Closed Saturday for Snow! January 29, 2010
Posted by Hich in : SANDWHICH musings , comments closedSANDWHICH will be closed Saturday, January 30th, because of the really cool snow that is falling all around!
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, so I know about snow…I know a LOT about snow. And still, I find something incredibly magical about the particular kind of snow and ice we get here in North Carolina. Enjoy it, everyone, and we’ll see you Monday! …or Tuesday…or whenever you come in next!
…or whenever you want some perfect soup and a Nice Green Salad…
…or whenever you need a cozy meatloaf sammich…
…or whenever you just have to have an O.B.L.T.
…or whenever you crave a burger cooked medium…
…or whenever you need a brownie…
…or if you’re just thirsty for some Moroccan Iced Tea…
Whenever it is, see you then!
(and sorry to make you hungry!)
Janet, Hich & Staff
Our Neighbors in Haiti January 13, 2010
Posted by Janet in : SANDWHICH musings , comments closedDear Friends,
Many of you know how I adore sending these e-mails and then including whatever little story I might have inside my head that sort of scratches its way out onto the keyboard. I write a lot about the meaning of community, and the important relationships Hich and I have created through this restaurant. Today’s message is a simple plea to all of you to consider our neighbors to the south, in Haiti, who are dealing with the aftermath of what was a horrible earthquake on Wednesday.
There are hundreds of subscribers on this e-mail list. Consider the impact we could have if each of us gives something — even a small amount — right now. You can always give more later, so start with an amount that is very easy for you to give, so you can do it right away without even having to think about it. Five dollars? Ten?
On the New York Times website, in small print near the articles about Haiti, there is a link to a page listing disaster relief organizations. Below I have listed two of my favorites from that list, as well as a link to the list.
Thank you,
Janet Elbetri
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS USA/MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES (MSF)
333 7th Avenue, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001-5004
(888) 392-0392
http://doctorswithoutborders.org
AMERICAN RED CROSS
Text “HAITI” to “90999″ to make a $10 donation.
2025 E Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20006
(800) REDCROSS (733-2767)
Here’s a link to the list:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/haiti-disaster-relief-how-to-contribute/
New Menu & Santa Claus December 22, 2009
Posted by Janet in : SANDWHICH musings , comments closedFriends and Countrypeople! Countrypersons!
At last we have a new menu that DOES include the OBLT because we were able to find some tomatoes this time of year that we are happy with. It won’t be long before we find tomatoes from David at Sunny Slope that make us even happier, but for now I think you’ll find our OBLT holds its own, even if, juicy as it is, it doesn’t really hold together without both hands employed in the task.
To read the new menu (which isn’t really all that new — lots of old favorites are on it), go to our website: www.sandwhich.biz and click on the MENU tab.
Holiday Hours: We will be closed Christmas Day and New Years Day and open regular hours/days aside from that. Remember that we are always closed on Sundays.
NOW YOU ARE FINISHED WITH SANDWHICH NEWS. Below is a story you shouldn’t feel bad about not reading. It is long, but I like it. Please don’t be distracted by the cheesy title.
HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY EVERYONE! and a Merry, Merry 2010!
Santa Claus is Real
by Janet Elbetri
I have realized, and this is with some certainty, that Santa Claus exists. I could qualify that by saying, “not in the sleigh-and-big-bag-of-presents kind of way,” but I won’t say that because I do indeed mean it in that kind of way. Santa Claus exists for me in exactly the same way Victoria Falls does, and I know it to be true just as I know it to be true that mother birds chew up worms and then spit them out into their baby birds’ gaping beaks. I have seen photographs of Victoria Falls. I have seen cartoons depicting mother bird behavior. And I have heard a lot about Santa Claus. I have met him, I have sat on his lap, I have seen countless cartoons and movies about him. I have received presents from him. I have known about Santa Claus for 44 years.
