The Rake Magazine

Author: Ann Bauer

  • The Emperor Has Underwear. . . and Maybe a Pair of Socks

    What you drink from matters. No question.

    Good coffee will be ruined by a Styrofoam, waxed, or plastic vessel (and here, I include all those plastiform travel mugs distributed by SA). Water leaches toxins from petroleum-based bottles. Anything out of an aluminum can tastes like. . . .aluminum can. Chunky little Chinese bowl cups somehow make tea taste better. Wide cappuccino mugs with plenty of room for foam are a must. And decent wine glasses do improve the wine drinking experience.

    To a point.

    Take it from me, a woman who sat through most of a demonstration staged last night at Solera, by the legendary stemware producer Georg Riedel (pronounced REE-dle, rhymes with needle). I left early — truth — because I had a conference for one of my kids. But I was glad to go. For 45 minutes, we’d been swirling, pouring, sniffing, and experimenting with three nice wines and five different "glasses" (explanation of quotes below) and I was rather tired of the process. It was a little Montessori and, frankly, sucked every ounce of enjoyment from the experience of simply drinking the wine.

    Georg is the 10th generation principal of his family’s Austrian glass-blowing business. They actually started, back in the mid-1700’s, making windows. But after World War 2, the Riedel family was forced out of their native Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). And in 1957, Georg’s father, Claus, had an opportunity to buy a business that made high-quality stemware. But rather than just carry on in the tradition of the company — making glasses that were aesthetically pleasing or in keeping with current decor — Claus came up with a whole new paradigm.

    He developed what his son — Georg — calls "the concept." Simply put: that the size and shape of a glass matter when it comes to drinking wine.

    I don’t know about Claus, but Georg is a born salesman. And by this I mean, he can make it seem imperative that you have what he sells. He’s canny. Self deprecating. He talks about how he "complicates" the lives of the people he meets by alerting them to their need for better wine glasses. How clever is that? He cops to the fact that he is adding a layer of cost and effort onto what is for most of us a simple, pleasant pursuit. And yet, he manages to make this sound like a gift!

    During yesterday’s presentation, Riedel the 10th was suave in a very European high-buttoned coat. He warned us charmingly (he nearly won me over with this) about the volume of wine we were about to drink and cautioned drivers against over-indulging. He talked about the rising alcohol content of wines and the unfortunate practice of chaptalizing (adding sugar during fermentation) that has become standard because modern drinkers seem to want ever bolder and bigger wines.

    He told us that the word "flavor" actually means the combination of smell and taste. This is only marginally accurate. It is one definition (third on the list in most dictionaries). But I’m willing to give him credit, given that the sensory experiences (smell and taste) certainly are connected where wine is concerned. And I, for instance, am a person more reliant upon the former than the latter.

    "In every handmade glass is the breath of a human being," Georg said. And I have to admit, I swooned.

    But then, we were led through a complicated dance that involved tasting white wine from a Riedel Chardonnay glass, then from a plastic cup, and then from a cheap, wide-mouthed glass. And this is where Georg lost me.

    Of course, the wine tasted awful from the plastic cup. There were, to my mind, many reasons. Plastic has an odor, even a distinct taste. It’s flimsy and unsatisfying to hold. I associate it with keg parties and hospital water jugs. However, Georg Riedel insisted the only problem with the plastic cup was that its mouth was too narrow to allow for proper aromatics.

    Once we’d poured the wine into the wide-mouthed glass, we were instructed to sip again. And here, he told us there was just too MUCH aroma escaping, it wasn’t being funneled to the nose properly. This, too, he said, ruined the wine. All around me, I saw heads nodding.

    But I was thinking, Balderdash. (Actually, I was thinking something else, but this is a word more in keeping with the refinement of Riedel.)

    After the white wine had been swirled, poured, and disposed of, we started in on the red. This was served in a Riedel Burgundy glass — a beautiful, bulbous thing (in the middle above) that Georg told us is large enough to hold a bottle and a half. Now, put aside the risks inherent in giving people glasses so large that a moderate serving of wine looks like a pathetic dribble. The fact is, we drank a lovely French pinot noir from the Burgundy glass and it was very nice.

