The  dustcover of my daughter Nani’s fourth book, Feed the Hungry, “a memoir with recipes”. Her other three books are novels, also bursting with delectable edibles both for the mind and the stomach. ( quotes from the book in italics).  

Feed the Hungry is a book about hunger…it is the invisible chain that threads our memories to our hearts..woven of culture and nostalgia…

 

 

click on most photos to enlarge

Nani in 1962, not yet a year old, photographed in Los Angeles where she was born. I was going to art school at the time, hence this arty picture. I was prevailed upon to dispense with artiness so I dutifully recorded Nani as Jackie Gleason, a resemblance that was mercifully shortlived.

 

 

In her memoir, Nani describes the descent to my parent’s basement kitchen as: the smell was earthy stone and a healthy waft of moss..one felt an unconscious surge as one came down the stairs, a Jungian journey into something unspoken and magical…

 

1967: Nani, five years old

 

The book is indeed a Jungian journey  through  a maze of family joys and secrets via the alimentary canal. When the child Nani wasn’t reading cookbooks and experimenting with recipes she was observing with a sharp eye: Nobody cries at funerals or anywhere, dry little conversations, handshakes, ham biscuits, bourbon…things are not what they seem, appearances are everything.

 

The dustcover picture, Nani, ten years old. 1972

 

Food and family: the food is love; the family is loss. Is this what it’s like getting old? All the foundations crumble until you’re alone on the sand..when did everything change? When did the islands fade, the family become scattered across continents like confetti?

 

1974: Nani, age 12. Rachel, her half-sister in the pool

 

But if memories only wound, there is always food for solace: You’ll find recipes for lobster rolls, fried green tomatoes, Virginia ham, squash casserole and damson pie…and many more.

 

 

Nani at 17: 1979

So we went chop, chop, chop, across the water, hair flying.

 

As Nani broadened her horizon, the recipes and the adventures became ever more exotic. I have traveled through countries by route of the stomach..there were years ..of black beans and smoked meats, forofa and cachaca because I was immersed in Brazil..or a sushi mat, sushi vinegar or a prized sashimi knife…

Traveling in Peru, Nani observed: a spectacular woman sung in a red satin sheath, I didn’t catch the lyrics, I just heard amor, amor,amor

 

Wedding portrait, July, 1990

 

But still the family turns the screw: My grandparents.. did not come my wedding ..was it because [my husband] was Jewish?

I hasten to add these were her maternal grandparents; my parents only attended in spirit as they had died earlier. Aside from noting her grandparent’s absence,  Nani doesn’t talk much about her wedding in Feed the Hungry but I can tell you about it since I was there. It was on July 4, 1990, out at our farm in Virginia. Her maternal grandparents may not have come but everyone else was there, including all three of my wives.

The service was ecumenical with my old friend, the Reverend Elijah White (Episcopal) and a young rabbi amicably paired as representatives of their various deities. Came the moment when Lige asked, is there anyone here who wishes to object to the union of this man and woman? and I distinctly heard my Uncle Ross, a staunch Roman Catholic, mutter, “Well, somebody should.” At least he had the grace not to object with his absence.

It was unbearably hot and humid and we had no air conditioning except for one window unit which went into the living room. Soon the wedding broke into two groups: a covey of old ladies, pallid and hollow-eyed, huddled about the air conditioner in the living room, and everyone else on the lawn sweating, drinking, hollering, and of course, diving into mounds of incredible food. It was a memorable Fourth.

 

 

Nani’s Persian period, 2005

 

Caviar, quormeh sabzi,..saffron and rosewater … a clear glass of amber liquid fragrant with bergamot, small sweets, shirni…tiny sour pickles, olives, stuffed grape leaves..checlo kabob..basmati rice..braised lamb shanks in saffron…

 

The ‘official’ book portrait by Yvonne Taylor, a Nani I have never met!

 

On cooking and writing: These impulses, cooking and writing come from the basic seed of love. We have been moved, touched, by the sensual experience of a great meal, a moving book. We would like somehow to harness this power and give it to others…stories start to tumble out as quickly as the memories of food, because they are all intertwined, food and memory, love and taste, all piecemeal of this lovely sensual world we live in…

 

An except from an email I sent Nani:

I am bowled over by your amazing memoir. it is a very fine book, your best piece of writing yet I think. I think the expectation was by me and maybe many others too, that it would a light-hearted look back along with some juicy recipes. You ease us in with the dustcover, giving little hint of the contents therein, and then you follow with your charming first chapter which is like a tinkling bell which hardly prepares us for the sturm und drang to follow. But soon we are witness to the agony of a family falling apart, more or less simply from the wheel turning, the effects of time, the tragedy that all is subject to change, no matter how hard you push to keep it from happening.

It is a  sad book, funny too, but filled with loss…and not only do you lay your mother’s family bare, you do the same to yourself which makes it a very honest book. …

I particularly liked your Peruvian section, why I don’t know exactly, it read like a novel. In fact, almost all the sections could make their own novel which gives the book its weight and gives you something to do for the next ten years!   Your last chapter was also especially good, wrapping things up with the opposite of the first chapter, not a tinkling anymore but a deep and rueful note of the bell.

 

More at www.nanipower.com.