The Rake Magazine

Year: 2004

  • When the Party’s Over

    When you get to a certain age, you realize it’s time to prioritize your to-do list. Not to discount her enthusiasm, but I think Ms. Routson exaggerated in my fifth-grade yearbook when she wrote, “Teacher, writer, astronaut, president—you can do it all!”

    The truth is, the moon and the White House are not the only items to delete from my plans for this lifetime. I’m beginning to think the only degrees I’ll earn are the kind you order online, and I’m no longer waiting to metamorphose into a social butterfly, a ballerina, a talented cook, or a person who can utilize more than two organizational skills at the same time. These days, I see the wisdom in playing to my strengths and cutting my losses elsewhere.

    For the most part, I’m at peace with the gradual recognition of the many things I may never do. My throat closes more stubbornly against the rush of things I will never do again.

    Mainly, we’re talking about babies.

    If you said that six kids in one blended family were enough, you’d probably be right. My oldest daughter started high school this year, while Jon’s oldest graduated and headed for the East Coast. Only one of the bunch is still too young for deodorant. I can see—even through today’s cyclonic activity level—an eerie quiet waiting to settle over our house in a few short years.

    The thing is, I’ve spent so much time being buffeted by children’s urgency, so many years spinning in their familiar cacophony, that I don’t trust the impending quiet. It’s foreshadowed already during the times when our kids are with their other parents. The silence then is demanding, it wants something back. But what? Productivity? Leisure? Gratitude? Sex? I’m incredibly grateful that Jon and I have predictable times when we can enjoy each other in that intensely indulgent way that childless couples do, since we never experienced that phase of life together. Besides, being both divorced once already, we have a depressingly realistic sense of how dangerous it can be to let your marriage become like running a child care center with someone you used to date. Couple time is good! It’s just that a totally empty nest sounds so excessive.

    Take New Year’s Eve, 2002. Jon and I had a party that started with all of our kids and a few friends at the Nicollet Island ice rink, and continued with festivities at our house. Our friend Julie brought her Best of Abba CD, while our friend Sean was the karaoke singer. In a fit of abandon, I put on my silver dress and black boots and became the dancing queen. Jon’s oldest daughter was a junior then, and she had invited about fifteen high school friends over. The other kids had guests, as well. At around ten o’clock, the adults made martinis. When midnight arrived, we paraded the block with pots and pans while the college kids on the corner backed us up with trombones from their balcony. It was a crazy good time.

    Boy, did we pay for it the next day. Worse by far than the hangover was the weirdness of a confetti strewn floor and a kitchen counter stacked with dirty cups, coagulated hot chocolate clinging to their insides. Amid these sticky reminders of our kids, who were freshly departed to their other homes, Jon and I sat sullen, our ears ringing in the hush.

    Not that I would seriously consider having a baby. Of course not! Yet to admit that, even to myself, feels like a hard pinch. Because living a life this full is a lot like giving birth over and over again. Each time you get better at it, and you realize how much you didn’t understand before. Even pain feels partly good because you’re so damned alive. By the time of Lillie’s birth—my last—I was only beginning to understand this. She came so fast we barely made it to the hospital. The intensity and speed of the effort left me shaking so hard I could barely hold her. She was wakeful and calm, and she smelled of bread. Sophie and Max were there to meet their sister, awed as much by the blood as by the strange new creature in my arms. My own sister was placating them with vending-machine treats and trying—while she waited for us to come home with Lillie—to fend off chaos.

    And that’s the thing that’s so clear to me now: Everything alive is in some sort of chaos. I mean, what could be more chaotic than emerging life, or more deathly than complete stasis? I’m sure I can manage over the next several years to envision a rich middle path, but still, I’m a little sad to know that the fullness of the moment is but a sign of the gradual waning of these most chaotic years.

