Winners: Round 24

maggiethecat · March 7, 2005

I am deeply impressed (to say nothing of madly envious of) the entries this Smackdown received. Thank you, entrants. You really put the letters in the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters. Judging this round was took multiple PMs back and forth among us judges, and I wish to dispense a blanket Honorable Mention to all who didn't make the top three. You guys have some chops.

We know that there are many, many more Society members who can dazzle us with their wordsmithery. Please watch this space for Round 25, and send in an entry.

The golden threesome: please PM me your addresses so that I can trot to the Post Office with your prizes.

And the winners are:

maggiethecat · March 7, 2005

Third Prize: kriskitchen

“Why don’t you look through medicine cabinets like normal people?” Because kris makes the case that the fridge is a better source of DNA evidence.

“You can tell more about a man by looking in his refrigerator than in his eyes.”

Or so goes the prayer that I mutter to myself as I eyeball the cracked faux-wood refrigerator handle. Amana side-by-side, Harvest Gold, circa 1974.

The rubber seal puckers open with a loud fwak. In the next room, I hear my husband’s voice swing up a notch. Poor thing. Andy is trapped in a conversation with our host about titanium drivers. His heroic enthusiasm is to keep the man from thinking about my whereabouts. From discovering that I’m rummaging through his kitchen like some fridge burglar.

*

“Why don’t you look through medicine cabinets like normal people?” Andy asks, smiling at me across the dark of our rental car. While he guides us back to the highway, I tell him what I found: Slices of ham, half-heartedly wrapped in plastic, turning to paper. Fluorescent yellow mustard, mayonnaise (fat-free) and vintage barbecue sauce, all in squeeze bottles crusted over at the top. No produce to speak of, save a dying bunch of carrots huddled like refugees in the crisper. And for no good reason, next to the Spicy V-8, an upright bottle of Rosenblum Zinfandel.

Mr. Golf is not who I am looking for.

*

I spot trends for a living, connecting the details, textures, shapes and tastes of our daily lives, looking for clues about the Next Big Thing. What music is playing at the Gap in Long Beach, the latest in Japanese cartoons, what colors folks wear to their hot yoga classes and what kind of special water they drink when they’re done – stuff like that. I’m the kind of person who knew pink was the new black and, though unreported anywhere, I saw pomegranates coming. (By the way, it looks like figs are next.)

In my line of work, you spend a lot of time lurking in peoples’ kitchens and in their lives figuring out who is eating what, how. So I guess it’s only natural that when I started my current hunt – the one for my father – I would fall back on what I know best. Somewhere along the way, I became convinced that when I found him, I’d know by the contents of the fridge. Sure, it’s crazy. But that’s always worked for me before.

My mother died two years ago, taking all of her secrets with her, including my father’s identity. The only remaining clue is me: a mirror of their combined effect. My ankles, humor and curiosity, they all came from her. I also came into this world hardwired for food. Mom could have eaten the same bad takeout day in and day out (in fact, she did, just so she wouldn’t have to cook). Clearly, another set of genes was at work. Several fine Brunellos and one long afternoon netted a list of likely candidates from Mom’s closest girlfriend. The hunt began.

Candidate #2 lived in Savannah. Talking my way into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I discovered a tidy green room, glowing with the afternoon and thick with trinkets and dust. A menagerie of cat magnets herded lazily on the door of the basic black Frigidaire. Inside, saucers and foil pie plates held valuable offerings of gold: fried chicken, perfectly crisped disks of green tomato, knots of fried okra, cornbread and cobbler. The top shelf sagged under the weight of several liter bottles of soda. I feared at any minute, a picnic was going to break out.

Later, he told me that since his wife died, the church ladies were always ringing his bell dropping off a little something to eat. “They’re just trying to make sure I don’t starve,” he said. I’m thinking they are either trying to court him or kill him. Either way, he’s not my man. Though he has his charms…he doesn’t cook.