    Then, we were told to pour our Burgundy into the Chardonnay glass — which Georg told us is similar to many other manufacturers’ red wine glasses — and take a sip. "Do you taste that? It’s too acidic!" Georg cried out, and the people around me were nearly weeping with gratitude as if someone had finally confirmed what they always knew. Stemware really does matter! Hallelujah!!

    I, on the other hand, drank my Burgundy from the wrong glass and I thought it was just fine. . . .except for the little bit of white wine residue.

    There are many things I love about Riedel stemware. It is lovely and stately and makes a thrilling sound when you clink in toast. I’ve no doubt it improves wine marginally (marginally!) to be able to stick one’s entire nose in the glass. It’s on sale at Target, for God’s sake, where you can get two bottom-of-the-line glasses for $25-30, which is not, actually a bad deal. But I do not believe, nor have I seen any evidence, that the average wine drinker must buy a different shaped glass for every varietal he or she may drink.

    As I said, a master salesman is someone who comes up with a product and convinces you that you absolutely must have it. He is the emperor who convinces you he is well dressed when he appears stark naked. Or, in the case of Georg Riedel — who has some very good points to make among all the flim-flam and twirling fire — a pair of boxers and maybe a couple woolen socks.

  • Spring Break

    Ah. . . .spring break.

    I don’t know what the words conjure up for you. For me, a college professor and parent, spring break means two things: a week of stupid, drunken antics that tend to leave my students hungover, pregnant, and/or diseased, and a week of sleeping in, being bored, and watching too much TV that tends to make my children ready to go back to school.

    Either way, not my favorite time of year. Until last week.

    It was spring break in St. Louis Park. My two younger children were home, the 17-year-old newly jobless, the 13-year-old reading Ayn Rand. And somewhere along the line each of them decided to ask every single person they knew to come over and hang out.

    Now, you might not think a parent would like that. But I was just back in town after a long trip and irrationally happy to see my own kids. I was in a rare mellow frame of mind. And the simple fact is, the teenagers who were teeming into my house like droves of ants were just downright cool.

    There were boys ranging from 16-21, sprawled across couches and tables and chairs. They were drinking from enormous cans of Rock Star and Red Bull and Snapple, hauling in bags of chips and burritos the size of my head. And what were they doing: getting high, staging destructive wrestling matches, setting fire to things? No. They were engaged in a week-long Risk tournament that provoked discussions about world history and famous despots, as well as shouts of "You asshole!" that reverberated through the house at two in the morning, but I didn’t mind.

    There was also a younger tier — mostly girls, with a few shy, awkward boys hanging around the edges — from the ages of 12 to 14. They mostly ate pizza and sat on the front steps during those few days in March when it didn’t snow, texting each other even though they easily could have talked. After the boys were gone, the girls had sleepovers during which they held long Disney marathons, watching the videos we’ve owned since my daughter was born. The Little Mermaid. The Lion King.

    And I don’t know that I’ve ever had such a satisying week in my entire life.

    It was noisy and cluttered and SMELLY (at one point there were 14 pairs of boys’ shoes in my front hall). My husband and I slept almost not at all. But we knew exactly where our children were — and where every other St. Louis Park parent’s were, for that matter — and there’s no feeling in the world as good as that. Add to this the fact that we were buying pizzas and burritos at such a mad rate, we could afford nothing else and were drinking what we’ve come to call our "house" wine, a dirt cheap Nero d’Avola by Archeo that retails for about $4.99. And even THIS didn’t bother me. In fact, I rather liked it.

    Nero d’Avola is a Sicilian grape that makes a light, juicy, incredibly quaffable wine. And it seems that no matter how low you go on the price scale, it’s pretty standard and inoffensive. Rather like a happy puppy, the cherry and oak flavor is generally cheerful and easy to like.

    Next year, when my son is in college and only my daughter is home, spring break will almost surely have a whole different tone. I will miss the boys terribly — foot odor notwithstanding — and am grateful that at least I was here to enjoy this year’s Risk-and-pizza free-for-all.

    If you’re in a mood to read more about children and the joys thereof, check out the new Rake sister site: www.gomom.com. It’s a great resource. There’s only one downside: I’m afraid it’s a little short on wine drinking advice.