  • American Hi-Fi

    Drummer Stacey Jones had his hand in several “kinda cool for a minute” mid-nineties alternative rock bands, including Letters to Cleo and Veruca Salt. With an enthusiastic nod to Cheap Trick, the Boston-based American Hi-Fi, his latest band, comes to town determined to change the musical landscape as we know it. OK, actually, they’ll be happy with a good seventy-five minutes of uncomplicated rawk without incident. 110 Fifth St. N., Minneapolis; 612-338-3383; www.thequestclub.org

  • Profiles in Chocolate

    You need to kick-start your life, no? Aren’t you searching for that mystical buzz of inspiration that comes with seeing others achieve their dreams? Well, cheer up, Charlie. For a lucky few in our Twin Cities, and far more in places across the country, the dream of a creative and self-determined life has been found in chocolate. Job growth for chocolatiers is due, in large part, to the ever-growing fascination with food—and there’s plenty to explore when it comes to this ancient, mysterious treat. Once an earthy, spicy aphrodisiacal drink for Mexican royalty, chocolate has been transformed over the centuries into a common delight, made sweet and milky to suit the masses. The early nineties kicked off a chocolate renaissance, now in full flower, that has many erstwhile Hershey’s eaters discovering—and creating—the world of superior-quality, artisanal chocolate. For those who get hooked, it’s an obsession as wide-ranging and complex as wine connoisseurship.

    Dark chocolate never really went out of favor, at least not with us true chocoholics, who could be found gnawing on the “baking chocolate” behind closed drapes. But our day has come. We can now saunter into fine chocolate boutiques that are popping up all over and not only select dark chocolate with confidence, but revel in the choices among premium, extra-bitter, and extreme darks. Traditionally, cocoa beans from around the world have been commingled to balance the strong and mellow flavors, but the new desire for “single plantation” cocoa has allowed the intense, heady flavors of the Venezuelan bean to be celebrated alongside the subtler, fruitier Indonesian variety. Even some of the milk chocolates are made with extra cocoa solids (the combination of cocoa and cocoa butter that makes chocolate, well, chocolate) that deepen its flavor.

    Given the varying percentages of cocoa solids, myriad handcrafted processes, and a host of herbs and other unique flavorings, there’s no shortage of opportunities for a chocolate experience that can verge on the religious. As we’ve seen with the cheese, wine, and coffee industries, piquing the interest of the Foodie Generation has become quite lucrative for the boutique producer. Whether it’s a need for something unique, something different from what they had as kids, or an ever-evolving palate that desires to be challenged at every turn, or simply a search for an increasingly incredible chocolate high, there are salivating legions opening their wallets for the next big chocolate thing.

    With his national Fancy Food Show Award and spots on the Food Network, Brian McElrath is one of the luminaries among the local chefs, visionaries, and Wonka wannabees who are creating a sweet life for themselves as chocolatiers. McElrath and his wife and partner Christine Walthour-McElrath began crafting innovative chocolates eight years ago. It is a success story that began with a frustrated chef who climbed the culinary ladder as far as it could go, and found himself unsatisfied with (and unchallenged by) the day-to-day of running a restaurant. Craving more creativity and self-control, McElrath threw his life into chocolate. A rough first year in business, including a family illness, proved no match for the drive and passion the husband and wife team feels for this sweet trade.

    For some reason, I have this impression that artisanal chocolatiers should be dark and brooding, like Ecuadorian cocoa, but Brian is an ebullient redhead. He is duly intense, but also firmly rooted in the belief that chocolate should be fun. Like a true visionary, he is continually seeking to deliver singular experiences for the palate. Zinfandel, kaffir lime, cayenne pepper, passion fruit, and lavender are just a few of the ingredients in his cutting-edge confections. While a box of B.T. McElrath truffles usually makes it to my dinner table at the end of a good meal (minus the zinfandel-balsamic ones, which never make it out of the market parking lot), it is their ridiculously dense, all-butter toffee that I keep stashed away from undeserving guests and kids’ sticky fingers.

    Then there’s Mary Leonard, an erstwhile marketing executive. She found herself at a career crossroads when she had to build a fictitious business to test some software. Making use of her degree in food science, she used a chocolate company as her model. Leonard grew so excited about her fabricated company, much more so than about the software, that she decided to turn it into a reality. Now Chocolat Céleste is working through its fourth holiday season, and Leonard has found her calling. Her fresh cream truffles are silky, rich, and handmade every day on University Avenue. Seasonal favorites include the zippy Red Chili Pepper, Pumpkin Spice, and Cranberry Nut truffles.

