The Constant Eater? What? You Weigh Like...Nothing.

This is what people generally say when I tell them the title of my food blog.

That, or they just look at me and roll their eyes.

But I DO eat constantly!  Just the other day, someone said to me, "My god---you're ALWAYS EATING!"

I attribute my slender figure to a combination of good genes, a weird metabolism, and the fact that I've always been a grazer.

This caused my poor mother no amount of embarrassment when I was a child.

Honey, you were always so skinny.  But we fed you.  Whatever you wanted.  You'd eat as much as you wanted and then you'd be full.  An hour later, you'd see the soft pretzels at Famous & Barr and you'd start crying, "But Mom!  I'm starving to death!!!"

(You were always so dramatic, honey.)

And you were so skinny that I was worried people would think I wasn't feeding you.  I'd be hauled off as an unfit mother.  But we had just fed you!  An hour ago!  I was never so embarrassed in my life.

In all fairness, half of my mother's stories end with the phrase, "I was never so embarrassed in my life."

But I still remember her asking our pediatrician every year, "Dr. Sommers, are you SURE she doesn't have a tape worm?"

"No Judi," he would laugh.  "That's just how she is."

To this day I eat whatever I want and never gain weight.  I've never been on a diet a day in my life.

Feel free to hate me right about now.

The title of the blog comes from my deer-like grazing habits and the fact that I wanted to write about food.  There are plenty of blogs with wonderful recipes and food porn photos---most of them doing it WAY better than I ever could.

How was I going to make my blog different?

Then I remembered a quote from one of my favorite writers:

"This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible.  This was terrible with raisins in it."

---Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was one of the members of The Algonquin Round Table---a group of writers who met for lunch at The Algonquin Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in the 1920s.  Their plays, screenplays, magazine columns, short stories, and theatre and book reviews helped shape the culture of a new, more worldly, and more intelligent America.  Most of them were the original writers for The New Yorker magazine.

In the 1920s, Parker ran a column in The New Yorker under the thinly-veiled pseudonym, "The Constant Reader".  The column was supposed to be book reviews.  But as Joan Acocella wrote for a "Life & Letters" piece in the same magazine in 1993:

"The Constant Reader columns are not really book reviews; they are stand-up comedy routines.  You don't have to listen to her opinion, she says.  If she didn't like the book, maybe that was just her hangover speaking."

"I hate writing.  I love having written."

---Dorothy Parker

She was born Dorothy Rothschild.  "But not THOSE Rothschilds" she refined.

She was beautiful, witty, brilliant...

And a bit of a hot mess.

"Tell him I was too fucking busy.  Or vice versa."

---Dorothy Parker

A toxic blend of bad love affairs and booze with a few failed suicide attempts thrown in for fun.

If you've ever used the phrase, "one-night stand"----you can thank Dorothy Parker.  She's the one who first uttered it---most likely over the hair of the dog that bit her.

Her biography (written by Marion Meade) is titled What Fresh Hell Is This?---a phrase Parker often uttered when the doorbell or the phone rang.

Sometimes she's like that dark, but funny friend you love to sit and snark on popular culture with over brunch; other times, she's like that friend on Facebook whose posts seem to be just on the edge.

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

---Dorothy Parker

Oddly, being an alcoholic may have saved her life.  In those pre-Prozac days---the hooch at least seemed to calm her head.  When she DID die at the age of 73, it wasn't by her own hand---it was just an old-fashioned heart attack.

I recently discovered a delicious little book that came out last year and I just got around to reading:  Under the Table:  A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick.

Because if anyone liked to booze it up during the age of classic cocktails, it was Mrs. Parker.  You not only get a cocktail guide to all the classic (as well as obscure or forgotten) cocktails of the Prohibition-era----you also get tidy little sidebar pieces on the history of Prohibition, how the drinks got their names, speakeasies in NYC, some tightly-written bios on members of the Algonquin Roundtable---and of course, a delightful primer to Dorothy Parker herself.

In addition to the title of author, Fitzpatrick is the founder and president of The Dorothy Parker Society.  He's also a licensed NYC tour guide who gives Dorothy Parker-themed tours to her legions of fans.

