I know there is nothing in the refrigerator that I can just pull out and snack on. I know the contents of my refrigerator, it’s emblazoned on my mind. I don’t know if I’m expecting something to catch my eye. I’m not physically hungry, yet every time I walk into the kitchen I open the refrigerator door.

There’s an odd satisfaction or sense of fulfillment that I get from opening the door. My adopted lebanese grandmother – God rest her – had worry beads (سبحة) and she was able to massage all of her unwanted juju into the surface of agate beads. I’ve come to the realization that the refrigerator door handle is the husky boy’s worry beads. I don’t have to eat, I don’t have to cook, I just grab the door handle;  when it feels right… food.

I’m not entirely clear as to how black eyed peas made it to our New Year’s table living in the American midwest and being immigrant Canadian. Mom has made it a point to serve these totemic dishes to ensure health and prosperity, so I try to keep with tradition.

Start with some kind of meat, the cheaper the better – about the size of your fist for a large pot. We have noticed over the years that fresh beef ribs, tail, spine, hooves, tongue; don’t compare to pork trotters, which seem to be in constant supply at a very low price. Boil the meat with a few pepper corns and bay leaves. Once the the meat is tender and a broth is set – throw in soaked black eyed peas, boil again.

One can appreciate the simplicity of this method – it is 90% done.

Magic time, some of the black eyed peas disintegrate, some stay whole, and the broth goes starchy and everything picks up the flavor of meat. At this stage one could throw in:

- hot sauce and vinegar
- julienne strips of bitter melon and bitter melon leaves
- spinach
- rice and roast pork
- field peas, black beans, or red kidney beans

Today it’s ham hocks and spinach, rice on the side. Happy New Year!

Pictured below is baked macaroni and cheese. Not one of the most creative or complicated dishes in my repertoire, I serve this when there has been a long run of rice or asian noodles. While good in its own right there is a huge flaw, but it doesn’t reside in the creamy sauce and the crispness of the melted cheeses on the top, no clearly it is…. that I made it.

True, I have not made one macaroni and cheese the same way twice but they’ve all turned out to be general successes. Unfortunately, no matter who I serve it to, it never seems to be quite right; I will never live up to the one person that served them their best mac and cheese. Save for my friend whose adoptive mother was notorious for making “macaroni and milk”, everyone who comes up to my table has the paragon of macaroni and cheese deeply embedded into their psyche. It is not so much the technique, but there are certain memories locked in with that perfect mac and cheese that I don’t seem to stock in my pantry.

Elbow, shells, fusilli, baked, stove top, roux-based, boil, boil and absorption, soft noodle, firm noodle, broth based, milk only, cream only, sour cream, no crust, crumb crust, cracker crust, cheese crust, one cheese, three cheese, white cheese, soufflé, black pepper, white pepper, fresh herb, dried herb, no spice, dried mustard, with vegetables, with meat, with meat and vegetables, full fat, low fat, no fat, soul free, soul crushing, crushed garlic, crushed ice, ice cold, cold heart, heart broken, heart ache, head ache, head trauma, traumatic childhood…

There’s a certain happy healthy glow that our green grociers take on at this time of the year. Tender baby vegetables make their way to the market stalls and I troll the bins like a zombie – cash in hand. The long winter and the cold beginning of spring has supressed my horticultural libido. Like those prowling fonricating woodland animals outside my door, I want nay need to fulfill my urges.

At the moment, I’m imagining eating butter yellow pattypan squash. I can feel the satisfying slice into the quartered bite with my incisors. Breaching the waxy skin and delving into the dense sponge of its flesh, pushing the cleaved morsels to back to front with my tongue to experience the whole thing over again. Simply sauteed with butter, salt, and white pepper I get excited; eating something so vital, so sunny, so humble. If I’m lucky, I’ll find small squash, the size of a cherry tomatoes – roast them whole in Spanish olive oil and topped with coarse salt along side a finely roasted chicken.

The crisp skins of both chicken and vegetables giving way to the juicy flesh in an orally scintillating, synestheticically sexual feeling.

Hungry… pattypan squash

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattypan_squash