    But the most distinctive thing about Chocolat Céleste is Leonard’s natural desire to teach. She holds chocolate tastings in her gorgeously turned-out factory/store (she bartered truffle-making lessons for architectural services), showing people the differences among chocolate varietals. She’s also become known for her classes on wine and chocolate pairings, given in-store or privately. Call it the business end of a chocolate bar. Leonard understands the power of knowledge, and knows that her product isn’t for the Chunky Bar bunch. By welcoming people to her chocolaterie and allowing them to smell the toasty aromas and understand the nuances of the bean, she is both creating a craving and meeting the demand from a new generation of educated consumers, who will find it difficult to turn back to a waxy Hershey’s bar.

    It was a tractor accident that became a defining moment for Deirdre Davis and Allen Whitney, one that slowed their hectic culinary careers (she was a restaurant manager, he a chef). They decided it was time to create something that would make them, and others, smile. River Chocolate Company was born with a true-hearted mission: to create world-class traditional chocolate with local and organic resources. If you can catch her at the St. Paul Farmers’ Winter Market, Deirdre will tell you all about the rich, local creams and butters they use. Or the organic fruits and fair-trade flavorings like Madagascar vanilla and Vietnamese cinnamon, which make a difference both to the chocolatiers and their recipes. River Chocolate seeks out single-plantation cocoa beans, which rewards small-scale producers while delivering a more intense, uniquely flavored chocolate. Although their truffles and brownies are beyond killer, it’s their amazingly luscious chocolate sauce tinged with zingy flavors including Moroccan orange, cinnamon, and dark-roasted Kenyan coffee. Sure, you could heat up this stuff and pour it over ice cream, or maybe spread it on shortbread, but in my house the most popular accompaniment is, simply, a spoon.

  • Julie Landsman

    Do our public schools really suck? Don’t take a legislator’s word for it—ask an actual teacher. Or you could go hear Landsman read from her inspiring and illuminating books, Basic Needs: A Year with Street Kids in a City School and A White Teacher Talks About Race. Take note that twenty-five years of work in Minneapolis schools didn’t turn Landsman into the bitter and burned-out stereotype of the city teacher. She’s still full of hope and energy, and it sounds like her students turned out pretty well, too. Co-sponsored by SASE: The Write Place. 315 14th Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-822-2500

  • James Solheim

    Remember when the Santa stories stopped making sense? Maybe you wondered how he could be at both Southdale and the MOA, or why there was brown hair growing above his ear. Author James Solheim is the perfect guy to get to the bottom of such mysteries. In his first book, It’s Disgusting–and We Ate It!, he explored the world of multicultural cuisine, from violet pudding to “hot garbage” (think chicken byproduct stew). His newest release, Santa’s Secrets Revealed, delivers the lowdown on the big night—everything from elf scientists to radar-clad reindeer. Moms and Dads shouldn’t think of this book as elaborating a web of lies—consider it preparation for disappointments your children will face down the road. Southdale Library, 7001 York Ave. S., Edina; 952-847-5900; Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-224-8320

  • Life Skills

    One of my favorite ways to pass the time while standing in line at the grocery store is to analyze the contents of the carts of the people around me. I like the incongruity of it. Gazing up and down the lines, it’s not unusual to see a cart containing a sack of generic Froot Loops the size of a duvet cover, plus a few shiny, well-chosen apples. I imagine sharing meals with these people, dining on fare concocted solely from what they’ve got in their carts. The social activity would have to complement the menu. I think: “Lady, I’m coming to your house for breakfast! I love generic Froot Loops! Let’s you and me eat ’em dry by crumbly handfuls in front of the tube while we take in The View! Is Star Jones married yet, or what? (Munch-munch-munch.) Do you think she’ll wear Payless shoes to the wedding?”

    Yes, it is possible to dream up an entire relationship with someone in the span of time it takes to get through the checkout. But part of the game is never, ever talking to the people behind the cart. It’s important to tell the story of the cart all by yourself. I don’t want to hear that this worn-looking woman has five kids who eat through that massive bag of cereal bowlful by bowlful, like dog food. In my mind, she’s an eccentric who lives entirely on snack chips and apples. She can’t deal with utensils, not since she was involved in a walk-by stabbing at the Old Country Buffet salad bar. She did her time all right, paid her debt to society. But she can’t trust herself with cutlery in a world where certain folks think it’s all right to take the last of the low-cal French.