  • Get Corked for a Cause at FireLake

    Let’s face it. The economy sucks.

    Doesn’t matter who you are these days, you’re feeling the squeeze. Soaring gas prices, plummeting real estate values, low returns on your mutual funds. So what do you do? You cut out the non-essentials: fine wine, fancy dinners, charitable giving. After all, who has the money to go out to eat or worry about starving children when there are April heat and snow removal bills to pay?

    The answer is: You do, at FireLake Grill House & Cocktail Bar. Tomorrow night.

    Starting on April 6, FireLake began running a pretty unbeatable special every Sunday night. The restaurant is waiving its usual $15 corkage fee, which means you can bring in a bottle (or two) of your favorite reasonably-priced wine. They’ll not only uncork it for you, they’ll chill it if it’s white, furnish appropriate glassware, give you a voucher for 10% off your next purchase at any Haskell’s, AND they’ll save the cork in a bin that represents the amount FireLake will donate to Second Harvest Heartland and the World Childhood Foundation.

    In other words, your meal will run only as high as food and tip. You can enjoy a bottle that might cost $30 on any restaurant’s wine list for as little as ten. And simply by allowing FireLake to uncork it, you’ll be ensuring that money is sent to a worthy cause.

    Add to this that in my opinion, the food at FireLake is too often dismissed. Yes, it’s hearty Midwestern comfort food — buffalo ribeye, smoke pork, trout, and chicken and herb ricotta dumplings — at a price point about 15% below most other "fine dining" establishments downtown. But Chef Paul Lynch is a talented guy who puts out some of the best authentically regional food. And there’s no doubt, he and his team are Minnesota’s masters of the woodfire grill.

    This honestly is the best deal I know of in town right now. And if you’re truly in a mood to splurge, keep in mind that the Four Diamond Radisson Plaza Hotel (adjacent) is running a Sunday night special as well: $99 for a double room.

    Think about it, if you make a hotel reservation, you can bring THREE bottles of wine. Then get up from the table and walk to bed. . . .

  • At Cue: A Thinking Woman's Wines

    She may look like a lost cast member from Charmed, the former WB’s show for Gothic teenyboppers that featured beautiful, modern-day witches living in San Francisco, fighting evil lords, and dyeing their long, silky hair. But Jessica Nielsen is, in fact, the wine captain at Cue and a first-level accredited sommelier (which is rare these days, when most people calling themselves sommeliers actually are not) who spends every night circulating among the tables and making personal recommendations for the guests.

    If you have a yearning to see what this sorceress of a wine expert would select for you, now’s the time. Three reasons: First, the Guthrie Theater is on hiatus, so it’s easy to get a table, even at prime pre-show times. Second, chef Michael Delcambre recently introduced a new spring menu that features pan roasted chicken breast in a roasted lemon sauce and a beautiful grilled artichoke and ricotta ravioli. But third — and most important — Cue is putting all its wines on special until April 11.

    Management at Bon Appetit — the company that owns Cue and runs the food service operations at high-end colleges such as Macalester, St. Olaf, and Carleton — has come up with a hopelessly (and unnecessarily) complicated rubric for what they’re calling the Spring Cellar Celebration. What it boils down to is this:

    Wines from overseas will be offered at a 30% markdown this weekend, through Sunday, April 6. Wines from the Americas, both North and South, will be offered at the same 30% discount next week, until April 11th. All 35 by-the-glass options will be available 1/4 to 1/3 off at lunch only. There’s a special prix fixe lunch for $20 that can be paired with a flight for an additional $24 or $30, and a prix fixe dinner for $30 also with the two tiers of 3-ounce flights. And finally, on the 11th itself, Nielsen is adding a special Big Red flight that will cost you a mere $45.

    Got all that?

    Well, here’s the real deal. Word on the street is that Cue overbought on the pricey end of the wine cellar, and they’re trying to sell off those truly [for most of us] out-of-reach bottles so they can bring in more $60 and $90 vintages that real people can afford. So for the next 8 days, they’re willing to broker some pretty incredible deals on wines you may never, under normal circumstances, have an opportunity to taste.

