Wednesday, February 20, 2013

shopping for basil in February


There he was piling bags of carrots into the lighted bin, a man who could help me find it. He might have piled carrots for fifty years. Or maybe he started at retirement after a job as a textbook salesman. No, he couldn’t have been a salesman with those teeth. 

It strikes me now how serviceable carrots are, how tossable, not easily harmed when stacked and laden with one another.

He stared at me at close range, mouth open, crooked teeth leaning like uncomprehending children. “Mango?”

“Basil.”

“Oh!” and off he trotted in conversation with the air as I followed. The basil was far from the carrots, and I needed it though it was February. I have grown accustomed to having the food I want when I want it, and the week’s paralyzing wind made me want a panzanella salad with fontina, chunks of day-old cornbread, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and basil because all the comments at Giada’s online recipe for it said it was fabulous. I had googled “recipes with leftover cornbread." Since the first of the year I have been more diligent about using up what is in the fridge. I am conscious that women used to know ways in their heads to use up leftovers, but never mind.

The store itself is like this man racing away in front of me, soft at the edges from age, though he was leaner. The store’s passageways are barely wide enough to get a cart through, and even sturdy shelves seem to sag under mountains of onions, potatoes, oranges, peppers of many varieties for local Latinos and Latinas who know how to cook from their grandmothers. I begin to see that he is lean because he dashes off to another part of the store when called upon, rather than point and direct. Like my father, he walk-runs, and like my father, he loves to help.

He rifles through thin plastic boxes of salad greens and finds a large-ish one of basil, more than I will be able to use before it goes bad I think to myself. It costs $3.89, which seems a lot to me, I say, and I realize that I have said it to him because he is suddenly my father who shopped at this store for bargains for twenty or thirty years. Two months ago I would not have blinked at spending $3.89 for basil, but now that I have resolved to take more care with money and food, this seems too much out of the $20 I have allotted in my purse for this shopping trip.

After my mother’s hand operation my father took over cooking and shopping. He never went to fewer than three stores, and he never walked the aisles; he walk-ran, a man with a purpose. At this store, he came for boxes of slightly bruised fruits and vegetables that no one else noticed lined up on the floor tucked under the good produce shelves, or whole boxes of canned beans on sale four for a dollar. Our refrigerator perpetually smelled of rotting apples because he bought them past their prime, the whole box costing a couple of bucks. So yes, a large-ish plastic container of basil for $3.89 was a lot, and the man who was like my father agreed. But I tossed it into my cart all the same. I needed the panzanella salad, and I needed to use up the leftover cornbread.

As we started to walk away suddenly a look of discovery crossed his face. He remembered a stash of something else. “Thai basil” he said crisply with one finger raised, and he walked me over to the display where herbs were hunched loosely and unpackaged. He proffered a bunch of wilted green leaves with red stems toward my face a little apologetically, and I buried my nose, smelling the strength of it. “There is almost an anise smell,” I suggested. He said, “If you use this in your recipe, use maybe half of what it calls for. It’s strong, pungent stuff. And this one is what,” as he looked at the sign, “$1.69.” We smiled conspiratorially, and he left for his carrot piling while I went to put the $3.89 basil back with the stacked lettuce greens.

Satisfied with myself and the wilted Thai basil as if I were my father’s daughter I shimmied through stacks of spices and sauces, looking for peppercorns, all of which were at least $5. Then I pushed my cart through the automatic door into the dairy refrigerator as big as a semi-truck and picked up the smallest carton of half-and-half for my husband's coffee. Back out toward check-out and there was my father-man speaking something to someone and I realized it was to me. “Guess what just came in the truck!”

Of course the cart and I followed him back turning this way and that around corners to produce where a Latino man was unpacking a box of pristine basil in plastic. “They still have their roots, and look they’re grown right here in Michigan.” I could smell it before I held it by the wet roots. “Spring,” I said. “It’s like planting time.” The leaves were supple and curved, the color of new grass. The price: $2.89. “A little bit more than the Thai,” he said, “but this will last a long time because of the roots” with a fatherly look implying that of the three, this was the bargain.

23 comments:

  1. How we love people who do whatever it is they do with passion and delight!
    It's infectious and wonderful.
    And how spoiled we are getting such a wide variety of veggies at every season!

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    1. True, true. This particular store is fabulous. I don't usually shop there because it is way across town. But now that I am doing flowers at the restaurant, it is where I head weekly because of their vast flower selection. I've begun to explore the rest of the store, each department of which is a world unto itself.

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  2. Very nice piece of writing, Ruth. Lovely, in fact. I like the way a routine shopping trip is made into something memorable — particularly with the echoes of your father ever-present. Shades of Virginia Woolf's patterns of ordinary experience here?

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    1. I appreciate your kind response, Robert, and even the mere question about VW is a compliment I welcome, though I can't dream of reaching her depth and breadth. She keeps astonishing me from each few pages I read daily with just what you intimate about connections made from ordinary experience.

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  3. I agree with Robert, but must add that, notwithstanding the fine quality of the writing, I find myself riveted by the prospect of panzanella salad with fontina. You have me looking forward to lunch today!

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    1. Thank you, George. I had a feeling my readers might be inspired to eat as I was. If you are interested, the recipe I used is here. Enjoy!