    Still, I had to break my long-standing rule of silence the other day when a cart rolled up behind me that contained the following: forty-eight cans of refrigerated biscuit dough, three economy-size jars of tomato basil Prego spaghetti sauce, a pillow sham of grated cheddar, one can of Diet Coke, and a pack of Dentyne Ice.

    I immediately came up with several options for a back story, but none rang true. Spaghetti sauce wrestler? That explained the Diet Coke and the breath-freshening gum, but not the cheese and biscuit dough. In my list of possible explanations, I had gotten all the way down to, “Well, maybe she’s having a party.” But what kind of party do you have with forty-eight cans of dough? I had to ask.

    The woman laughed nervously and drew her hand through her smooth blonde hair. “Oh! I teach a junior-high life skills class, and today we’re cooking a dinner. I’m going to teach them how to make ‘Bubble Pizza.’ ”

    Instantly, I had a snapshot of Bubble Pizza. The separated biscuit rounds smashed onto an ungreased cookie sheet, smothered in Prego, caked with cheese curls, and baked at 350 degrees for ten minutes. I could see this pretty teacher standing in front of her class, holding aloft a can of dough to show how to press the back of a spoon along the seam of the can to pop it open. I could see our nation’s youth, diligently taking notes.

    Life Skills. In 1985 we called it “home ec,” and it was widely considered an easy A. With the advances in convenience foods since then, anybody who can press the popcorn button on a microwave oven must be guaranteed top marks.

    I remember cooking at age sixteen, stewing a whole chicken and making from scratch leaden baking-powder biscuits that not even my dog would sniff. These early adventures did not transform me into a good cook, but did help me to take culinary missteps in stride. Two Thanksgivings ago, in the course of using a “foolproof” Reynolds roasting bag, I neglected to remove the bird’s plastic wrapper and laminated a twenty-pound turkey. The year before I tried the traditional roasting method, and terrifying flames leapt out of the oven when my snoopy sister looked in to see “what that smell was.” Someone recently gave me a recipe for “Beer Can Turkey,” which calls for stuffing a twelve-ounce can of Schlitz into the bird’s cavity. I am afraid to attempt this until the terror alert goes down. I don’t know if you can call the bomb squad to defuse poultry.

    The point is, it’s a part of life to take chances. The kitchen is one of the few places in life where even if you don’t succeed, folks are more than willing to give you a chance to try, try again. Pre-grated cheese is to cooking what Legos are to architecture. Read a recipe, screw it up. Decide what you’ll do next time and eat the mistakes.

  • David Charters

    A VRS (very reliable source) reports that while he was working for a BIF (big investment firm) he witnessed several horrendous CLMs (career-limiting moves) executed by some high-powered VIPs (come on, you know that one). On one occasion, said VRS was at a certain decidedly not-straight Minneapolis bar when he felt someone’s hands groping his nonetheless-straight rear end. Our VRS yelped, turned to face his pursuer, and found his clearly intoxicated VIP boss staring back at him. Our JRG (just recently graduated) VRS went to work the next morning, packed his belongings, and said goodbye. Similar accounts are found in The Insiders, David Charters’ personal tell-all from his years in a world dominated by BBBs (bankers, brokers, and business execs).

  • Carmen Boullosa

    Baby, we really haven’t come a very long way when you consider the women of antiquity. Cleopatra, in particular, had the full power package. The last of Egypt’s pharaohs, influential consort of guys like Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony, a rabble-rouser of the first degree, and a woman who really knew a few things about style, she set a template for feminism that more than two thousand years later remains intimidating. Mexico’s Carmen Boullosa, a writer known for her bold, revisionist takes on history—ancient Mexico, pirates of the Caribbean (sans Johnny Depp), Moctezuma—sets her lavish imagination loose on the life and myth of Queen Cleo. The result is a multi-dimensional, intelligent, and passionate character at the center of a richly detailed world.