    Plus, Nielsen is a pro. Put aside the fact that she looks barely old enough to drink, she has a great palate, an ear for the things that make a wine interesting — such as the fact that it was made from grapes shipped from one tiny French region to another, then casked in a way that makes the taste completely unlike other varietals of its ilk — and she’s willing to tell you what she doesn’t yet know. . . .then go find out.

    My advice: Go to Cue, forget their ridiculous "program" for specials, pick out the wine you like and ask if they’ll give you the discount. My guess is the answer will be yes. And if you’re so inclined, there are a couple extraordinary and unusual wines there that I think serious wine drinkers really should try.

    Domaine Jean-Marc Pillot, Meursault 2001 — a white Burgundy with a sunny, straw-like yellow hue, this is one of the wiliest wines I’ve ever drunk; full of butterscotch and oak, it has a looonngg finish that zings back on perhaps ten seconds after you’ve swallowed with a shot so mineral-rich it’s like having a stone land in your mouth. There is even [and believe me when I tell you, I liked this about it] a slightly fishy, oyster-y quality to this Mersault. A wine you must think about as you drink, if I were ever to drop $150 on a bottle of white wine, this might be the one.

    Nicolas Catena Zapata 2002 — a huge, formidable, conquistador of a red from Mendoza, Argentina, that comes in the heaviest bottle I’ve ever hefted (I swear, it weighs a good three pounds). Meaty, complex, and hot — the Zapata has 13.9% alcohol — it has layers of salt, saddle oil, tobacco, and plum, all suspended in a strong base of cello: the wood, the bow, the resin, and the sound. Never have I had to listen to a blend so carefully. . . .This is a $205 wine that will sell for roughly $140 on special, Monday through Friday of next week. And if you happen to show up for Big Red night on 4/11, it will appear on the $45 flight alongside a California Zin and an ultra-smooth Bordeaux.

     

  • Going Wilde

    I have to admit, when Wilde Roast Cafe first opened its doors back in 2004, I was a little underwhelmed.

    It was, for one thing, hidden — at the tail end of the "working" segment of East Hennepin, and turned sideways so it was hard to spot. Inside, it was quaint and roomy, with a fireplace and Victorian-style furnishings, plus high tables and Wi-Fi and monstrous desserts. But I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

    There were salon nights, for one thing: gatherings to discuss books and topics of one kind and another. There was coffee, there was wine and beer. A limited menu of quick items. But unlike some of the other breakfast-to-bar-time spots that had opened in the same general time frame (Zeno comes to mind), there was nothing edgy about Wilde Roast. It was part library, part sandwich shop. I liked it, but I didn’t think there was anything special about the place.

    Boy, was I wrong.

    First, Wilde Roast is not just a coffeehouse that happens to serve desserts. It’s a restaurant that makes some of the most sumptuous pastries and cakes in the Twin Cities. You don’t have to take my word for it — I’m easy and would hock my grandmother’s silver for a slice of their amazing carrot cake — you can also call up the cover of the September 2006 issue of Bon Appetit, which featured "La Bete Noire," a flourless chocolate cake made on-site.

    Second, the baristas here KNOW HOW TO MAKE A DECENT ESPRESSO. Sorry to shout. But I had a cup of the most godawful tepid water squeezed through inadequately ground beans at the flagship Caribou Coffee (44th and France, in Minneapolis) this morning, and I am sick and tired of paying $2.60 for a coffee drink that tastes like it came out of my teenage son’s shoe. I’m appalled by the way most shops fail to clean and time their espresso machines. But you can get a cup of something real — kaffe with a half-inch of beautiful tan crema on top — at Wilde Roast. Plus, they’ll put it on a doilied plate with a nice little wafer cookie on the side.

    However, the best thing about Wilde Roast is something I couldn’t fully appreciate at the time it opened.

    Because four years ago, we still had Oddfellows. Boom was operating. And there were one or two other clubs in town where straight couples and gay couples and straight singles and gay singles mixed together like they were all just, er, people. I miss that.

    Today, there are gay clubs and straight clubs. Gone is the sweet little restaurant where two dads would hold hands and discuss their son’s soccer team at a table next to the one where a silver-haired man and wife were celebrating their 50th anniversary. There is nowhere else I can think of where it so wholly does not matter who you are or who you love or who you bed, you’re never on the outside.

