Carla

name: Carla

collection #: ML14

collection location: The Chicken Coop, Mildred’s Lane, Beach Lake, PA

age: mid thirties

occupation: artist

Relationship to food: strained

At the time that I interviewed Carla, her relationship to food was strained. Generally, it was in her disposition to take great pleasure in eating- pairing food with wine or going out to dinner and languishing in the length of time spent there. However, as she was in her second and final year of grad school, food had become more about survival than pleasure. She had lost her desire to cook and was functioning from the mindset of “what’s the quickest way I can keep my body moving”.

She grew into early adulthood with a very romantic notion of food. As an artist she enjoys process and always thought she’d have a particular relationship with food preparation, one where she spends hours in the kitchen doing something such as making pasta from scratch. I suffer from this same notion. I revel in the idea of mixing the perfect dough, rolling it out over and over in the pasta maker. Carla has, however, never really done this and as she gets older, she is growing comfortable with the idea that she just may not be one of those people who makes pasta from scratch. She credits this with the fact that she eats alone. She believes it has killed her desire for the process of food preparation as it lacks a community and ritualistic atmosphere.

Her greatest food memory is of coffee. Her parents brought the ritual with them from Columbia. They have a pot together as a family to start the day. They always have a pot of coffee with dinner and they finish their day with it too. When she moved to NY several years ago, she lived alone for the first time. On her first day in her new apartment, she bought a coffee pot and a bread machine, both equipped with a timer. She set them to go off the next morning at the same time and still remembers the amazing scent of both as they baked and brewed. To her it felt like the ultimate in spoiling herself. She still feels the same way when she rewards herself with a really good cup of coffee.

But my favorite of food memory of Carla’s is one told of green olives (the kind stuffed with pimentos) and her sister. When she was young, Carla wanted to be just like her sister: wearing clothes like her, changing clothes when she changed clothes, ordering the same things when they went out…and this drove her sister crazy. One day at a salad buffet, her sister dared her to eat 100 olives in a row. She remembers being really little and fighting through it but eating them all. The thing she finds funny about this story is that she still loves olives. She finds it amazing every time she eats olives that she still loves them because when she does she always thinks of her sister and that moment. It makes her question the food that we love and the foods we hate and why we love or hate them, because that was one of those moments that could have changed her relationship with green olives forever. But it didn’t. Not in the slightest.

Coffee Warm Ups

During the Physical Space show, I gave people the opportunity to write about their relationship to specific types of edible materials. One of them was coffee. I got some great responses from participants, from the good to the bad: “Thank you lord”, “smells good, tastes aight”, “poop”. They also had an opportunity to ingest the substance, as I made cookies laced with the grounds.

It is an interesting substance for me, as I love the way it smells…hate the way it tastes. Well, that’s not true. I just don’t like black coffee in liquid form. I know I will make the die-hards cringe when I say this, but I think it is just the essence I like, as I love coffee flavored candy, espresso soaked lady fingers and coffee ice cream. This is probably why the cookies I made for the Physical Space show are a perfect use of the stuff in my opinion.

Coffee also has an interesting ability, for those who love it or hate it to create lasting memories, whether it is of the actual drink or to the whole ritual surrounding it. More coffee responses included things like “study time” or “mornin’!” as well as the more in depth relationship of “early morning wake ups and long bow watches at the boat house” and “I realize that I miss my country, France so much”. Who knew such a ubiquitous substance could elicit such bittersweet responses.

The cookies I shared with participants at the Physical Space Show are called Coffee Warm Ups, so called from an aural mistake by my husband (“no I said walnuts, not warm ups…”). They are made from a combination of two different memories: one on coffee, one on walnuts. Both of these memories were collected prior to the show at Mildred's Lane. This recipe was used in the first food memory dinner there and is much like a shortbread cookie. It was created out of common sense (coffee and walnuts would make a wonderful combination in a dessert) and a fair amount of research. It is an adaptation of a recipe by Alice Medrich.

Coffee Warm Ups

2 cups flour

1 cup walnuts

¾ cups sugar

¼ tsp salt

2 tsp coffee, ground

1 ¾ sticks butter, softened

1 tbsp + 1 tsp apple cider

1 ½ tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°

In a large food processor*, mix the flour, walnuts, sugar and salt. Pulse till combined. Add in coffee and butter and pulse till crumbly. Add apple juice and vanilla and pulse till it starts to form a dough ball. Remove from food processor and place on a well-floured surface. Kneed dough a few times till it sticks together better. It still will be crumbly. Place on a piece of waxed paper and roll into a log about 1 ½- 2” in diameter. Refrigerate for at least 2 hrs. Cut into ¼ slices and place on baking sheet about 1” apart. Bake for about 12-15 min. Makes about 4-6 doz.

*Yes, you can do this with out a food processor. You can chop and mix by hand. The ingredients will just be less finely ground and mixed unless you have righteous knife skills and buff arms