White Chocolate

Blackberry smoothie and one of the strangest novels I’ve ever read: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender about the (sometimes) magical gifts we’re born with.

 Aunt Julia drinks coffee from a demitasse. When it is cold outside, she adjusts her fur collar with a gloved hand. And today is a cold day. Quick steps down the cobblestoned street, but careful so you don’t trip! Fall days are short this far up north, and the light is already fading.

Gilded mirrors and heavy green velvet curtains. At Holmgrens Kafé on Kaggensgatan the girls stand in line and wear starched, white aprons over their black dresses. Now one of them holds up the lid to a glass dome and waits for Aunt Julia to choose a pastry. There, on a doily, is a pretty selection of freshly made ones. The girl then uses silver tongs to transport Aunt Julia’s choice to a white dessert plate. Aunt Julia bends down and flashes a seductive smile to a little boy who is only six years old:

“And what would you like, dear?”

Today is my father’s 81^st birthday, and I am celebrating him by telling you about his grandmother, whom he called “Aunt Julia”. My father was young when Aunt Julia passed away, but he remembers her well. She was a whiff of the finer things in life: French perfume from a cut glass scent bottle, fur coats, cloche hats, lipstick, and – most importantly – “white chocolate”, my father’s favorite. White chocolate meant hot chocolate with a dollop of whipped cream taken with Aunt Julia at Holmgrens, her favorite café.

I’ve heard the tale of Aunt Julia so many times. And I have her photograph right here, in front of me.

She set out in life as a starry-eyed maid whose greatest asset was her petite, dark-haired beauty. No wonder her unmarried boss, the one with the fat wallet and the gold pocket-watch, fell for her! And perhaps she fell for him? Or was she maybe more cynically made and fell for the idea of an elegant, idle life? Either way, Aunt Julia was in for a rude awakening, the lesson of many a young girl: Rich Men Don’t Marry Girls With No Money. At least not then. At least not him.

They had two baby boys, Aunt Julia and her rich boss. Twice did he make her pregnant and twice did she make the long, arduous trip to the capital, where she gave birth and promptly placed her babies in an orphanage on a shabby backstreet.

My paternal grandfather, Harry, was the younger one of those babies. He was auctioned off from that orphanage to the highest bidder, a ruthless man who made my grandfather’s childhood a living hell. There was a long scar at the back of my grandfather’s head from a beating he took as a child, and later on, when he was an adult, he oftentimes woke the entire household by thrashing about and screaming, the result of endless nightmares.

The first baby, my grandfather’s brother Werner, was also auctioned off. The two boys didn’t know of each other’s existence. My grandfather didn’t find out he had a brother until he was a grown man, and by then it was too late: Werner had already immigrated to America. He never knew of my grandfather, never knew he had a family back in Sweden actively searching for him. Werner died in California in 1985.

I guess most of us don’t change. It’s only in the movies that people have those hoped-for epiphanies. Aunt Julia’s rich boss died and though they never married, he willed all his money and belongings to his “faithful servant Julia Larsson”. Aunt Julia took the cash, moved into a modern apartment in the city, and made even more cash by letting rooms to students. It’s at this point she looked up – and found –  her son (my grandfather), and his family and began visiting them and taking my father to her favorite café.

How I wish this story had a happy ending! Or at least a conclusive one.

I have asked my father several times:
“Did Aunt Julia ever apologize for giving up her babies? Did she ever express any regrets?”

But no, she never did. She has been dead for many years now. I don’t know where she is buried, and I don’t think anyone in my family has ever been to put flowers on her grave.

"Aunt Julia" - my father's grandmother.

Mary

Today is the first day of May. Where I grew up that meant a whole lot of demonstrations, since it’s the International Workers’ Day. But May is also the month of Mary. For that reason, I decided to make Madeleines, Proust’s French Madeleines. However, this year I wanted to do something different, so I made Spanish Magdalenas instead. They aren’t shell-shaped like the French cookie, but are baked in muffin trays. They have a subtle lemony taste to them and are, I read, typically eaten for breakfast in Spain, with café con leche. Recipe here. Have a good weekend!

