Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [24]
Butter in the refrigerator should be covered, since it absorbs odors. It also contains a large amount of saturated fat, not particularly healthful.
CÉZANNE
Manet, Utrillo, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others, painted scenes of restaurants and eating, and painters sometimes sought to pay for meals with their work. The Kronenhalle in Zurich and the Colombe d’Or in Vence profited fantastically in the end by accepting paintings, but in another case, M. Bise, proprietor of a small restaurant on Lake Annecy near Geneva, refused to accept one. He perhaps should have. It was offered by the then little-known Paul Cézanne.
SYRUP
Maple syrup is perfect on pancakes, if you can get it on them. What you assumed was maple when you took syrup from the grocery shelf is nothing of the kind. A quart of it is made of 2 cups of water, a cup of sugar, 2 cups of dark corn syrup, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon “maple flavoring.” The word “maple” doesn’t appear in the name, nor should it.
The real stuff is called exactly that, maple syrup, on the label. You can also tell by the price, which is justifiably much higher than the corn syrup variety. Maple syrup is made in the Northeast and Minnesota from the sap of sugar maple trees during the very early weeks of spring, when the days are warming but the nights are still below freezing. It’s the alternating temperatures that make the sap flow in the tree, and when tapped, into a bucket. The tree must be mature enough—usually at least forty years old—to be able to recover from the half-inch tap driven three inches into its trunk. Each tap finally produces about ten gallons of sap, only a fraction of that in the tree, and from those ten gallons, only about one quart of maple syrup is produced once most of the water has been boiled out of the sap. Large, healthy trees can provide sap for one hundred years or more, often from more than one tap each year.
TOASTS
In 16th-century England, water was too dangerous to drink, and Queen Elizabeth I had beer or wine with breakfast. Even wine could be tainted, and the favorite remedy was to float a piece of spiced bread in the cup to improve the flavor, as well as provide a bit of nourishment. Raising the glass eventually came to be named for the bread: a toast.
THEO’S BIRTH
1985. In Paris, the labor pains began in the morning as we drove out to Versailles to walk the splendid grounds and take the tour. “Don’t go to the hospital too early and end up just waiting,” the Lamaze teacher had advised. “Keep busy.” So it was late afternoon in the Great Hall of Mirrors when I told Jim to skip the postcards this time; we had to get back to town.
Experienced friends had strongly advised that we stay close to home for the birth, both for the advantages of cutting-edge medicine and to encourage what they called my nesting instincts. Instead, we chose Paris as the perfect place to begin life as three. The first faint green was appearing on the chestnut trees. Confectionary shop windows were filled with chocolate animals as Easter approached. Wed found a French obstetrician, Dr. Bazan, graying and distinguished-looking, from Brittany, as it turned out, where they are traditionally more laconic. And wed visited the American Hospital in Neuilly where it would all happen.
Jim had once read that the lips of the future kings of France were moistened at birth with a good French wine, so they would always remember the taste. He’d carried with us a bottle of Château Latour, chosen for its quality and perhaps also its history, built as a fortification to defend against pirates and later occupied in turn by the English and French during the Hundred Years War. The ruined tower is all that remains and is the centerpiece of the vineyard today.
As the orderly was wheeling me into the delivery room, Jim took a moment to speak to Bazin, who had been summoned from a dinner party and was still wearing evening clothes. There had been a few complications—Bazin wanted to get going without delay he said, but didn’t want us to be alarmed.
“We have all the confidence