Fitzpatrick uses his tour guide skills to take you into a potentially snobby world of dead writers and extinct cocktails without making you feel like you just walked out of a lecture on "The Doric Column in Greek Architecture".  You come away from his tour well-informed, delightfully entertained---and thirsty!

It's no secret that the world of mixology has moved past the Sex & The City-era of Cosmos and Appletinis and gone all the way back to the Eighteenth Amendment for inspiration.

When I first started waiting tables, if someone ordered an Old Fashioned, you knew it was going to that table of old folks out for the Early Bird Special.

Now that same Old Fashioned is using locally-distilled whiskey, kumquats, brandied cherries, infused house-made simple syrup, pricey boutique bitters---and it's going to the kids with tattoos and hipster handlebar mustaches.

My bartender friends went a little nuts over the book.  And customers at the bar passed the book around as they sipped on Sidecars and took a snapshot of the cover with their iPhones so they could remember the title to add to the arsenal of their home bar.

Another little tidbit you'll learn is that the phrase you often see printed on bar napkins:

"I love a martini---
But two at the most.
Three, I'm under the table;
Four, I'm under the host."

---Dorothy Parker

SHE NEVER SAID THAT!

If she actually HAD, the NAACP would be getting a cut.

The N-Double-what?---you say?

Jewish white lady leaves her estate to Martin Luther King Jr.  He's killed a few months later.  Her ashes sit in a file cabinet in her lawyer's office for almost 20 years as they haggle out a lawsuit that goes on almost as long as the one in Bleak House.  She's now buried in the NAACP Memorial Garden at their headquarters in Baltimore.

Don't believe me?  Look it up.

With Fitzgerald being such an expert on Dorothy Parker, I decided to email him a few days ago.  I went to the Dorothy Parker Society website, mentioned that I had just finished reading (and LOVING!) his book, and asked a question:

"What did Dorothy Parker like to eat?"

"I write doo-dads, because it's a doo-dad kind of town."

---Dorothy Parker

According to Meade's biography, Parker wasn't all that interested in food.  She was more the liquid lunch-type.

Kevin got back to me quickly, thanked me for the compliments on his book, and then answered my question.

"I've heard Mrs. Parker was a meat and potatoes fan.  I met the daughter of her housekeeper, and she said as much."

He refers to her as "Mrs. Parker".  A thousand times love!

And then he sent me a terrific link to something he'd posted on the Society's website several years ago with an actual recipe for "Dorothy Parker Steak".

The recipe was sent to him by the granddaughter of Warren Dixon who was "chef to the stars during the Depression".  I love the simple way recipes used to be written:

"A small, thick, juicy sirloin steak grilled along with halved tomatoes, mushrooms, and narrow discs of summer squash which have been boiled lightly in salt water and then covered with pats of butter, may be substituted for the marrow"

You can view the entire post here:

http://www.dorothyparker.com/wordpress/2000/05/cook-this-up.html

"Maybe you can think of a drink pairing?" Kevin suggested.

Naturally, I went to Under the Table for ideas.

While there is now on the market a Dorothy Parker Gin, Dorothy Parker preferred bourbon or rye---both of which would go much better with the steak, anyway.

So here's a recipe from Under the Table:  A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide for a little something called the New York Cocktail, which was a favorite in speakeasies all over the city.

New York Cocktail

2 ounces rye or bourbon
3/4 ounce fresh lime or lemon juice
2 dashes grenadine
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
Orange peel

Shake liquid ingredients and sugar over cracked ice, strain into a chilled old-fashioned glass, and garnish with an orange twist.


So after all this, if you still don't understand why it's called The Constant Eater...

"There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it."

---Dorothy Parker

Elizabeth David: A Cautionary Tale From the Kitchen

I have a secret thrift store.  And my friends want to know where it is. 

They see the clothes I find there.  The vintage kitchen items.  And the hard-to-find books.

I’ve had people beg me for the address. 

But I won’t tell them. 

Not even my closest friends.

Because it’s MY Secret Garden.  

“But I’m not even your size!  And I’m a man!”

Doesn’t matter.  You’ll eventually tell my doppelganger. 

“But I can keep a secret.  I SWEAR!!!”

People THINK they can keep a secret----but let me remind you that someone pointed out Anne Frank.

ANNE FRANK!

And my Secret Annex is not only an awesome thrift store----it’s magic!