    I had high hopes for Pi, but frankly all those were dashed when my husband and I stopped by late one packed weekend night and were [glaringly] the only white, middle-aged, heterosexual couple in the entire place. Don’t get me wrong. Everyone was nice, the music was great, no one told us we should leave. But I’d been hoping for a true melting pot.

    That, to me, is the real beauty of Wilde Roast. It is authentically inclusive. Here, you can step inside, have your perfect cup of espresso and a devilishly good pastry, then a glass of red wine, and feel as if we Minnesotans really maybe actually can get over ourselves and our stupid boundaries and mix like we’re all just weird, lost, fallible humans who need a soft chair and someone to talk to.

    "Society exists only as a mental concept," said Oscar Wilde. "In the real world there are only individuals." In fashioning Wilde Roast, the proprietors Dean Schlaak and Tom
    DeGree have achieved something we all need: a place where the society is made up of individuals. Imagine that.

  • The Next Best Thing to Breast

    Back in the late 1980’s, when I was weaning my oldest child and attending meetings of the breastfeeding network La Leche League, I became convinced that pasteurized milk was the root of all evil.

    Hey, I was 22 years old. I’d fed my darling infant nothing but 100 percent pure breastmilk for the first 10 months of his life, and then, for another 9, only bits of organic baby food and pasture-fed meat in addition to on-demand nursings. The thought of putting antibiotic-ridden cow’s milk into his perfect little body made me quail.

    So once a week, I would drive to a farm in rural Iowa — about 20 miles from where we lived in Iowa City — to buy jugs of raw milk out from a dark-haired guy who sold it out of the back of his truck. I felt fairly confident in the product: Most of the women I knew in LLL bought his wares and gave it to their children; no one had died. But in the intervening two decades, I’ve become a little more circumspect.

    Now that we have the option of [putatively] antibiotic-free milk, even in convenience stores, I’m not sure I’d take the bacterial risks that raw milk from "unofficial" sources may pose. What’s more, I’m no longer a fan of milk, period. It’s meant for baby cows — just as that milk I was making was meant for my human offspring, and not for calves — so probably should be consumed only in very small amounts.

    All that said, if you want to hear from people with various viewpoints different from mine on this debate, stop by Common Roots Cafe for Local Food Happy Hour from 5-8 p.m. tonight.

    From the Common Roots press release:


    No LOCAL FOOD, no TRADITIONAL FOOD, is more misunderstood nor more in need of support and help than our LOCAL RAW MILK. When we say we live in "the land of milk and honey" and then allow those who attempt to create this world to be struck down it makes little sense. In a state where we can legally purchase alcohol, tobacco and junk food, purchasers of raw dairy products have to sneak around in alleys like common criminals. Local raw milk producers have been incarcerated, their only crime: selling delicious and wholesome raw milk. It’s crazy and begs for change. That is no April Fool’s joke.

    On TUESDAY, April 1st, the topic of the Local Foods Happy Hour event will will be LOCAL RAW MILK. As you will learn, no animal food has a better track record for being safe, wholesome and pathogen-free than raw milk. No other food, bar none, is a "perfect food, perfect in the
    sense that one could lead a healthy and long life consuming not a bite
    of any other food, but raw milk. This cannot be done with any other
    food, even pasteurized or homogenized milk could not alone sustain life.

    WILL WINTER has assisted production, distribution and consumption of
    local, healthy raw milk and wholesome raw dairy products in the TC
    metro area for over 9 years. He works with his wife Rebekah as chapter
    leaders of the Weston A. Price Foundation, an organization dedicated
    to connecting people who want good local food with the producers who
    want to make it. The WAPF has created the CAMPAIGN FOR REAL MILK which works to help sustainable and organic dairy farmers create and market their wares. He is on the board of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, a brand-new LDF that will come to the aid of any farmer arrested or harangued by the food police.

    This brief presentation will cover the state-of-the-art for Raw Dairy
    in MN, the products, the producers, the laws and the real facts. It
    will be followed by a Q & A session while we experience a RAW BAR
    TASTING EXPERIENCE of fresh, ice-cold raw organic milk

    .

