My mother was a terrific
cook. Despite that fact--or maybe because of it--I am not. While
she was alive, I could always count on wonderful meals, without
ever having to go near a stove. So I didn't. I figured that I
could learn when it became necessary. Nothing to it. All I'd need
would be recipes. Anyone who can read, I reasoned, can cook--which
is true, up to a point. But how well? Ah, there's the rub.
Living alone, I did
not have in-house critics to provide feedback for my culinary
efforts. Nevertheless, and not to brag, when I invite friends
and most kin to dinner, they invariably lavish praise on every
course. "Why not?" some of my other, less kind relatives point
out; "it's one less meal they've had to prepare for themselves."
Such remarks do not inspire confidence.
It was with considerable
trepidation, therefore, that I entered the kitchen of my hostess,
the legendary actress, Joan Fontaine, one long-ago Thanksgiving
morning, to offer my assistance. Acting is not Miss Fontaine's
only talent. Not by a long shot. She's also a hole-in-one golfer,
a prize-winning fisherwoman, a hot air balloonist, an accomplished
horsewoman, and a pilot. "When you've had as many husbands as
I've had, Darling," she quips, "you learn all their hobbies."
And one hobby all hubbies shared in common was a love of good
food. No problem. Joan is also a gourmet cook who studied at the
Cordon Bleu in Paris.
No wonder I was intimidated
that day. But though my mother did not teach me to cook, she did
teach me good manners, so I asked, politely, "What can I do to
help, Joan?" "Can you cook?" she asked. "Not really," I said truthfully,
"but I should be able to manage some simple tasks." "All right,"
said she. "You can section the fruit for the salad."
She handed me an apron
and sat me down at a table in front of a large bowl, a bag full
of oranges and grapefruit, and a paring knife. I figured, how
hard can this be? I found out. She stopped me as I was mangling
orange No. 1. "No, no--not that way--this way," she said demonstrating.
Within seconds, she had removed the skin expertly, in one long
piece, and then cut into the orange. With one swoop, she sliced
into a segment and up the other side, removing a perfect orange
slice and leaving behind only the membrane from both sides. In
less than a minute, she had repeated this feat until all that
was left in her hand was a complete "empty" orange-only membranes
and core.
I tried to imitate
her. Disaster. "Never mind," she said, "I'll do it. It will be
faster." "See, that's why I can't cook," I wailed. "That's what
my mother always says." "Good God, I don't blame her," said Joan.
"The woman should be canonized just for letting you near her kitchen!"
She then banished me to the den to write place cards.
I have never lived
it down. Thirty years later in a phone conversation, after her
usual, "How's your love life, Darling?" (which she knows never
compared to hers, even in my wildest dreams), she twisted the
knife: "Are you having any more success in your kitchen than in
your bedroom these days?" This, in spite of the fact that a mutual
friend who had dined at my home a few years ago and claimed to
enjoy it (again, he didn't have to cook it himself) wrote her
a glowing review of the meal. Instead of a letter, he inserted
the message in a large mock-up of a front page of the show-biz
bible, "Variety." Echoing "GARBO TALKS," the historic headline
touting Greta Garbo's first talking picture, his headline read,
"MULA COOKS!"
Unfortunately, his
praise gave me a false sense of security. Shortly thereafter I
committed a culinary catastrophe that made all my past disasters
look like Julia Childs (or Joan Fontaine) triumphs: I'd had a
busy day. I was ravenously hungry, but too tired to cook something
from scratch, so I decided to make a little pasta topped with
some leftover tomato sauce I had in the fridge. I boiled some
linguini, warmed the sauce in the microwave, and poured it on
the pasta. Strange. It looked quite pink. But I thought that was
because the lighting in my kitchen isn't very bright. Also, I
figured that the thin, flat linguini didn't hold the sauce as
well as the lined rigatoni I usually use. So I piled on some grated
Romano and dug in. It tasted sweet. Strange. I never use sugar
in my sauce. But, I really was starved, so I kept wolfing it down.
As I got to the bottom
of the dish I remembered that I had put onions and a little red
pepper in the sauce. This definitely had neither. Then I thought
that possibly I had inadvertently used plain crushed tomatoes
since when I don't use a whole can, I save the remainder in a
bowl. But as I kept eating, I finally realized that it really
didn't taste the least bit like tomatoes.
Then it hit me: A couple
of nights before, I was looking for a container to take to my
watercolor class. I remembered pouring something out of a half-filled
jar in my refrigerator into a bowl so I could use the jar. What
I had poured into the bowl was cranberry/apple sauce. Can you
imagine that on pasta? With grated cheese yet? Some say it was
probably better than my homemade tomato sauce.
I worry that they might
be right.
Rose Mula was an executive
assistant, a public relations specialist, and an operations manager
for a New England theater chain before discovering a passion for
writing.
Her work has appeared
in The Saturday Evening Post, Yankee, Modern Maturity, The
Christian Science Monitor, The Reader's Digest, The Philadelphia
Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, and more than a hundred other
magazines and newspapers. Actually-thousands of newspapers, since
one of her essays, The
Stranger in My Mirror (originally titled, The Stranger
in My House), was reprinted in Ann Landers' nationally syndicated
column in 1999, and after an explanatory exchange with Ms. Landers, an attribution.
Rose's new book, If These Are Laugh Lines I'm Having Way Too Much Fun, is available at bookstores, through online bookstores, and from Pelican Publishing, 800-843-1724. The book was a finalist in USABOOKNEWS.COM's 2006 Best Books Award humor category. Meanwhile, she can reached
by e-mail.