Mary wasn’t around when I grew up. Not that there was much religion at all, but whatever there was – light a candle for Advent, open presents at Christmas, eat eggs for Easter – for sure there was no Mary.

She had been thrown out during the Protestant reformation in Sweden. Perhaps they had meant to keep her, Mary hardly did any harm, but as a female figure she wasn’t deemed necessary to save. I guess.

As an adult, after I converted to Catholicism, I never much cared for Marian devotion. Or rather, I didn’t understand it. I already had a mother; it wasn’t like I needed another. Also, Mary seemed a bit lame.

It was our 5^th grade teacher who took us to visit a Catholic church. We had been reading about Catholicism in school. Sweden is a Lutheran country, and in the small town I lived back then there weren’t many Catholics, so they didn’t exactly have a church, it was more like a big room in a private villa. There were a whole lot of things in there. That’s what I remember. A whole lot of things. Crucifixes in all sizes, paintings depicting dramatic scenes from the Bible and pictures of all kinds of saints, candlesticks, sculptures. And rosaries in silver and gold with colorful gems in them, and a mysterious wooden booth and a mysterious sweet-smelling smoke, but I don’t remember any Marys. Although there must have been at least one.

In school, I always liked when the teacher talked about other religions, and my favorite ones were Hinduism and Catholicism. They were mysterious and different. They had elephant-headed gods and blue gods and Gregorian chants and stigmatas and “signs” flashing across the sky. Spooky, fascinating stuff. The Lutheran church I was used to seemed empty and cold in comparison. 

When I was 13 or so, I discovered Joan of Arc. She was a revelation. I’d never heard of saints like her before, an armor-clad, brave girl with a sword. She was more like a superhero than a saint, and way cooler than Mary.

Mary didn’t come into my life until everything else had been pretty much given up and emptied out. It was a time when all seemed utterly hopeless. I felt very much alone. You know those endless nights that somehow blend into days and you don’t sleep and there are no more tears to cry and you wonder how you’re going to be able to go on? Your head aches from thinking. That’s when Mary came.

I had a friend in this Mary business. She too was lying sleepless at night; she too felt everything was a hopeless mess. So we started talking. We talked and we talked. I don’t know how we came upon Mary, or how she came upon us, but suddenly there she was. And my friend and I got very excited; we could both feel her presence. These are things that you can’t really talk about because they are so remarkable. It’s almost like saying:

“Hey, Jesus is out there walking on the water! I can see him from my bedroom window!”

But we were strangely joined in this, my friend and I.

It was like a game we played. Skype was constantly on, because my friend lived in another country. I would send a message:
“Now!”

And we’d fall to our knees and pray.

She’d send a message:
“Now!”
And we’d fall to our knees and pray.

The Memorare nine times. Always.

Some months later, maybe four, Mary pulled through. I used to go to this tunnel where there was a whole lot of graffiti and the graffiti said: “Love, love, love!” I thought that was a “sign”. Not like those signs flashing boldly across the sky, but nevertheless a sign. From Mary.

My friend was the first to receive a miracle, but only a week or so later, I received mine.

Shortly afterwards a woman in our town told my husband:
“When I see your wife, it’s as if there’s a woman walking next to her. All the time walking next to her. Who is she?”
My husband said he had no idea what she was talking about. It sounded downright crazy.

But later, when he told me about it, he clearly had thought it over, because he said:
“Maybe it’s your dead grandmother walking next to you?”
“Oh, no,” I shrugged. “That’s not my grandmother. That’s Mary.”

Them Carefree Brooklyn Days

The other day I bought canned pumpkin and made pumpkin pancakes with half of it. I knew exactly what to do with the rest of it: Bake my favorite pumpkin muffins that happen to be vegan! You can find the recipe here.