One day I had a free afternoon and was on my way there when I thought to myself, “You know----you really don’t need anything.  Maybe you should take a walk in the park instead?  Or go to a museum?  What do you need that could possibly be there?”

And then I answered back to myself, “Well, I don’t NEED anything, but I wish I could find an Elizabeth David cookbook.”

Five minutes after walking in the door, I had a 1959 Penguin Edition of French Country Cooking in my hands.

For a dollar.

Maybe I just need to make more wishes!  My life is going to be AMAZING from now on!!!

So I kept wishing.

Unfortunately, not every rabbit hole leads to Wonderland.  Sometimes you just step in mud and rabbit poo.

But while my life isn’t always Utopia-----my secret thrift store has never let me down.  I can walk thru the doors of that magical wardrobe and wish for anything from a cool vintage t-shirt to a garlic keeper----and I will find it in Narnia.

For a dollar.

After discovering several of David’s cookbooks in my Boo Radley tree, I began to wonder about the life of the woman who wrote so brilliantly and was so passionately knowledgeable about food.

So this week, I book-wormed my way thru Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David.

Elizabeth David was born into an upper-class family in Britain in 1913.  A bit too rebellious for the life of a debutante, she shocked her family by going off to Paris to study acting, quickly realized she was no good at it, and then ran off with her lover on a yacht to sail the Mediterranean. 

Unfortunately, they chose the outbreak of World War II as their departure date.  They spent the rest of the war trying to get away from it----shuttling between Greece, Egypt, India, and even spent time in an Italian prison accused of espionage.    

When she finally got back to England in 1946, she was shocked at the toll wartime food rations had taken on the already bland British cuisine.  To earn a bit of money, she began to write articles describing all the heavenly dishes she had eaten during her Mediterranean years while the folks back home were subsisting on tinned meats and powdered eggs.  Different from most cooking manuals of the day, she wrote about fresh ingredients, seasonality, how to cook with wine, and the emotional response to food and its preparation. 

Far from being resentful at her years of plenty, the still-rationed British public gobbled up her articles like food porn. 

She went on to publish several ground-breaking books that introduced then-exotic ingredients like zucchini, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese to the English-speaking world.  Her books on French, Mediterranean, and Italian cooking won her world-renown.  When she wrote a favorable review of the newly published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child was “simply overwhelmed” and immediately penned a gushing letter thanking her for the acknowledgement.  Her scholarly work on the history of English bread won her several honorary degrees and she was eventually made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a CBE of the Order of the British Empire.

Despite all the public accolades, David was intensely private.  She constantly turned down requests for interviews by saying, “Everything I want to say is in my books.”

Her biography by Artemis Cooper gives you a rough idea why.

Elizabeth David may have had a few good days, but she was mostly a bitter, unhappy woman.  She fought with friends and family constantly and held long-standing grudges against editors and business partners.  She appears to have spent most of her evenings all alone and flying into drunken rages---or with scores of sexual partners who cared as little about her as she did about them.

The great love of her life was a young officer of the 9^th Lancers.  But when General Montgomery began to drive Rommel out of North Africa, the officer’s jeep hit a landmine.  He was taken to a Cairo hospital where his legs were amputated.  Elizabeth visited him in the hospital and brought him some home-cooked food----but she knew she wasn’t the sort to play nursemaid and walked away.

He married a wonderful woman and lived happily ever after.

Elizabeth David continued to make herself miserable.

When she was only 49, she became maniacally obsessed with some illustrated plates her publisher had lost----and then she discovered that her boyfriend of ten years was in love a younger woman.

She completely lost it.  Screaming and hurling the contents of her home like a one-woman tornado, she finally collapsed into a heap.  She discovered soon after that she was physically unable to talk----she had given herself a cerebral hemorrhage.

She spent weeks in the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases recovering from what amounted to a stroke. 

While trying to keep her condition from editors, publishers, and the general public----she wrote an article from her hospital bed for The Spectator describing a fish market:

"In the dawn light of the Rialto markets...a sole isn't made of old white cricket flannels but of pale lilac silk, and....if you are looking you may see a pyramid of apricots radiating rose and gilt reflections from a catch of red mullet..."

Her image was all she had.