Today was a “delayed opening” day at my son’s school, which means school starts 2 hours later than usual, making it a tolerably decent hour for me. Seven-thirty, the normal start time, is decidedly not decent; nine-thirty is more like it. So my son and I woke up and, as we always do on delayed opening day, had a special morning together. Sometimes we go to Guglhupf for a chocolate croissant, but today we stayed in. The morning’s activities included chocolate bread, tea for me and milk for him, a blanket, the living room couch and “The Polar Express” on DVD which we pulled out of the Christmas tree decorations box three days ago. It is a fun movie to watch, even to watch 300 times, as I have (the only movie I have seen more times is “Finding Nemo,” and believe me, I could watch that one 300 more times, it is that good).
Chocolate Bread is made by slicing Whole Foods Wheat Dinner Rolls across the middle, like a hamburger bun, and sticking them in the microwave for 10 seconds. Then you open the bun and put “chocolate pearls” inside, closing it so they melt. Chocolate Perles, as they are properly spelled in French, a language spoken by a select of group of people with whom no one should ever quarrel about chocolate, are spherical 56% cacao chocolate chips that arrive on an airplane from France, surprise, surprise, and if you think that is environmentally un-sound, then you are right. A proper chocolate chip shouldn’t have to take an airplane ride. It should just walk to your door. But don’t go getting mad about those chocolate chips on an airplane. Just come to the restaurant and eat one of our Antidepressant Chocolate Chip Cookies and you’ll understand why I think it is ok to use them.
Back to “The Polar Express.” I was watching it, feeling all agnostic, as I am, and thinking about whether or not celebrating Christmas is a religious thing, and wondering about the whole notion of “naughty or nice” and if that wasn’t an awful, borderline abusive, thing to tell a child. My son’s first nanny, Deni, a very special Brazilian woman we knew when we lived in Brooklyn, hated the concept of Santa Claus, or Papa Noel, as she called him. Deni didn’t speak very much English and my Portuguese was only ok, even though I am one of those “language people.” But somehow she and I managed to have a conversation about Papa Noel one day, about five years ago, when she was bringing my little boy back to me after a day in the park. He was asleep in his stroller. It was Christmastime, and I said to Deni, aware that she was liberal-minded like me, “you know, I haven’t decided how to present Santa Claus to my son.” She said to me that if she ever had children, that she was never going to tell them about Santa Claus. I was surprised by her intensity as she said this. “Wow,” I said, looking at her, “really?”
She paused, her face frozen. Then, the 32 year-old woman sitting in my living room, with my sleeping child in a stroller next to her, burst into tears.
Deni proceeded to tell me the story of her childhood. The poverty, and the dirt floors. How her own father, as a child, had been sent to work for a neighbor in exchange for his meals. How her mother struggled to feed their medium-sized family. She digressed, telling me about her father’s current case of prostate cancer and how she wished she were nearer to him, adding that she planned to return to Brazil at Easter to see him. Then she continued, telling me how, when she was young, she envied the rich girl in her town. Every Christmas, she said, she would walk past the house where the girl lived, and stand on her tiptoes to look over their fence and see the Christmas decorations, knowing that after Christmas, the girl would come to school with new clothes, or something special to wear in her hair, or maybe a doll that she would show off to everyone, or, more likely, all three. Deni was still crying, as she told me this. In fact she was sobbing, choking – I could barely understand her (remember the language barrier too). This was such a tender moment, and it was so important for me to be present for her, this woman who cared so wonderfully for my child, and who was becoming my friend. It bothered me to have to ask her to repeat herself, or to explain a word I didn’t understand. Deni told me how, every December, she would wonder to herself if Papa Noel was going to come to her own house. And how, each Christmas, her mother, without the vision to see what effect it would have, Deni explained, would say that the reason Papa Noel didn’t come was that Deni had not been a very good girl, but that if she was a good girl next year, maybe Papa Noel would come. Deni has a very loving mother whose idea must have been that it was far better to offer her children the pre-made, canned reason for no Christmas presents: naughty, rather than the real one: poverty.
