我妈妈对这些面条做白日梦
My mom is a great cook. She comes by it naturally, and she is obsessed with it. My mom will be the first to tell you she has an eating disorder—then she will say it’s just like how her daughter (me) is an alcoholic. So much for anonymity.
At a very young age, she found comfort in food. Her mother was cold, her father was an alcoholic, and mostly she was left alone. Some parents tell stories about walking miles to school in the cold. In 1949, at five years old, in her dirty little dress and no shoes, my mom was put on a bicycle. Her mother said, “School is that way.” To hear her tell it, she never had a birthday party until she was old enough to give herself one.
Occasionally she would go to her grandfather’s house, where her uncle Frank still lived. Frank cleaned my mom’s face and hands, put her in fresher clothes, and brought her into the kitchen. She sat on a curved bench by a window with the small kitchen table in front of her. Frank stood on the other side of the table, a pile of flour between them.
They spent the afternoons mixing dough; my mother helped roll it out. She pinched it closed before placing it in the long loaf pan, which she had smeared with butter. After Frank put it on top of the stove, she didn’t move for two hours, until it was ready to bake. She readArchie漫画,她等待着。她每隔几分钟looked up to see the level of the loaf, because she knew that when it peeked from the top like a cloud, it was ready. Frank gave her mittens to wear while she put it in the oven. The hiss and crackle of the logs from inside the stove were the perfect accompaniment when rain began to fall. When he opened the oven, the Champagne-like smell of yeast and caramelized butter permeated the room, so thick you could feel it on your skin. The sweet smell stuck in your hair for days.
“Can we cut it?” she asked every time a loaf came out.
“No,” Frank said. “We have to wait.”
当他们终于切成面包时，弗兰克有了一种方法。他用黄油把它涂了。然后他用一层糖涂了黄油。然后，他将少量的沸水倒在上面，足够缓慢地将糖和黄油融入面包中。
这就是我妈妈在白日梦，睡眠梦中以及每当她仍然讲这个故事时都回想起的。
弗兰克会坐在她旁边，在一天的余下时间里，她被允许在听大火的时候用尽可能多的碎片吃东西，如果下雨（如果在下雨），并一起读了报纸。
在50年代初，印第安纳州的加里（Gary）是57俱乐部。这是当成为调酒师是一项非常真实的工作，而弗兰克（Frank）是镇上最好的工作。每个人在星期五下午3点来。那是弗兰克的转变开始的时候。我妈妈也去了那里。放学后，她会爬上楼梯到一毛钱商店的二楼。短桌子在敞开的房间穿过。在房间的远端是一个舞台，在那个时候，一个乐队将设置。
Frank would make my mom a grenadine “cocktail” with a cherry, and she’d sit at the bar. Frank would put a bowl of beef and noodles in front of her, and she’d devour it.
vwin德赢ac米兰食物也喜欢弗兰克。我妈妈通常会从一年开始穿便士，这使她的脚趾curl弯向脚的球。当他第二次装满她的碗时，弗兰克总是提醒她她是一个可爱的女孩，他爱她。
我妈妈说：“那些牛肉和面条是最好的。他们真的吸引了一群人，很快这个地方就会饱满，乐队将开始演奏。”
我妈妈通常会在沙发后台睡着了，第二天早晨，她的祖父醒来时会散发出焦糖牛肉的气味。她昏昏欲睡，会漫步到厨房。她坐在同一张桌子上，她和弗兰克一起做面包。
“I got you something,” Frank told her once.
He began to unwrap what looked like a hunk of meat in butcher paper, tied up pretty with twine. When he turned around, he was holding a shiny new pair of shoes.
My mother gasped. “Those are for me?”
“Yes,” he said and slipped them on her feet. She wiggled her toes inside them.
“我可以移动我的脚趾。”
“我知道，”他说。“我看到你在林，那是不对的。”
她紧紧地拥抱着他的腰部。
“好，”他说。“让我们做饭。是时候做牛肉和面条了。”
他将牛肉翻到锅中，直到每一侧都一样深褐色，几乎在角落烧焦。肉被撒在面粉中，现在被困在大荷兰烤箱的底部，变得越来越深。他添加了黄油和洋葱，切成薄片和碎的大蒜丁香，仍在果壳中。然后，他用水覆盖肉，迅速放在盖子上，然后将锅放在烤箱中。
弗兰克（Frank）充分发挥了一切作用 - 没有捷径，没有窍门。弗兰克（Frank）从头开始制作了一切，铣削面粉，搅拌黄油。
我妈妈说：“就是这样。”“这就是为什么它总是如此诅咒的原因。”
Frank created a mound of flour in the center of the table. The white dust spilled out and up into the air. It was beautiful, my mom thought, like a mini avalanche. He formed a well and had my mom crack a dozen eggs into it. Frank made his own crème fraîche by leaving cream in a jar on top of his icebox with a dash of apple cider vinegar. He placed two large spoonfuls in the center of the well.
“现在混合了。”他说，并示意她把手放进去，按摩面团。弗兰克（Frank）弄得像抹布一样大之后，将其拉向他，开始在桌子上揉捏。他将其一遍又一遍地翻身，直到它是统一的。他把手指戳进去，然后慢慢弹回。
“Perfect,” he exclaimed. He wrapped it snug with a kitchen towel and set it in a cool, dark corner on the kitchen counter.
Several hours and many crossword puzzles later, Frank began to roll out the dough with a large rolling pin. He tossed the sheets to my mom. With steady concentration, she cut them the size of chewing gum sticks.
When Frank pulled off the Dutch oven lid, my mom felt what girls at school said they felt about boys they liked: Her stomach felt full of butterflies, and her heart felt like it was beating all the way up into her throat. The beef was brown and juicy; the muscle pieces began to splinter away, held by a web of milky white fat. Frank explained that you should always cook with beef that has a good amount of fat between its muscles, and cook it until it falls apart—but not too long. Just until it’s perfect.
He pulled the meat from the pan, into which he added more water, some bay leaves, and a splash of red wine. With two forks he gently broke the meat into pieces.
锅里的内容回到沸腾,他表演ed my mom how to cook the noodles, right in the same pan. The flour from the noodles thickened the pan drippings, water, and wine into a gravy. Once the noodles were floating in the gurgling gravy mess, Frank added the meat back in and stirred. He used a big wooden ladle to heap the contents into a china bowl and placed the dish before her.
弗兰克就是一切。
Reprinted with permission fromBurn the Placeby Iliana Regan, Agate Midway, July 2019.