The first time I ate an artichoke, it was in my friend Cecily’s tiny carriage house apartment when we were in grad school in Pittsburgh. She taught me to pull the leaves from the core, dip them in butter, and scrape the meat off with my teeth. She had also made lamb, fresh from her family’s farm, and probably another dish I’m not remembering.
What was the occasion? A birthday meal? I don’t know. But any fresh artichoke becomes my madeleine for other 30-year-old memories of that little home and that time in my life. Of the tiny table and the good-kind-of-kitschy furnishings in her small kitchen, the first room you entered at the top of the stairs. And the big old dog she had then. And her blue convertible parked out back. And the summer night she drove me home with the top down and I sat on the back like a beauty queen and practiced my benevolent wave on the sidewalk citizens of Oakland and Bloomfield.
In grad school we were always organizing unusual parties. One spring, Cecily held a cakewalk behind the carriage house. It was a little like musical chairs. She’d play something (I’m picturing a phonograph perched on one of the mismatched chairs that had come outside or been borrowed for the occasion, though it was more likely a boom box) and we’d shuffle in a circle. The music would stop, and whoever stood on or nearest some sidewalk-chalked mark on the concrete would get the choice of one of the remaining cakes. I think I took home an orange Bundt cake with a drizzled lemon glaze.
Aside from the first experience with artichoke, my crispest memory of that little home is the time I went over after she’d had a broken nose or a black eye or some injury to her face. When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw her bandage, and flinched. She commented on it. I still feel bad about that (or do I just remember feeling bad?). I wish I’d looked her in her good eye instead of her bandage.
A few other grad-school memories of regret involve food.
Frozen yogurt, for example. One summer night after a poetry workshop, a classmate who was also writing about a dead mother invited me to TCBY. Back then I was sometimes shy about invitations, so I said I had too much work to do. And I probably meant it. But given the choice again, I’d say yes.
Tea and oranges. Sometimes peeling a navel orange on a gray winter day takes me back to the basement cafeteria of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, where my friends Sally and Sue and I often stopped after the ballet class we were taking for fun one winter. My usual post-dance snack was hot tea and an orange. I said something to Sally in teasing, but it was too rough, and it made her mad enough to stop talking to me for a few weeks.
Tortilla chips. That is, the bag of them that I left in the grocery sack behind Liz’s sofa in the apartment on Winebiddle that time she hosted a Halloween costume party and I came as a bag lady. It was part of my props, but also, seeing the snack spread, I realized I should have brought something to dip those chips into. And for some reason, in that nanosecond I reasoned that it was better to appear empty-handed than to just open a lame bag of Tostito’s.
Sometimes the details are discoverable. I contacted Cecily, and she doesn’t remember the incident, let alone my flinching. But she does remember what happened to her eye. “I was reading the Sunday New York Times and flicked the edge of the page against my cornea. I had to go to Shadyside Hospital where they gave me eye drops and I guess bandaged it. I don’t remember the bandage, just the relief when it stopped hurting when I blinked!”
Sally doesn’t remember the bitter orange moment either. But she believes it happened.
Her home was the place we usually went for our potluck dinner music nights. People would bring food and guitars and voices and dates, and we’d eat and talk and sing for hours.
Steve and April Murabito were part of our loose circle (more like an amoeba) of friends. They were there at some of our potluck music nights, and Steve, a poet, was perhaps the first person I’d ever met who was rhapsodic about good food. He loved food, loved it in its particulars, loved to eat it and praise it and talk about its preparation. We joked that it wasn’t a Steve Murabito poem if it didn’t have food in it.
So I got thinking about artichokes and food regrets and grad school while reading his book Communion of Asiago, part of a trilogy about growing up in Oswego, New York.
I don’t know why, for some of us, moments of regret or humiliation imprint the clay of memory more deeply than moments of joy or transcendence. I do know that retelling anything embeds it, too. And sometimes I need to stop and ask, why do I keep retelling this story?
Why even remember the bandage, at the risk of forgetting that night I was a beauty queen on the back of a royal blue MGB?