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    2. Thanks, Ruth. I will definitely make this salad!

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  4. A beautiful piece, evocative and rich in details. What a world we live in where basil can be had any time of the year! Yes, I'd pay the price to have a panzanella salad to satisfy that yearning for summer in the middle of winter.

    p.s. pinch those leaves, and keep the stems and roots. They can be planted and kept on a sunny sill to produce a full bunch of fresh leaves in no time.

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    1. Rosaria, I'm glad I'm not the only one who would pay the price in winter. I remember reading somewhere about the Florida train bringing citrus to the Midwest in the 19th and early 20th c. (if memory serves), and what a thrill it was.

      I will plant the basil in soil. Thanks for the tip!

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  5. What a lovely story! I have been so used to just buying what I want - and we REALLY could use some tightening of the purse strings around here. We're not wasteful - but we do spend more than we should to feed ourselves.

    Now I'm off to check out that recipe - I needed it last month, but instead I just kept eating different soups until the cornbread was gone :)

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    1. Dana, I believe in feasting and celebrating now and then. But I agree, we can do with a lot less. More rice and beans and less meat is one way.

      When you make the panzanella, I recommend toasting the cornbread cubes at 300° F for about 15 minutes to crisp them up, so they stay intact in the salad. The lemon is fantastic and sunny. Enjoy!

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  6. That salad, a version of which our local Kiwi cafe serves, sounds delicious. Your writing is delicious, too. Wonderful piece!

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    1. Oh fun, Maureen! Maybe Giada went to the Kiwi cafe. Thank you for your kind response!

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  7. I love the intense *awareness* in your writing! The emotional nuances are as pungent as smelling the basil! Memories are like that too - pungent. You've reminded me that I sometimes like to visit an old spice store near downtown Denver that is just so aromatic that it has the same affect on me, as soon as I walk in the door: I am taken to another world, just from the smells of freshly ground spices, although there is nothing in my past that would trigger this; only a great-grandmother I never knew who as an herbalist. Maybe it's in the DNA :) Thank you for the memory and simple joy of basil...

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    1. Christine, you are such a good reader, thank you. And I appreciate your attention to the sensory (and sensual) experience in the spice market. How would a writer describe such smells?

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    2. Well I think I shall have to visit that store again and allow myself to become acutely aware of the details of the smells and the experience in order to write anything as lovely as you just did!

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    3. Yes, it didn't matter how good it was....what mattered was that it was a bargain....I'm struck by your memories of Dad, his walk-running (he always out-walked me, almost 'til his death). I'm at the stage of life where, yes, I look for bargains, but the food must be good. bon appetit

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    4. :-)

      I speculate that Dad did not care so much about flavor. How could he? And yet he so enjoyed a good meal when someone else cooked. I wonder how much Southern cooking affected his taste buds, all that overcooking of vegetables.

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  8. ruth, i was almost toppled over with this sentence, "I have grown accustomed to having the food I want when I want it." i was almost dashed to hell. but it is no light thing, i know, as i know you. it is you being honest and it is all of our honesty. jesusjesus, we are accustomed to having what we want when we want it, aren't we, in every way that we can imagine.

    the thought put into your considerations should be the care and thought we all put into consuming goods, not because we should be zealots, but because the finite earth requires us to be thoughtful. it should be the manner in which we be in the world.

    i picked up wendell berry's agrarian essays a week or so ago. this from the first chapter:

    "The idea was when faced with abundance one should consume abundantly - an idea that has survived to become the basis of our present economy. It is neither natural nor civilized, and even from a 'practical' point of view it is to the last degree brutalizing and stupid."

    i can not add one thing to wendell berry's raw and necessary statement or your sensual journey, to state this case any stronger.

    with this post (which is more than words but rather a new approach to living) i can not help but love you even more)))and have hope. yes, this gives me hope. let this thinking become an overwhelming wave of revolution, not just environmentally speaking but philosophically. how our spirits will be fed with the thoughtful less.

    xo
    erin

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    1. My friend, thank you for feeling what is behind this, as well as what is here. To know that even one farmer/poet with the influence of Wendell Berry is devoting his life to the cause of locally adapted farming, and of sustainable socioeconomic practices, gives me great hope too. I just responded to a Facebook friend about a GMO site I "liked". He (whose father teaches agribusiness at my university) says that if not for GMO the world would not be fed. But the challenges are far greater than just feeding people. People with ingenuity can, and are, applying their intimate understanding of farming to specific communities where farming practice can honor the soil, the animals, the humans who live there, so that long term the community can abide. Profits, profits, can there be any cause but profits for agribusiness and global economics?! And where will we be in 10, 20, 50 years?

      I am a little off topic, but it is all related, just as what we eat is connected with far more than our stomachs.

      xoxox

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  9. Oh, Ruth. I read "Like my father, he walk-runs, and like my father, he loves to help" and immediately remembered that I had told Astrid the other day how Dad bounded up the stairs until almost his very end of days.

    This post has almost brought me to tears. I probably have much more of Dad in me than you do (remember, you're 11 years "removed"), since we who are the oldest were closer to the lean times. When I think of how Dad made things work on his limited income with 8 kids, I often marvel at his ingenuity. We really come from good stock! :)

    What a sweet post! Thank you.

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All responses are welcome.