Years ago, I lived in Brooklyn. Actually first, I lived in Manhattan, on Bleecker Street, in a one bedroom apartment, which I shared with a model and a dancer. I cried in the taxi the day I moved from Manhattan. I sat in the backseat with my belongings in a suitcase and two plastic trash bags and cried and cried.

“You all right there, Miss?” asked the cabdriver as we crossed Brooklyn Bridge.

I turned and looked at all Manhattan’s twinkling lights through the window.

“No, I’m not,” I whispered.

A small part of me was dying.

Over the next 13 years, I lived in four different apartments in Brooklyn: Three of them in Greenpoint and one, the last one, in Williamsburg. They all had this in common: Filth, roaches, and mice.

And yet, I fell in love with Brooklyn. I would still take Brooklyn any day over Manhattan. Brooklyn has attitude. Manhattan has only cash. Big cash-fat Manhattan. Unfortunately, friends tell me Brooklyn too is going in that direction.

My husband Fernando sometimes sighs:

“Remember the carefree days in Brooklyn?”

What he means is: Remember when we were young and beautiful and could spend all our money on restaurants, books, movies, and the theater?

Back then Bedford Avenue was lined with no-frills mom-and-pop stores and you got a cup of coffee for 75 cents. There wasn’t a commercial café in sight. I ate my Edith Piaf sandwich in peace in the back garden of the L-Café.

We knew that the best Mexican food, the authentic, real stuff, could be found in the back of a dingy store. Cooked and served by stout Mexican women with hairnets, while Spanish music was playing on the radio. We drank cheap Jarritos soda.

We browsed the shelves with second hand books at Spoonbill & Sugartown where you sometimes had to shoo away one of the two big, fat cats, which sprawled the book tables. I bought Colette’s Retreat From Love for $2.50

Fernando, Friday nights we splurged on fancy dinners at Sea, way before Sarah Jessica Parker and TV got to it.

We took turns reading chapters of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.

One summer day we fell asleep on a blanket in McCarren Park and slept for hours. I got sun burnt, but you got a nice tan.

Saturdays we strolled over Williamsburg Bridge into the city where you bought me my favorite licorice candy on Rivington Street.

I bought a never-once-used Calvin Klein coat at the Salvation Army in the corner of North 7^th and Bedford for $10, because the manager had never heard the name “Calvin Klein” before.

Sometimes we took the less glamorous Driggs Avenue home.

“Man Ray lived here,” I told you. “And Henry Miller.”

And you squeezed my hand.

Brooklyn is where we first became cat owners.

Brooklyn is where we took our infant son (born at Beth Israel Medical Center on 1^st Avenue and 16^th Street in the City). I was terrified you hadn’t fastened the newly purchased infant car seat correctly in the yellow cab. You checked it and checked it and checked it again while I – clumsily – held our 2-day old son, brand new little star in our private universe, in my arms. He wore his bear outfit, his homecoming suit. Over us the November sky arched gray and rainy.

Then carefully, gingerly, the cabdriver took us downtown and home, home to Brooklyn.

Sweet, wonderful Brooklyn.

The Emin

Last year, around Thanksgiving or so, I made these delicious pumpkin-chocolate chip pancakes found here. Today, I bought some canned pumpkin (which is thankfully sold even when it’s not pumpkin season) and made the pancakes again, this time omitting the chocolate chips. I also made the cinnamon syrup. Here’s a recipe for it.

 When I was in college, a friend of mine, Eszter, and I went to a lecture by the Emin Foundation. Eszter, who was Hungarian, was into all esoteric things, and the Emin Foundation was one of those mysterious New Age movements that sprung up everywhere back then. I was sort of clueless but thought “why not?” The flyer promised three free lectures (or maybe they were called lessons, I don’t remember) after which you had to either stop coming or become a paid member.

There were two men heading the Emin Foundation in Lund, Sweden, where I lived then. The leader of the two was a British man named Lance. Lance was tall and slender with a longish face and a light brown beard. I especially remember his hands, which were also long and had monkeylike, sensitive fingers.