Why think about that sad sack behind the sofa, and not remember what happened in the center of the room, everyone dancing in our own sweet funny ways?
Why tell about that moment I said something that hurt, and not tell about the afternoon weeks later when, in a wordless meeting of our eyes, all was forgiven?
Here, artichokes are a food of accusation and regret. That doesn’t have to be their only bitter flavor.
Alone with the Artichokes
I can’t believe that of all things
It’s me and these artichokes in the dark,
No early morning light, no last-minute
Preparations, April’s anxious hands
Tucking the tin foil around the rim.
No, these leftover artichokes soak,
The oil separating into small pools
Like sparkling glasses of Galliano.
The vinegar coils into red pockets
Of bitterness that sting the tongue
Like the memory of sour words.
I can’t believe that I’ve taken
The lion’s share of everything
From everyone in my entire life,
But that’s what she said.
Yes, I forgot April’s birthday party
And went to a clambake in Fulton,
Eating all day with pumpkin-gutted men.
Drinking Molson drafts, I forgot the whole thing.
The minutes became dozens of oysters,
Shrimp, clams, friends with our bullshit stories.
And all day, she waited here for me,
Moving in this darkening kitchen,
Stirring these quartered, soaking hearts.
— Stephen Murabito, from Communion of Asiago
Artichoke for Two
Choose two good artichokes (or one, if you’re not sure you’re going to like it enough to have one to yourself, and you think you and your guest can share nicely). The petals should be tightly packed. A few brown spots are fine.
Trim the thorns off the remaining leaves with kitchen scissors. Cut about an inch off the top with a serrated knife, and cut off all but an inch of the stem. Remove the small petals at the base.
Rinse under running water, top up, to let the water run down between the leaves.
Put a lemon slice, a garlic clove and a bay leaf into two inches of water in a large pot with a steamer basket. Put in the artichokes, cover, and bring water to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer.
Steam for 25 to 45 minutes—long enough that the outer leaves pull off easily.
Artichokes can be served hot or cold. To eat, pull off outer petals one at a time. Dip the part that was attached into melted butter, mayonnaise, or another dipping sauce (honey mustard, aioli, butter and lemon juice, Greek yogurt with scallions, EVOO with your herbs of choice). Pull through teeth to remove the soft, pulpy portion. Discard the remaining petal. Repeat.
Together, ponder other situations in which small gain is worth great effort.
Artichoke for One
Buy a jar of marinated artichoke hearts. Have them handy for salads, pasta dishes, flatbread pizza, and anything else you think they’d enhance. Once in a while, lean over the sink and eat one straight from the jar while thinking about a long-held regret. Conjure a happy counterbalance of memory involving the same person. Turn the water on and rinse the juices of choke and regret down the drain together.
Photo by Yu+Mi, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Poem used by permission of the author. Post by Laura Lynn Brown.
Consider the fall Words You Can Taste writing workshop, which will include an interview with Steve Murabito about his food-laden poetry.
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Megan Willome says
My mother’s father grew up in northern California and loved artichokes. They were rare in south Texas, where he came to work in the oil boom. Once a year, in spring, maybe, they’d briefly appear on grocery store shelves. I remember my parents being so excited when that would happen. We would have steamed artichokes with two different dipping sauces as part of dinner. They taught me how to find the heart, prepare it, and eat it.
I have not been able to convince anyone in my family of the joys of artichokes, but maybe I need your recipe.
Laura Lynn Brown says
The shared experience is partly what makes a new food memorable, isn’t it? Sally and I were talking about this and she worried that navel oranges are freighted with memory for me now. They’re really not, but there is one food I no longer eat because of a memory associated with it: lobster. And part of that story, which I won’t recount here, is that lobster is something to be eaten in company, with other people who love it or who are trying it for the first time. She asked why and I realized, well, maybe it isn’t that way for everyone, but it sure was for me, up until the night of my last lobster.
Honestly, with artichokes, it’s not the taste so much as the ritual, the work involved, the slow eating your way from the outside in. Maybe it’s a little like Tom Sawyer’s fence. Demonstrate the fun, be a little hoggish of the artichoke, and it might look desirable.