  • Jack and Jill Moved Up the Hill

    In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, farm animals overthrew the evil Mr. Jones and created a utopia where “all animals are equal.” However, the pigs, who led the uprising, gradually began acting more like the hated Jones. By the book’s end, the pigs had morphed into porcine Mr. Joneses and the farm into a place where “some animals are more equal than others.”

    Orwell’s classic tale was an allegory about the 1917 Russian Revolution, but it was also aimed squarely at the very human tendency to create a pecking order based on perceived differences in status. Over the years, African-Americans, tired of fighting for social acceptance, have created their own groups in which they can feel comfortable. However, critics claim that some of these African-American groups have become as exclusive—some would say as discriminatory—as the white organizations that once spurned blacks.

    One institution often singled out for excluding the “wrong” kind of black person is Jack and Jill, a social club for upper-crust African-American children. Jack and Jill was created in 1938 so that young African-Americans could “network with each other and meet each other,” as alumnus Lawrence Otis Graham, author of Our Kind of People, put it. Founder Marion Turner Stubbs Thomas said she wanted a “means of furthering an inherent natural desire … to bestow upon our children all the opportunities possible for a normal and graceful approach to a beautiful adulthood.”

    When it comes to joining Jack and Jill, it is not who you know, but who knows you. Potential members must be sponsored by a current member. And not all who are called upon are chosen. In fact, not so many years ago, the biracial children of a well-known Minneapolis barrister were nearly rejected because their mother broke an unspoken taboo by having a white spouse. Even to this day, the local Minneapolis chapter doesn’t include any biracial families with a white mother as a member. When I asked a Jack and Jill member if my decidedly non-African-American wife would be welcome, she told me that she would support it, but she conceded that some of her sisters might be a tad lukewarm about bringing a white woman into the fold. And despite its billing as a family organization, this is a group run by women. (The role of men, who are relegated to an “auxiliary,” is made clear by their “under construction” page on Jack and Jill’s web site.)

    However, Murvyn Baker Kelsey, the organization’s National Recording Secretary, claims that Jack and Jill is much more “receptive to today’s culture.” Yet even she concedes that old habits die hard. “We are not a racist organization,” she told me recently. “We just want to make sure that our children have contact with other quality black children. Class, more than race, is the dividing line.” Kelsey said that she had seen white moms at a Jack and Jill function once on the West Coast, though she could not tell me which chapter they belonged to.

    She also asked plaintively, “You aren’t going to write something bad about us, are you? You sound like a professional, educated man. Don’t you want your sons around people that are going to uplift and support them?”

    Indeed, I do. I have to admit that there are certain kinds of people with whom I do not want my sons to associate. My wife and I have candidly discussed whether we have the gumption to continue our Northside “urban adventure” once my youngest son starts school in three or four years. Like others, I do notice where people went to school. And I usually find some discreet way of asking my oldest sons about the parents of their new friends, what they do to put bread on the table.

    Martin Luther King Jr. dreamt of an America where his four young children would be judged not by “the color of their skin but the content of their character.” However, his dream tacitly acknowledged that it was entirely appropriate to judge children, as long as it was for character using criteria that they could control (or perhaps more accurately, that their families could control).

    Maybe Jack and Jill is just honest about what the upwardly mobile of all races have always secretly believed: People may be created equal, but when it comes to shaping your children’s character and hence, their future, some are more equal than others.

  • Terry Iacuzzo

    We fell asleep listening to stories about how Grandma passed her psychic ability on to our father. While he lay in his pram, Gram clipped his pinkie fingernails, boiled them in horseradish sauce, then poured the compound on a patch of dirt behind Fluffy’s doghouse. Father told us that to complete the transfer, he was later ordered to visit Transylvania and make love to a chubby, pale-skinned woman. (When our mother was nearby, he left out the sex part.) None of this compares to Terry Iacuzzo’s family ghost stories. The freakiest thing isn’t even the half-human, half-spiritual apparition that would show up to warn the Iacuzzos about impending tragedies. It was that their family pet never, ever died. Funny, our Fluffy is still alive, too, sixty years after Gram’s ritual.