Although I don’t have memories of poverty, I do have my fair share of difficult stories from childhood, so I cried with Deni that day as I listened to her very sad story, where the notion of “badness” is somehow strangely intertwined with a mother’s love. Like many of us, I have struggled with issues of self-esteem, bobbing back and forth between the belief that I was “the most wonderful, smartest, neatest, most creative person in the whole world,” and the belief that I was a really terrible person who should be ashamed of all her selfish, bull-headed and irresponsible behaviors. Between those two extremes there is only the non-self, the imaginary Victoria Falls, as brilliant as it is terrible, and as real as Santa Claus. Despite my good fortune at having a fine supply of joy in my life, I lived with that non-self as my constant companion for many years. At last, I learned — this year, at age 44 – that the real me is irresponsible sometimes, creative other times, plenty selfish, brilliantly stubborn, and also very giving. And generally good. Plain old good. It took me 44 years, and a lot of what we might call “personal work,” to get here.
One element of this “work” has been parenting, and my aching desire to do a good a job of it, frequently questioning myself, and often criticizing myself (you see, not even those years of “work” have completely cured me of all my internal fighting). The other day, for example, I was making my son’s favorite: red sauce for pasta. I learned from an Italian mom that the best sugo – that’s what Italians call “red sauce” – is made from very few ingredients. First you start with half a yellow onion, fine diced, gently sautéed in extra virgin olive oil. Then you add a 28 oz. can of pelati – that’s canned plum tomatoes. The tomatoes have to be the good kind and I can’t go into that right now. You squish the tomatoes into the pot that has the sautéed onions in the bottom of it. Salt it and throw a basil leaf in there, or a bent stalk of celery, or a half clove of garlic, and let it reduce for a while. Then you remove whatever you might have thrown in, like that basil leaf, and puree it all. Taste it for salt, adjust and you’re done.
My little guy, however, notices minutae. He can pull out a 1mm piece of onion from a twirled fork of spaghetti in a heartbeat. (I have taught him how to twirl spaghetti. He is six.). Guess what else he can detect? A tomato seed. This is maddening — the last time I served it, I had to help him collect the tomato seeds and onion bits, and shovel them to the side of his plate. It is so hard to feed this child and when I happen upon something he likes – pasta with red sauce, for example – I have to go with my momentum and make it for him often. An obstacle in the road, like a tomato seed, doesn’t only threaten the whole meal, it can threaten a like – as in the liking of pasta with red sauce, one of the few things I know I can feed him. Those of you who raised easy-to-feed children will credit yourselves for this ease, and you might criticize those of us who don’t have it so easy. But those of us who have hard-to-feed children will know exactly what I am talking about. That’s all I am going to say in my defense, lest I launch into a self-critical mode (maybe I shouldn’t have nursed him so long – maybe it is my fault he doesn’t eat well….and so on…).
Now, I have a new way to make red sauce — a slightly more complicated way. I should say, “slightly,” in quotation marks and with an evil wink. Here’s what I did the other day when I was making the sauce: I sautéed the onion, as directed. Then took it off the stove. I opened the can of tomatoes. I balanced a fine strainer over a bowl. I set another bowl next to it. I prepared a bowl of warm water. Ok, that’s the set-up. Then I pulled each soft plum tomato from the can and held it over the strainer and gently pulled one of the sides of the tomato off, exposing the seeded inside. I put the open tomato gently into the strainer and held the piece I had pulled off, examining it for seeds. One seed – I pulled it off, and placed the piece of tomato into the empty bowl. The seed was stuck to my fingers, so I dipped my fingers into the clean water, shook off the excess water and then picked up the rest of the already-open tomato from the strainer.
Holding it with my right hand, I used my left hand to scrape out the seeds from inside the tomato, opening it up more and more, tearing off more seed-free pieces and placing those into the bowl. Finally, I had the heart of the tomato in my hand, with some seeds still attached – and I had to use the warm-water technique to extract them all. Then, using my thumb and forefinger, I squeezed off the hard stem-end, placed the rest of the now seedless tomato carcass in the bowl, and started again with the next tomato. When all the tomatoes were done, and placed in the bowl, I passed a wooden spoon over the strainer, pushing through any tomato pulp or juice past the seeds that remained behind. In the bowl under the strainer was pure seedless tomato juice, which I poured over the bowl with the tomato pieces in it, carefully double-checking for seeds.