L.L. Barkat says
I heard the absolute funniest lobster story of my life this past June (sorry yours sounds anything but amusing). Anyway, it was told by a city boy—a virtuoso musician, in fact, who was all prepared to eat lobster the way he’d seen it at Red Lobster. He was all anticipation!!
But, um, he was in Maine.
Maybe Sharon could explain just what happened, without even hearing him tell it. 😉
Laura Lynn Brown says
The way I tell it, it has funny moments. But it has some sorrowful moments too. And, come to think of it, forgiveness.
I’d love to hear Sharon’s version.
L.L. Barkat says
Well, of course Sharon wasn’t there. But I’d guess she’s seen the havoc a whole lobster can wreak on the fine sensibilities of a non-native. 🙂
Sandra Heska King says
“Why even remember . . . ?” Because you need it at that moment?
I’ve been spending some reading time with Josh Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein. He’s got a chapter titled “The End of Remembering.” He writes, “Our internal memories are associational, nonlinear. You don’t need to know where a particular memory is stored in order to find it. It simply turns up–or doesn’t–when you need it. Because of the dense network that interconnects our memories, we can skip around from memory to memory and idea to idea very rapidly. From Barry White to the color white to milk to the Milky Way is a long voyage conceptually, but a short jaunt neurologically.”
Going on a voyage with your words is like flying to the Milky Way. 🙂
We love artichokes at our house–though the fresh ones are always a splurge. I might need to splurge this weekend. (Did you know there was an artichoke tea?)
Laura Lynn Brown says
Thank you for your kind words, Sandy! And also that quotation from your reading. I’d love to see what the file system of the brain looks like. Maybe some memories get reshuffled like cards.
I’m not sure memories are always needed when they come. Sometimes they need to be let go. Or reframed. Or scraped of the mineral deposits of emotion that they’ve accrued over time.
I did not know until working on this that artichoke tea is a thing. And packed with some nutrients, I think. Do you make it? Do you recommend it?
Sandra Heska King says
Maybe memories come because it’s time to let them go. Or do something with them?
Nope… I didn’t know about artichoke tea. And now I’m trusting you to check it out and report on it. 😉
Laura Lynn Brown says
I think that often they come simply because of some association. I don’t think there is purpose or meaning in every memory.
I will now be on the lookout for artichoke tea in my tea quests …
Bethany R. says
“I do know that retelling anything embeds it, too. And sometimes I need to stop and ask, why do I keep retelling this story?” I appreciate this, Laura, thank you for the beautiful post. Next time I eat a jarred artichoke, I’m going to try rinsing it before I swallow.
Laura Lynn Brown says
You’re welcome, and thank you for your comments, Bethany. Depending on the recipe, rinsing is sometimes recommended (especially if they come from a can), but you know what? I never rinse the jarred ones. If I think there are trace elements of a bitter feeling, maybe I’ll symbolically wave ’em under the faucet. 😉
L.L. Barkat says
“We joked that it wasn’t a Steve Murabito poem if it didn’t have food in it.”
Makes one wonder what the ingredient is that makes it not-our-own if that ingredient is absent. Yours might be a camera tilt, achieved through the sharp focus of a single word that stands out (though, usually, it is several).
In this piece: sidewalk citizens, rhapsodic, counterbalance.
Funny, but I read his poem not as one of regret but rather of forgiveness, edgy as that was. (Maybe a bit like what transpired between you and Sally. Though she seems to have forgiven without a food offering—albeit, you’ve memorialized it with a touch of bitter orange. 🙂 )
I hope people vie for a chance to take your workshop. They will not be disappointed with the opportunity to cook up their own unforgettable dishes of words, alongside your master chef presence.
Laura Lynn Brown says
That is a thing to wonder, isn’t it? And sometimes other people can see that better than we can. I’m test-driving some writing on a trusted reader-friend, and in this morning’s offering, she noticed all kinds of liquid references. This is one of the things a workshop can do — hold a mirror up to our writing and let us know what stands out, what says, “I’d recognize this as yours even without the byline.”
