing something about a culture and experiencing that culture firsthand. I think that this is the first time I really realized that, and have since been motivated to visit every country on earth. I’m nowhere near completing that goal, but the journey’s been started, and I can’t turn back now.
Another culture shock, along the same lines? I was told that they don’t use salt in Florentine bread, but didn’t really think that this would make a huge difference in taste. I was wrong. If I wanted to eat the bread by itself, I had to put a small bit of salt on it. Otherwise, it was GREAT for dipping in things, or mopping up the leftover sauce in a bowl of pasta – “scarpetta,” or “little shoe,” as they call it in Italian.
*
Finally, as any visitor to a foreign country will attest to, a journey of any significant amount of time will lead to certain misunderstandings, whether they be cultural or simply due to the language barrier.
The first of these that comes to mind is an experience in a restaurant in some Italian city. We were looking at a menu, and the names of everything looked somewhat familiar to me, but I didn’t know what I was really looking at, and was very fearful of what might happen to me when the waitress came over to take our order. I think that my uncle could see, somewhat, my embarrassment, as when the waitress came over and looked at me to take my order, he ordered for me. I don’t remember what I had, but I remember loving it. The food wasn’t that important, though, except in that it represented a family member I had hardly talked to a month previously saving me from embarrassment, saving me from being culturally lost in a country I had thought I knew.
I did not have my uncle with me, however, at another restaurant a week later. My cousin Flora had decided to take me out with all of her friends, to go see her boyfriend (at that time)’s soccer game. After the game, we went to a pizza place (there were other things on the menu, but pizza was the main attraction. Real, Napoli pizza. [Which is so, so much better than even the best New York pizza]) and had a great, large dinner. I had to go to the bathroom, however, and was only able to find it because I knew two words – “Dove bagno?” I found the bathroom, took care of business and washed my hands, but as I was leaving, a man walked into the bathroom and tried talking to me. I didn’t understand a word he said, and seeing me so visibly embarrassed, a more patient look came over the man’s face, to which I had to apologetically tell him, “Mi dispiace, ma sono Americano, e non buono capisco l’Italiano.” My grammar was off a bit, as I now know, but the point had gotten across. I feel bad now that I had given America such a bad representation, but what else could I do? That was what I knew how to say.
Looking back, I think that this may have fueled my desire to gain at least a very basic, working knowledge of as many languages as I possibly can. Yes, my maternal grandfather’s vast lingual knowledge was some inspiration, but it never really occurred to me that such skills could be useful until I was in a situation where I needed them and did not have them.
After finishing dinner, we moved on to a nice little café in the middle of the town. It was late (around 11 pm, I believe), and the night was approaching it’s close. Everyone ordered his or her espressos, but I wanted a taste of home, so I ordered a Caffe Americano (simply an American coffee, not the drink two or three shots of espresso that is sold at Starbucks here in the states). The waiter got a pained look on his face, and when he walked away, it was explained to me that only an American would order an American coffee, and this was seen as something like an ugly-Americanism. I was very embarrassed, but I let it go, and enjoyed my coffee very much. Of course, I’ve since learned that that coffee was nothing different than what I can make in my coffee maker here at home (as opposed to something with the machines like baristas use), but I loved it. It tasted, a little bit, like home.
That night has also taught me that the purpose of going to another country is not to get something that you could otherwise get at home, but to go and experience their culture, to eat their food, to drink their drinks. And once again, the seeds of who I am had been planted – never again would I be the ugly American. I would be a cultured man of the world, who happened to live in, be a citizen of, and love America.
And so…
And now that my childhood and first European food adventures have been (incompletely, I’m sure) detailed, I realize that I’ve far exceeded the page limit for this memoir. I guess I’m just really passionate about my food, and my experiences. Regardless, I think that the experiences I’ve shared with you here help to show a great deal of who I am, or at the very least, how I became the person that I am. Realizing that they are not complete, however, I will promise the reader this: eventually, I will flush out the details even more with regards to the stories given here, and I will tell further stories with just as much detail. For those, I’d look at some point to http://jonrossi.wordpress.com.
Until then, my friends, I bid you adieu.
[1] A short side note – I recently learned that an apple in the morning gives you more and fresher energy than a cup of coffee does. I don’t know if I believe it, but it’s worth a try at some point in the future