    All my skepticism aside, I would encourage you to go if you’re healthy (meaning, your immune system is in good working order) and curious about what milk tastes like straight from the cow. No matter what my nostalgia for youthful arrogance or persnickety grown-up concerns, raw milk tastes like no other. It is creamy, earthy, buttery, and real. Go ahead. Take a sip. I know you want to. . . .

  • Getting Lucky with Gabriel James

    About three months ago, John and I decided we were in a rut. We went out to eat and then to a movie; we went to a movie and got a bite to eat. There was something missing. Music. So we pledged to go out at least twice a month and listen to some band we’d never heard of in a venue that doesn’t cost a ton.

    This is a high-risk venture. On any given week, there will be a long list of possibilities. Most charge $5 or $10 at the door. Few give you a sample of the music before you go. We’ve sat through some incredibly tepid performances, including a folk singer who billed himself as "like Bob Dylan" but sounded more like one of the Muppets, except off-key.

    There have been some good experiences, too. We ended up at 7th Street Entry one night, waiting well past 11 o’clock for an up-and-coming hip-hop band to appear. We were the oldest people in the place by about 10 years, which actually added to our enjoyment. The best part of the night was watching a crowd of really beautiful, high-energy kids dance.

    But last night, we struck gold at Acadia’s grand re-opening celebration, with a band led by the singer Gabriel James.

    I’d been aware that Acadia closed its Franklin and Nicollet location but was, until I saw the notice for the celebration yesterday, unaware they’d moved to take over the old Riverside Cafe space on the University’s West Bank.

    I was disappointed when we first walked in. The Riverside was terrific in its day, but that slice of building has gone through some hard times. It’s beat-up and very musty inside, desperately in need of ventilation. The crowd was standing elbow-to-elbow, and the whole room smelled of body emissions, stale cigarette smoke, and damp leather shoes. To tell the truth, I was ready to turn around and leave.

    But the musicians onstage, a three-man bluegrass band called Dragich and the Polemics, were fun to watch — in particular, their string bass player, a tall, wholesome-looking young man who danced with his instrument in a dashing Fred Astaire-ish way.

    Acadia has an extensive beer list and 28 varieties on tap, which made my husband happy. They’d also tapped a keg of Surly Furious, a dark, hoppy beer from, of all places, Brooklyn Center, MN. I had a glass of some perfectly acceptable house wine, for $4, and noted (for what it’s worth) that Acadia’s bar food looked to be a notch above the norm.

    So we stayed. And I’m so glad.

    Because after Dragich and his boys left the stage, Gabriel James — the small, skull-capped man who’d been standing in front of me just moments before and blocking my view — went up. And he began to sing.

    According to his website, James plays "an eclectic mix of acoustic jazz," but frankly, I don’t think that gives him, or his band, enough credit. Backed by a percussionist, a bass player, a fantastic trumpet player, and a woman who played both keyboard and flute, James had the sort of unique, unnameable sound of early R.E.M. His songs were original, aching, funny, weird. I would gladly have paid $20 just to hear him perform. Instead, parking and wine included, it cost me about $8.95.

    The calendar on James’s myspace lists only TWO performances this spring — the one last night and another (also at Acadia) on May 10. This is a shame — and probably means that despite his talent, he’s supporting himself working a regular old day job, which is really too bad. The 40 minutes he was on stage last night went by way too fast and I would have loved to see him again next week. Or, for that matter, tonight.

  • Is Italian Garbage Making You Sick?

    Photo by the Associated Press.

     

    While in Italy earlier this month, my husband and I cancelled our trip to Naples and headed instead to the north from Rome.

    We’d been going to visit the southern region mostly because we wanted to see Mt. Vesuvius and tour the wineries in Campania, where one of my favorite whites — Lacryma Christi, or Tears of Christ — is made. What kept us away? Garbage. It was, we heard, piled to overflowing on the streets of Naples, stinking up the entire place.

    It comes out now, the trash may be doing more than just producing an odor and scaring away tourists. It seems to be affecting the quality of food produced on the Italian peninsula, particularly buffalo milk mozzarella, the region’s most prized cheese.