The other man was a shorter, dark young man who was always smiling as if he knew something you didn’t. Which I guess he did. His name was Constantine. Both Lance and Constantine wore black pants and full, white, fluid shirts, like the ones Cossack dancers wear. Lance and Constantine weren’t their real names. Once you became a proper member of Emin, you were given (or could pick) a new name.

Only English was spoken.

There was something spooky and forbidding about the whole thing, which I guess is why we were drawn to it. The lecture-lessons were held in a deserted part of the public library, a bit too clinical for mystic stuff to take place, which it nevertheless did. I don’t remember much, but I remember we always sat in a circle. Lance either talked or conducted experiments, while Constantine stood aside smiling. One such experiment was called “the aura”.

Lance showed us photographs of ancient Egyptian art and asked us to look closer at the heads of the people in these pictures. Most of them had some sort headgear, strange structures, or just a huge, red circle on their heads. I hadn’t thought about that before, though obviously I had seen pictures of Egyptian art.

“These are not hats,” Lance explained. “These are auras. The Egyptians could see them clearly, which is why they were manifested in their art. We’ve since lost the ability to clearly see the aura of a person, the way the Egyptians did. Yet, it is still there, and it has many different colors. For instance, what color do you think the aura of an angry person has?”

“Red,” some smarty-pants piped up.

“Exactly,” nodded Lance. “And from there we get the word ‘hatred’, which is a combination of the words ‘hat’ and ‘red’. A red hat, or aura. Hatred.”

Next, he had us all line up in front of an empty wall. And sure enough, as I watched the others parade in front of that wall, I saw a faint sort of light emit from their heads. I suppose “shadow” would be the word. I left that lecture-lesson filled with awe, and proceeded to tell everyone I knew about the root of the word “hatred”.

“I saw it myself,” I whispered, baffled at the non-believers who just shook their heads at my naiveté.

The next time, Lance had an even better trick up his Cossack-sleeve. This time he was going to demonstrate his heat.

“Heat radiates from our bodies,” he explained. “And if you practice, you’ll be able to conduct that heat through various body parts.”

Since we had no clue what he was talking about, Lance asked us to stand up and hold out our palms. Then he went around and above every open palm he held his slender magician fingers. One after the other, everybody quickly withdrew their hands as if they’d been burnt by fire. Some even yelped “Ouch!”

I decided that I wouldn’t fall for this particular trick. I would not withdraw my hand and I would not scream. But when it was my turn and Lance stood in front of me and held his fingers over my palm, I felt a burn as if from a laser beam, and just like the others I pulled back my hand quickly.

I never went back for my third and last free lesson-lecture. I am not sure why. Eszter did though. She became a real member of the Emin. She even got to pick her new name: Spring.

Whales, Fires, Public Restrooms & Other Fears

Quinoa and kale breakfast, topped with a poached egg. This recipe comes from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good cookbook, which I rather like. It’s simple and tasty, and perfect for those times when you have leftover quinoa (but good enough to make with fresh quinoa too). You can find the recipe here. Have a good weekend and see you again on Monday!

My son, who is seven-and-a-half, has exhibited a lot of fears lately. He’s afraid of the mother of another kid, because she once screamed out loud, he’s afraid of police officers, he’s afraid of going into the kitchen alone at night.

The other day I asked my husband:
“What’s up with all these fears? I was never afraid as a kid!”

As if my son’s fears surely had been passed down from my husband’s side of the family, not mine. I tend to think of myself as pretty fearless, but a deeper examination of my own childhood and youth, revealed quite a few fears, some of which were almost compulsive in nature and a few of which lasted until I was a grown-up.

Two major fears are connected to this one summer, when I was 8 or 9. First, it was this whale, which had gotten lost and was “stuck” in the shallow strait located between the island of Öland and the town of Kalmar on the mainland, where we lived. Because of this whale, I refused to put my foot in the sea all summer for fear my foot would touch the back of this great big Leviathan. I imagined the feel of it: Slimy, bumpy, and worst of all alive.