Then I took the tomato pieces and their juice, placed them in the tall “beaker” that came with my hand blender, and added the onions with their olive oil on top. I submerged the hand blender into this tight space – so tight that, even pureed, no errant onion molecule could escape pulverization. This is step two in avoiding things my son doesn’t like so he will eat something, dammit. First step: seeds. Second step: onion molecules. The mixture is pulverized, for real, because, being a restaurant owner, you can be damn sure I have a good hand blender. Now I place it all back in the saucepan, still with traces of oil in it (but free, thanks to a paper towel, of any brown-edged onion pieces). Now I let it reduce and reduce, about half an hour, and I salt it and make it nice for my sweet boy, and then I mix it into perfectly cooked spaghetti, one of two kinds of pasta my son likes, grate a tiny bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano on top, and we’re good for one meal. I hope. That is, until he gets tired of red sauce.
No mother of a well-fed child need suggest to me that I am somehow “enabling” my boy’s food selectivity by working so hard to make things he likes. The idea – the self-critical idea – that I was not doing a great job as a mom was already there. I did not need help thinking that thought. I nursed him for too long, didn’t I? He got spoiled by breast milk laced with French chocolate perles. Then again, he almost never gets sick, I could remind those mothers of well-fed, runny-nosed children. My son never has a runny nose. Maybe 3-4 times in his whole life he has, no kidding. It was the nursing. Or the chocolate.
During the culminating scene of “The Polar Express,” my son turned to me and asked if Santa Claus was a ghost. I answered, “No, Santa Claus is not a ghost – Santa Claus is a little bit real and a little bit pretend.”
“But does he have that big bag of toys?” he continued.
“You know – I don’t know the answer to that,” I replied, aware that I also didn’t know whether or not mother birds just spit out the chewed up worm, or whether they actually swallow it and then throw it up into their baby birds’ beaks.
I’m using the details of the bird story here to make a point. I think we can all agree that there isn’t a flying sleigh that swoops down onto all the Christian, Buddhist and yes, even Jewish households with Christmas trees in order to deposit presents down the chimney. But that’s a boring detail. That’s the bothersome tomato seed.
The story isn’t the tomato seed itself – it is the removal of it, and the resulting worry that I have been a “naughty” mother by doing so, that makes it a story. I am not saying that Santa Claus lives in the North Pole and communes with gift-making elves. I am also not trying to assert that it is the message of Christmas – the family and friends and the love – that is important, although no one would disagree that it is. What I am saying is that Santa Claus is real to me for the very obvious reason that I have been thinking about him and talking about him and pretending about him for forty-four years. There is much more intellectual and emotional energy here than I have ever spent on Victoria Falls, so why is Victoria Falls entitled to be more real? Santa Claus in the red suit at the mall is real, end of story. There is nothing I can do about it now. We passed him at University Mall the other day and I confess: it felt pretty special. I know it was an actor, and I also know it was Santa Claus – Santa Claus, the actor.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Everything, in its way, is a little bit pretend and a little bit real. My son’s dislike for that tiny, slippery-crunchy bit of onion that migrates to a spot directly between his two canine teeth is perhaps more real that Santa Claus. Those are the exceptions. My sense of self? Very pretend, and very real as well. The grief on the part of Deni’s mother at having to answer the question, “why?” My aching desire to feed my son good food. My worry about having nursed him on chocolate milk. My need to accommodate his preferences, which battles my desire to make him “tougher.” These things are all as real as Santa Claus.
I have only known Victoria Falls since I learned about it in college, about 25 years ago. I have never seen with my own eyes a mother bird feed her young. But I have known about Santa Claus for most of my life and he is, to me, a little bit pretend and a little bit real. And I know about the throat-tightening wish to be a good mother. I know what I know, and that is the very best I can do.