You know, I thought about that, whether regret is the dominant feeling in that poem (or even the best word to use as an umbrella term for those other grad school memories I related, and the ones that didn’t make the cut from the long list to the short list). There’s remorse, for sure. Yet I think you’re right; there’s forgiveness there too, or the stirrings of it.
There was food present at the moment of forgiveness; it was a grad school end-of-semester party in the English department. But the moment came during a communal dance (nothing balletic about it, but something graceful).
Thank you. I’m so looking forward to the workshop, and happy about those who’ve signed up so far.
L.L. Barkat says
Well, and it’s also a way to realize when you haven’t yet developed a style (if people can’t really pinpoint a strong ingredient).
Sometimes there’s a latent style that someone with a good eye (editor, coach, seasoned writer friend, workshop teacher) can stir to the surface and say, “Here, see here, this is the flavor of something. The very trace of a spice. Let’s see if we can help you do more of that.”
Laura Lynn Brown says
Yes, and yes.
L.L. Barkat says
Am listening to Bobby McGee just now and visions (and scents) of an old pizza place with the classic red-checkered table cloths, worn linoleum, and a juke box are just riffing through my brain, along with visions of my flame-haired stepmother, who always was called upon to sing along to this tune, for the whole joint to hear.
Though laced with small sorrows because eventually she was not my stepmom (officially) anymore, it’s mostly a fine and lively memory. I can just see her face. And see the applause. And hear the whistles and cheers.
Anyway, since you are a music lover, I was thinking it could be fun to pair a song memory with a food memory and make one’s notations. (If I was feeling less lazy at the moment, my song-food combo might end up being a poem today. 🙂 )
Laura Lynn Brown says
What a rich memory. They say smell is the strongest evoker of memory, but I think sound, especially the sensory-rich sounds of music with words, can be equally strong, partly because they are often also associated with time and place.
The song about Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the Chicago fire + s’mores (summer camp).
Moondance (Van Morrison) + potato salad (grad school backyards).
Wild Rover + fish ‘n’ chips (any Irish pub).
Wild Mountain Thyme + shepherd’s pie (specifically Hibernia in Little Rock).
Happy Birthday + cherry pie (my grandmother’s kitchen table).
Roxanne (Sting) + vending machine snacks (The Pitt News when I worked there at night in grad school).
The Merrie Melodies theme song (or any Saturday morning cartoon theme from the mid to late 1960s) + bacon-peanut butter sandwich (living room with my brother, sandwiches made by Dad while Mom slept).
I could go on …
L.L. Barkat says
Almost reads like a poem.
I’m thinking this is a fun and quick formula for starting to write! 🙂
(This weekend I learned the name for that kind of memory: episodic. As opposed to semantic, which is not anchored in time or place.)
Donna says
Your writing is so beautiful and accessible…. and it’s very comforting to me how you talk about memories all throughout. Also, I suddenly must have artichokes! I think the last time I had them was grad school, but I can’t be sure… 🙂
Laura Lynn Brown says
Thank you, Donna. Can I ask why talking about memories was comforting to you?
Donna Falcone says
It’s good for me to see that other people forget, too… 🙂
Diana Bridgman says
I was reading this post and comments to hubby today, a lazy Sunday afternoon, and he, who has a nearly endless memory for words and associations, far more than I do, remembered Christian Wiman reading the following poem during one of our retreats at Laity Lodge. Enjoy.
Meditation on a Grapefruit
BY CRAIG ARNOLD
To wake when all is possible
before the agitations of the day
have gripped you
To come to the kitchen
and peel a little basketball
for breakfast
To tear the husk
like cotton padding a cloud of oil
misting out of its pinprick pores
clean and sharp as pepper
To ease
each pale pink section out of its case
so carefully without breaking
a single pearly cell
To slide each piece
into a cold blue china bowl
the juice pooling until the whole
fruit is divided from its skin
and only then to eat
so sweet
a discipline
precisely pointless a devout
involvement of the hands and senses
a pause a little emptiness
each year harder to live within
each year harder to live without