That same summer there was a fire in a nearby school. Everyone talked about it and I couldn’t sleep at night, imagining our house, too, might burn down.

“Our house is made of stone,” said my mother. “Stone houses rarely burn.”

Yet in my dreams I saw firefighters and police and a curious crowd of people poking in the remains of our house and our furniture all covered in heaps of black ash. And our bodies, blackened and burnt, found amidst it all.

Traveling alone was another fear. I was terrified of being alone on a train in my younger teens. I was afraid of having to change trains, actually my heart started to race every time the conductor announced that Alvesta Station was next. Alvesta was a busy railway junction, with tracks and platforms forming a difficult, snaky grid. I always knew the platform from which my next train would leave, but one little hick-up, one small delay, could easily change track 3b to track 5a and that would produce an hitherto unknown terror in my heart.

Public restrooms were also extremely scary. It began with the restrooms at school, where the older students held court and terrorized those who were younger. And the public restrooms were even worse! Who knew what one would find in there? I always opened the doors to the stalls very quickly. I imagined half-naked; half-dead bodies slumped in there, in a sea of urine. The stalls back then were always covered in vulgar graffiti and veiled in a nasty stench. I always wondered who in this world could stay in there long enough to write and draw all those things.

I still try to avoid public restrooms. The good thing is, that in New York City there’s a whole bunch of really nice ones: The ones in Bryant Park are the best, followed by the ones in the lobby of the Renaissance hotel at Times Square. Most Barnes and Noble restrooms are OK. I’m not as picky as when I was younger, but if you are in New York and you are picky, there’s a book out there for you.

In the Kitchen

Easy breakfast stuff: Chia pudding (mix 1 cup coconut milk and ¼ cup chia seeds and let sit in the fridge overnight) topped with cherries.

I used to abhor the kitchen and all that took place in it. When I was a kid in Sweden, cooking classes were mandatory. I couldn’t stand them. All of us kids had to bike to another school for these classes, because the one we went to didn’t have any kitchens in which to work. After a year, I still didn’t know the route to this other school, that’s how much I loathed those cooking lessons.

Cooking and all that, which takes place in a kitchen represented female submission to me back then. I never saw any men cooking. No man in my family ever cooked anything, not even a pot of coffee. It was women who cooked, and women who cleaned up after the cooking, and women who did the dishes, and women who dried the dishes and put them back in the cupboards. As a result, the kitchen reeked of resentment.

Frequently, the meals tasted of anger. A teacher I once had, said you could taste when a meal was prepared with anger, and it’s true. Food was thrown upon a plate, which in turn was thrown upon a table, and someone threw the apron on the counter and shouted:

“Dinner is served!”

My mother was a great cook. She still is. She claims her mother, my maternal grandmother, was better. I don’t know. I preferred my mother’s cooking (except for my grandmother’s pancakes). I never knew my paternal grandmother or her cooking abilities. She died when I was a baby, but members of our family still remember her lemon meringue pie with fondness. Being a good cook was (and maybe still is?) important to a woman. It meant she took care of her family. If you couldn’t cook, your family would starve and die. My grandmother worried about this:
“How are you going to live?”
To which I’d roll my eyes. I was going to have this really grand, adventurous life, I was going to be too busy to cook for others. I imagined I’d live on bread and Jarlsberg cheese.

I figured that if I never learnt how to cook, I would somehow, as if by miracle, avoid the trap I saw other women caught in: Cooking and cleaning until they were blue in the face. It was the same with typing. We also had to take lessons in touch-typing, but that they could not force me to. I was going to be nobody’s secretary. I swore I wouldn’t learn how to type and I didn’t. At least not then. I didn’t learn how to touch-type until years later, as a journalist student, when I was shamed into it.