    Health officials in several countries have confirmed that there are elevated levels of dioxin, a carcinogen, in shipments of buffalo mozzarella coming out of southern Italy. The governments of France and South Korea have actually banned imports of the cheese until the problem is taken care of. And sales around the world are declining fast: Last week, they were down 40 percent from last year. With widespread coverage of the issue, it’s likely they’ll continue to tank.

    Many local vendors have decided to stop carrying buffalo mozzarella from Italy and are recommending their customers try a domestic product instead.

    "We are not importing Italian buffalo mozzarella right now because of the concerns with contamination," says Mary Richter, manager of the cheese shop at Surdyk’s. "What we’ve found is even more popular is a company in California called Bubalus Bubalis that produces a very good buffalo-milk mozzarella. We can only get it in during the summer months, but if the demand is there, I think we’ll be able to start getting it pretty darn soon."

    Meantime, public servants in Naples are posing for photographs in which they’re very conspicuously eating Italian-made cheese and exclaiming over its superiority. And they always seem to be standing on perfectly clean, garbage-free streets. It’s a miracle.

  • "God talked to me today"

    The first time it happened, he was sitting in the kitchen behind me.

    I was at the counter cutting vegetables for dinner when my older son said, "When God talked to me earlier today, before I went to school…"

    That’s how he spoke as a child. He was only 11, but his diction was formal, biblical almost, and he habitually attached clauses to make his points more precise. If he heard from God, it would be important to know not only that it was today and that it was early but also that it had occurred before school.

    I turned. "What did he say?" I asked. But Andrew was already gone, concentrating on something midair, eyes soft behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "Sweetheart?" Then I fell silent, too, forcing myself not to prod. Andrew has autism, and I’d learned that repeating a question only increased the amount of time he needed for mental processing. Patience — or even just the appearance of it — was the only way to get through.

    By the time Andrew emerged from his reverie and began humming again, wagging his pencil back and forth above a rumpled page of history homework, dusk was settling in the room. The air outside had turned dim and coffee-colored. I switched on the overhead light.

    "What did he say?" I repeated.

    "What did he say?" Andrew muttered, as if this were a puzzle.

    I grew itchy waiting this time, which may have had something to do with the light. The gloaming of evening: It was dangerous for me. My mind slowed and things tended to happen or be said before I’d thought them through.

    "He said …" — I barely breathed for fear of interrupting my son’s fragile train of thought — "no."

    The word — though small and softly spoken — rang like a bell, echoing through the gloom. No, no, no.

    I waited for it to finish before asking, "No what?"

    Andrew shrugged, looking for a moment like any boy. "Just no. Because I knew the rest of what he meant."

    He made a hesitant mark on the sheet in front of him but erased it immediately. Maybe God could help you with your homework, I almost said, but I didn’t because Andrew wouldn’t find it funny. Maybe he could explain a few things to me.This was not so much a joke, because there were things I really wanted to know, like why my son’s thought process seemed tangled one moment and profound the next, and why my mostly devoted husband sometimes disappeared on a drinking spree, and what the point of life was anyway.

    Then I watched as Andrew wrote an answer on his history sheet. Then another, and a third. I hovered over his shoulder, looking down. France, 26, Petroleum and Coal. I had no idea if these were correct, but they were there on the paper, legible.

    I looked at Andrew’s face. But his eyes were closed, as if he were still listening. Classic autism is a disorder of divisions. There is no sense of "I" and "you" as being whole and separate in the world. Either that, or there is a lack of understanding that "I" and "you" are even of the same species, any more similar to each other than, say, a human being and a walrus. I’ve never understood exactly which it is.

    The "test" for autism — back when my son was diagnosed, in 1991 — was simple. A child suspected of being autistic would be placed behind a one-way mirror to watch this scene: A little girl in the neighboring room was given a toy and told to put it in one of three baskets. Then she was taken out for a snack. While she was gone (but the test subject still watching) someone entered the room and switched the toy from one basket to another. This question then was posed to the witness: When she returns, where will the girl look first for her toy? A "normal" child would point to the basket where the girl had stowed the item. But an autistic one would choose the basket to which it was transferred after she left, not understanding that even though he knew it had been moved, she did not.

    In other words, to know or remember or feel something as an autistic person is not a subjective experience. It is, rather, a matter of fact.