Her power of speech eventually came back; but it took quite a while longer for her to regain something else she’d lost---her sense of taste.

Only her doctors and a few close friends knew that the famous cookbook writer was putting her latest concoctions into four separate dishes and discreetly asking her dinner companions to taste them "to see which is properly salted".

From there it was more drinking and sleeping pills, more rages and family disputes, and then a whole messy business with her quaint little kitchen shop in London that caused her to fly into yet more rages, leave her own company, and spend years taking out lawyer-like ads denying her connection with them.

Frankly, by the time I got to this chapter, I was pretty sick of her myself.  I looked at the number of remaining pages left to read in the book and thought, “I wish she’d hurry up and die soon.  A hundred more pages!  Nooooo!!!!!”

But I kept reading.  Because I really wanted her to be happy.

And then it came out that her younger sister who lived in David’s upstairs apartment (in exchange for typing duties) was hospitalized for malnutrition.  Likely some form of anorexia, but David appeared more mortified that the famous cookery writer’s live-in sister was starving to death than getting her sibling any actual help.

Her life continued on---writing, drinking, trying to steal archival materials, more drinking, falls causing broken bones (likely from the drinking), suicides of relatives, more falls, more strokes, more bitter feuds.

She spent her final days in a constant dread that someone would write her biography.

And eventually she died---and someone did.

I’m SO happy I’m done reading it.  It’s been depressing me for days now. 

I still won’t tell you where my secret thrift store is.

And I’ll still keep wishing for good things in my life. 

But perhaps the key to happiness is how you handle life when you don’t get exactly what you want.

The Egg & I

The other day I found myself in the kitchen at work with a young chef fresh out of culinary school.  After he’d already screwed up his first batch of dessert (he forgot the sugar---in a DESSERT!?!?) I went back into the kitchen and stood over him as he attempted (once again) to follow the recipe.  The recipe called for the eggs to be added at the end, “one at a time”. 

He cracked the first one into the bowl, and then he cracked the second… 

“What are you doing?  It says ‘one at a time’?”

“But I’m cracking them one at a time.”

Cue my Oliver Hardy slow-burn.  

“Adding ’one at a time’ means that you MIX THEM IN one at a time.”

And then I began schooling this kid on eggs. 

The reason you add them at the end and one at a time is because you don’t want to over-beat the eggs.  Over-beaten eggs (the yolk in particular) will cause the dessert to be tough.  I picked up the whisk and gave Culinary School Graduate a lesson on how to stir eggs into a batter. 

“You want to get down deep in there and your goal is to do this as FEW times as possible.  You’re not beating the eggs; it’s just a big, deep stir.  You just want everything combined.  After that, just put down your whisk and step away.  See.  Done.  Just walk away.”

He immediately picked up the whisk and began beating the poor, unsuspecting batter.

“What are you doing?!?!  I told you to just walk away!”

“I’m practicing,” he said confidently as he continued to pummel the eggs like a punch-drunk prize fighter.

“It’s DONE!  It’s too late to practice now.  Your Time Is Up,” I said in true dominatrix fashion.

He put down the whisk.

I think I scared him.

Next time I’m going back there with my leather boots and a whip.

There’s a saying that the hundred folds in a chef’s hat indicates the hundred ways a chef knows how to prepare an egg.

But all culinary schools aren't alike.

One of the best books on eggs is a little volume titled “Eggs & Cheese”.   

It was part of the Time-Life series of 28 cookbooks called "The Good Cook"  that came out on a monthly basis between the late 70s to early 80s.  The series was edited by Richard Olney, an early food writer and expert on French cooking.  He was one of the first to talk about seasonal ingredients and wine pairings, counted Alice Waters as a fan, and at one point gave cooking classes in James Beard’s West Village apartment. 

Most of these classic books can be found for sale in your local used bookshop or on Amazon for a penny (plus $3.99 shipping).  They break down ingredients and techniques with simple instructions and clear photos and make you an expert in no time.  

They’re classics and I hope to have the full set soon!

A culinary school education is a great foundation.  But whatever you do in life, if you want to be successful, you have to go beyond what you learned in school.  You have to get out there and learn, learn, learn.  Ask questions.  Read.  Watch.  Listen.  Learn. 

And get better.

So, how many ways do YOU know to cook an egg?