Category: M.F.K. Fisher

Two Quotes

Karen

Quote the first, from M.F.K. Fisher (in How To Cook a Wolf):

“It is all a question of weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable surprises.”

Quote the second, from astrologer Chani Nicholas (sorry, Carl Sagan):

“Master the fine art of Giving The Right Fucks. We can’t care about everything, even if we wanted to be able to. We have to make choices. We have to be discerning. We have to direct our energy towards some things and away from others if we are to get anything done.”

Happy Birthday, M.F.K. Fisher (and Happy Fourth)

Karen

It’s the birthday of my BFF (best fiction friend) Mary Frances today. I think her “P is For Peas” chapter in An Alphabet for Gourmets is one of the most perfect things ever written (along with the opening of Out of Africa, some Michael Cunningham, some Tolstoy, and all of To The Lighthouse).

Here’s part of Mary Frances’ essay, which describes an outdoor celebration in the summer mountains. You can think of it as you celebrate your own Fourth of July, with or without peas. Have a good one and for the love of god, please don’t start any wildfires. I’ll be posting again on Monday.

I dashed up and down the steep terraces with the baskets [of shelled peas], and my mother would groan and then hum happily when another one appeared, and below I could hear my father and our friends cursing just as happily at their wry backs and their aching thighs, while the peas came off their stems and into the baskets with a small sound audible in that still, high air, so many hundred feet above the distant and completely silent Leman. It was suddenly almost twilight. The last sunlight on the Dents du Midi was fire-rosy, with immeasurable coldness in it.

…We raced through the rest of the shelling, and then while we ate rolled prosciutto and drank Swiss bitters or brandy-and-soda or sherry, according to our habits, I dashed like an eighteenth-century courier on a secret mission of utmost military importance, the pot cautiously braced in front of me, to the little hearth.

…I looked up at the terrace…There sat most of the people in the world I loved, in a thin light that was pink with alpenglow, blue with a veil of pine smoke from the hearth Their voices sang with a certain remoteness into the clear air, and suddenly from across the curve of the Lower Corniche a cow in Monsieur Rogivue’s orchard moved her head among the meadow flowers and shook her bell into a slow, melodious counterpoint, a kind of hymn. My father lifted up his head at the sweet sound and then, his fists all stained with green-pea juice, said passionately, “God, but I feel good!”  I felt near to tears.

 

Mary Frances On Going To Restaurants

Karen1 Comment

From “D is for Dining Out,” in An Alphabet for Gourmets, by my BFF Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher:

I had a happy beginning in [the] neglected art and much abused privilege [of dining out], one that has sheathed it in unfading pleasure for me when it is done well. When I was no more than five or so my father and mother would begin to prepare my spirits for Easter, or Christmas, or a birthday, and when the festival rolled around, there I would be, waiting to greet it…on the pink velvet seat of the region’s best restaurant.

I admit I am prejudiced about it. I seldom dine out, and because of my early conditioning to the sweet illusion of permanent celebration, of “party” and festivity on every such occasion, I feel automatically that any invitation means sure excitement, that it will be an event, whether it brings me a rained-on hamburger in a drive-in or Chicken Jerusalem at Perino’s. The trouble is, I’m afraid, that I expect people I dine with to feel the same muted but omnipresent delight that I feel.

New Things

Karen3 Comments

Tonight I am going to a chamber music concert. By myself. This is the first time I’ve been brave enough to go solo to an event and I’m proud of myself before the fact.

My BFF M.F.K. Fisher wrote about dining alone, and I like to think I’m channeling the same spirit here–just with a concert instead of dinner:

I came to believe that since nobody else dared to feed me as I wished to be fed, I must do it myself, with as much aplomb as I could muster.

If you need me, I’ll be attending a concert with aplomb.

Feeding Myself

Karen

I am a few days into a funk of not knowing what to eat–which, if you’ve met me, is kind of a big deal, because I pretty much get through the days by looking forward to the next meal. It’s a problem.

I got home last night and nothing sounded good but then I thought, “Maybe an omelette?” And I made one and it almost hit the spot and reminded me of this quote from M.F.K. Fisher’s “A is for Dining Alone” essay:

I treated myself fairly dispassionately as a marketable thing, at least from ten to six daily, in a Hollywood studio story department, and I fed myself to maintain top efficiency…I tried to apply what I knew of proteins and so forth to my own chemical pattern, and I deliberately scrambled two eggs in a little sweet butter when quite often I would have liked a glass of sherry and a hot bath and to hell with food.

Tuesday Vacation Report

Karen

I’m back from the beach and, while it was a little chilly and I was fighting a head cold, it was nice to be by the ocean.

It was especially nice to hear it at night. One of my favorite chapters of The Gastronomical Me describes MFK Fisher’s visit to the coast of Mexico, and she has this to say about the ocean:
“I slept like a cat all night, dreaming good dreams in my well-being, but hearing the waves when I wanted to through the dreams.”

(I brought some vacation knitting, so I’ll put up a Project Roundup tomorrow.)

Food I Cook For Myself

Karen

Oyster stew is a traditional Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve supper in my mother’s family, but only she and I like it. Mr. Isbell doesn’t care for it either, but since he was at band practice last night, I made some for a week-before-Christmas-eve dinner for myself. (And Toby. Toby, I discovered, is a big fan of oyster stew.)

I’ve started reading some M.F.K. Fisher again, to compare her with Laurie Colwin, and in Consider The Oyster I found this about oyster stew: “mildly potent, quietly sustaining, warm as love and welcomer in the winter.”

And also very popular with spoiled housecats.

The Delights of M.F.K. Fisher

Karen

It’s a thinly-disguised fact that I owe most of what I know to the J. Peterman catalog: If I read about it there, I would usually go and find out more–from British colonialism, Lawrence of Arabia, or Elsa Maxwell to Tolstoy.

And now, 12 years after my first historic Peterman, I’ve discovered M.F.K. Fisher, who was mentioned in a Spring/Summer issue probably around 1996. (Seriously. There was an apron dress you could buy, in pink or blue.) I picked up The Gastronomical Me, and this is what won me over:

Now…the three of us are in some ways even more than twenty-five years older than we were then. And still the warm round peach pie and the cool yellow cream we ate together that August night live in our hearts’ palates, succulent, secret, delicious.

“Hearts’ palates.” Perfect.