In Chicago, I met a man who has everything. The architectural digest kitchen, Sub Zero fridge and wine cellar drawers, and everything that could ever be labeled “artisanal” (can you believe - artisanal peanut butter). It all seemed rather curated – a well put together collection, for admiring purposes only.

Number four has sent instructions to his house in Ojai and I easily find the driveway marked on either side with wine casks. The house smells like browned garlic and bread. He was cooking us dinner.

Ruby colored glasses orbited a decanter on the table. A fennel and carrot salad, drizzled with olive oil and then, tomato risotto. Later, he brought out a bronzed guinea hen surrounded by fresh figs and a hint of lemon rind, both picked earlier just beyond the house.

Over dinner, he told us about his garden and his 97 cookbooks. He was fighting the urge to make it an even 100.

“This,” he says, nodding his head towards the fig barely hanging on his fork, “is about as good as it gets.”

I never went near the kitchen. He’d just told me all I needed to know.

Congratulations, kriskitchen. Here's your Golden Gully:

maggiethecat · March 7, 2005

Second Prize: reverendtmac

This is not Todd's first Golden Gulley -- the man can really write. I can't wait to retire the phrase "science project" to describe the blue fuzzies in the back of the fridge. I'll steal shamelessly from the rev: "something in the back that could hold a rudimentary conversation."

You can tell more about a man by looking into his fridge than looking into his eyes."

That was her line; the ones that you'd remember to recycle, they were hers, always. Well, that and the used-to-be-innocent-but-jesus-it-was-boring smirk, twisting under her twinkling green eyes...just a simple non-verbal unmisinterpretable broadcast: she was officially Up To Something. That was hers, too.

That bit about the fridge and the fella? She'd dropped that and the look just before she ransacked my closet, found an old pair of Thai boxing trunks and sauntered off, leaving me to fight the heap of twisted sheets and misplaced pillows.

The kitchen was tight, mostly dark; the only light was from the overworked bulb in the back of the fridge. She luxuriated in the hard yellow tunnel, forcing my eyes from her high cheekbones and shellfish-allergy lips to the spikes of tousled red bedhead, down her naked back to where my old trunks were barely hanging off the top of her ass...each and everything cut in sharp relief against a wall of mustards, salad dressings, overmarketed party orphans, and other things you hoped your stuck-up gourmand friends would ignore.

(Of course, if Sera was still there, I bet they wouldn't say shit if they had a mouthful.)

"I'm actually impressed," she said as I came in. "You could eat most of this. All of it."

"I even want to know what you were expecting?" I asked, snagging a Coors Light off the top shelf.

"Beer and take out containers. Maybe something in the back that could hold a rudimentary conversation," she said, glancing over with a grin.

"Mmm. Do me a favor and stay outa the garbage," I said, backing against the counter and killing the neck.

She giggled, rummaged some more. "One for three, anyway. Oh, and you definitely need more hot sauces. There's only what, six in here?"

I chuckled, paused. "And?"

"And what?" she said, punctuating it with the plasticky chunk of a crisper.

"And...well, you figure anything else out?"

She closed the crisper, straightened up, swung the door shut and stretched, leaving me with a glimpse of two long, lean ab columns disappearing into the oversized elastic band on the trunks before the light went out...and before I had my night vision back, she'd wiggled herself into my arms and liberated my beer.

"Clean. Full of food...good food, too. Fresh stuff..." she said, her voice trailing off.

She was quiet for a minute, then. Two, maybe. I didn't count. Bit of an effort to not glance at the microwave, mind you. Instead I just felt her shoulders rising and falling against my chest, tried to lose myself in the rhythm.

"I think I figured out that I love you," she said, finally.

I asked, later; back in bed, limbs knotted into a tagliatelle tangle.

"...wasn't in the eyes, huh?" I said softly, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"Just making sure," she murmured through a sleepy giggle.