It was baking, which brought me into the kitchen finally. I am not sure why, but I suspect I wanted to copy a friend’s brownies. They must have turned out well, because soon I baked all the time. Baking was somehow different from cooking; it was a bit of a luxury, not really a necessity like preparing a meal. I became a fanatic. I didn’t make cookies or pies or cakes or anything, I just made bready stuff, bread and buns and that sort of thing. Baking meant getting a dough to rise, and I became an expert. Our fridge was filled with stuff. Especially just before an exam. Baking soothes me; I love the feel of the dough.

Once I got over the trauma of those cooking classes, I found I could actually cook. What a revelation! I used to always shake my head and say:
“I’m sorry, I can’t cook for the life of me!”

But that’s not really true. I will probably never become a Cordon Bleu cook, but I am not that bad. Since I don’t have a big family, and since my son and I are alone most evenings I don’t have to prepare huge dinners all the time. This means, that when I do make them, it’s a pleasure. Over the weekends, my husband and I often cook together and it’s a lot of fun. And I’m teaching my son the secrets to making a good dough.

The kitchen doesn’t have to be a horrible place after all.

Kierkegaard and the Nuns

I had a lot of apples that weren’t of the best quality, so I decided to make a crumble. However, I wanted a crumble that was less crumbly and more pie-like. This recipe was perfect! Preheat oven to 435F. Using my fingertips, I mixed ¾ cup flour and 1/3-cup oats with ½ cup sugar and 125 g butter cut in pieces. In a separate bowl, I mixed 5 peeled and sliced apples with 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 2 teaspoons sugar. I put the apple slices in a pie form and topped it with the flour/oats/sugar mixture. I let it bake in the oven for about 22 minutes.

One day a man sees a sign in a store window. The sign reads: “Got clean laundry? We press it for you!” Happily the man runs home, collects all his clean shirts and heads back to the store. But when he hands over the bundle, he’s being told that the store does not press anything at all, in fact this is a store that sells signs, and that particular sign is for sale.

This is a story, or an aphorism really, that was written by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). It is meant to shine light on the disappointment we feel when we assume something is a certain way, and then discover it is not. (Although to me, the story is also a warning about the false promises often showcased in display windows.)

Kierkegaard is a philosopher for the fearless. He preaches the gospel of the individual and the power that rests within the individual (as opposed to the cowardly crowd). It is daunting, Kierkegaard argued, to live our lives as individuals. It is easier to adapt to the crowd than to form our own individual heart. We therefore tend to buy ready-made truths that sound and look good at first, but do we ever bother to look deeper into them? And if we did, would we like what we saw?

“Most people lead far too sheltered lives, and for that reason they get to know (the divine) so little. They have permanent positions, they never put in their utmost effort,” Kierkegaard wrote in his diary.

The other day, a friend and I visited a convent in Connecticut. The convent is located in a mansion, which in turn is ensconced in absolute peace and quiet by the water. It is a magnificent place, surrounded by green lawns. It is also a place where you hear things. You may not hear the sort of things you want to hear, but perhaps the sort of things you need to hear. One of the things Mother Superior, a beautiful petite Indian woman, said was:

“It’s not so important to be always the winner. Sometimes it’s good to be the loser.”

Kierkegaard held up a warning finger against the loud talk of the crowd, urging us instead to glean something from the individual who quietly communes with himself. In his diary he wrote:

“One can very well eat lettuce before its heart has been formed; still, the delicate crispness of the heart and its lovely frizz are something altogether different from the leaves. It is the same in the world of the spirit. Being too busy has this result: that an individual very, very rarely is permitted to form a heart; on the other hand, the thinker, the poet, or the religious personality who actually has formed his heart, will never be popular, not because he is difficult, but because it demands quiet and prolonged working with oneself and intimate knowledge of oneself as well as a certain isolation.”

When I came back home from the convent, I thought about Kierkegaard and all the glitter promised by the signs in all the window displays, and how easily it is to fall for it, be it a Louis Vuitton handbag or Converse sneakers. And I thought again about what Mother Superior had said about being a loser, and I wondered if I would even notice such as truth if it were to hang in a shop window.