    I cannot recall if Andrew ever had the hidden toy test. But throughout his childhood there were a series of meetings, odd questions, games, expert heads nodding. It was clear: My son was, in their lexicon, mind blind — unable to process the "otherness" of people … or the "peopleness" of others. Add to this the evidence that he had problems with both perspective and pronouns when he started speaking again. "The boy is cold," Andrew might say, when he himself was shivering. "You smell," he once told me, even as he was pointing to his baby brother whose diaper needed to be changed.

    By the time he’d reached adolescence, most of these problems were gone. Andrew had been through speech therapy, where he was trained in pronominal relationships — I, you, he — and I’d spent several years pointing out to him that there were also things he knew that the rest of us didn’t. Square roots, exact latitudes and longitudes, his private thoughts. Tentatively, Andrew began locating himself in the universe, figuring out where he left off and everything else began.

    Then this God thing cropped up — an echo, I decided, of all the old problems. Whereas Andrew had learned to differentiate his thoughts from mine or his teacher’s, he didn’t seem to understand where he ended and God began, or which of the two was speaking to the other.

    To continue reading, go to page 2 on     Salon.com.

  • Lynne Rossetto Kasper: Tuscan Princess and Peasant Chef

    Southern Italy is full of svelte young women running around in black leather coats and exquisite, sharp-pointed shoes who eat pasta every day. I don’t know how they do it.

    Yes, I’m referring to the shoes in part: torturous contraptions that look as if they could cause hammer toes within about an hour. But more than that, I’m talking about the diet which is full of simple carbs: pasta, bread, citrus fruits. And cheese, which as protein sources go is unusually rife with fat and sugars. During the time we were there, I did as the Romans do. . . .and despite the fact that everything was tasty — the noodles flaxen, homemade, and cooked al dente (which, by the way, lowers the glycemic index by quite a bit) — after about three days I felt tired and irritable and all gluey inside.

    It was a great relief to me when we crossed over the transparent border into northern Italy and entered Tuscany, where the cuisine trends more toward meat, vegetables, and one of my favorite dishes in the world — a stew typically made of tomatoes, garlic, sage, and cannellini beans called fagioli. We had dinner one night in Lucca, a beautiful little walled Tuscan village, at a place called Trattoria da Leo: boiled sausage with fagioli and a side dish of cauliflower covered in a thin blanket of parmigiano-reggiano.

    Even better was the meal ate in Florence, at a lovely sidestreet cafe called Ristorante Cafaggi, on our last day overseas.

    Rare duck breast in a savory balsamic vinegar sauce with arugula, braised Swiss chard, and — of course — fagioli, only this time it had bits of sweet, sundried pomodoro and hot pepper folded into the bean stew. The place was run by an honest-to-goodness Italian grandmother and her son, who served us personally. They welcomed us like family and came out from behind the counter to say goodbye when we left.

    I am not, of course, the first food expert to come out with a preference for the peasant cuisine of northern Italy over the Americanized pasta-and-sauce offerings of the South. In 1992, Lynne Rossetto Kasper wrote The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food, which won both a James Beard award and a Julia Child Best Cookbook of the Year. In this book, Kasper — who went on to parlay the name The Splendid Table into a great radio show for American Public Media — sang the praises of simple, regional Tuscan fare including balsamic vinegar, prosciutto di Parma, rabbit, and pot-roasted lamb.

    Forget such drivel as Under the Tuscan Sun, Kasper did more to convey the beauty and bounty of Tuscany than any soft-core romance memoir ever could. What’s more, I’ve known Lynne for years — interviewing her perhaps a half dozen times — and she is in person exactly like her radio personality. Warm, generous, open, and wild about good food. She’s also a fine, formidable lady who’s told me honestly about her past in the theater, her shoestring budget at the outset of Splendid Table, and her very personal struggles with weight and body image.

    Next month, Lynne’s newest book, The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio’s Award-Winning Food Show, will be released. And the incredibly cumbersome title notwithstanding, I expect great things. Stay tuned for a description of the book, which I will receive for review very soon. And meantime, check out Kasper’s original publication if it’s not already in your cookbook library.

    You’ll need some cold-pressed olive oil and a really good bottle of balsamic. Then, I trust, you and Lynne can do the rest.