When Did Summer Become Such a Burden?

 

Saturday morning. I open the window and a wave of humid, hot air hits me square in the face, taking my breath away.

“I won’t be going outside today”, I say to myself and quickly close the window.

When did summer become such a burden?

Back when we were kids, the word summer had an almost magical connotation. Summer meant vacanta mare – the summer break, “the big holiday” as we called it. It meant freedom and friends, days filled with fun and games and peeling skin on our shoulders and noses.

Summer meant waking up to cool, fresh mornings that smelled like buni’s washing drying on the line, eating a quick breakfast and then running off to my friends and neighbors. There I would spend my days, returning home late in the evening, dusty and tired but with a sense of accomplishment.

The same was true for my siblings, too. They would run wild through the streets and parks of our neighborhood, like a band of untamed natives. We were unsupervised most of the time and if you happened to be the adventurous sort, like my brothers, summer also meant countless accidents that ended up in cuts, bruises and sometimes even broken limbs.

I was happy during the summers of my childhood. I would go and stay with my great-aunt and then my days would dissolve into long reading sessions beneath the apple trees in her orchard, supervised by her cats. Summer with my great-aunt also meant long afternoons splashing in a huge wooden barrel filled with water warmed by the sun. I can still remember the smell of the wet staves – briny and woodsy, with just a hint of smoke.

Once a week, my great-aunt would place her wicker basket over her arm and we would walk to the farmer’s market just at a stone’s throw from her house. She would march determined between the concrete stalls where the farmers displayed their produce, searching for the best fruit at the best price. She loved to bargain, my great-aunt.

Then we would return home with her basket filled with fuzzy peaches, shiny orange apricots, fresh vegetables and sometimes a huge, dark-green watermelon, almost too heavy to carry.

The summers of my childhood were endless days of wonder and discovery, of real and imaginary adventures.

There are so many beautiful memories that is impossible for me to hold them all in my mind, at once.

But, if I stay still for a while and listen carefully, they will come back to me, one by one. And I will write them all down, making them real once again, if only for a moment.

Somewhere Between Bean Dip and Plum Butter I Found My Way Home

 

No matter what I am doing these days, whenever I am in the kitchen cooking or cleaning, my memories come rushing in and I find myself in a different kitchen, the one of my childhood back in Romania.

A few days ago while preparing fasole frecata (white bean dip), the image of buni – my grandmother appeared very clearly in my mind. Sitting at our old, battered kitchen table, waging a war against the beans, as usual. We didn’t have any modern or fancy kitchen utensils so the beans had to be mashed with a wooden spoon or better yet, with a fork. I am sure we didn’t have a potato masher. In our house mashed potatoes were prepared with a fork, too.

So, if you wanted a smooth dip you had to confront de beans with strength and determination. It was also a good way to vent your frustration, to work on your anger issues.

But no matter the way, the result was always the same: the smooth, nutty dip that we ate with caramelized onions spread on enormous slices of dark bread.

Today I bought plums, we have here this type – purple and huge but pretty dry inside, I buy them to make plum jam, a feeble imitation of the jam from home. But the plum jam has nothing on the champion of all fruit preserves: magiun de prune (plum butter).

I don’t remember if buni used to make us magiun. I think it was a too slow and too long process even for her and she didn’t have the time or the energy. We didn’t really care about it, because she made us jams and compote from all the fruits she bought at the farmer’s market. During long late-summer days, our kitchen was full of sweet aromas and glass jars that waited to be filled with buni’s concoctions.

Magiun de prune could be bought at the grocery store in autumn, when they used to put a big wooden crate on the counter and the saleswoman would sell us slices of magiun that she cut with a straight, thin wire. We watched her work, our mouths filled with saliva, making the wait seem longer and the magiun even sweeter. Because sweet it was. With a hint of tartness, it was dark purple, almost black and it painted our teeth and we laughed with out mouths open and the people in the grocery store would hush and tut us with low voices and judging looks. Not that we have a care in the world.

Why all these memories now, I keep asking myself? Am I getting old and gaga? Or maybe it is my mind’s way to protect itself and me from the present reality?

Not all my memories are happy. But, fortunately, the bad ones are hiding somewhere deep in my memory and I don’t have any intention to go looking for them.

For now I am perfectly content to dwell on the days spent with buni in the kitchen or on the summer afternoons eating watermelon with my siblings, challenging each other who spits the seeds the farthest.

The kitchen is quiet again, the plum jam is ready. I spread it on the bread, taste it and somewhere, for a little while, buni is still sitting at the table across me. And she says, with half a smile: “Eat up…and don’t talk with your mouth full”.

Down Memory Lane, One Golden Fry at a Time

 

Today, for the first time in a while, I fried potatoes on the stove, in a frying pan.  I usually bake them in the oven, it is easier, less mess and healthier, too.

Whenever I fry potatoes, I think of them as “cartofi pai” as we call them in Romanian – “straw potatoes” and I am instantly back in time as a child in communist Romania. Having “cartofi pai” at lunch was really a special occasion. My grandma didn’t approve of them because you had to use a lot of cooking oil and oil was on the ration card. So, whenever my gran wasn’t at home (something that seldom happened) we asked our mother to make us “cartofi pai”.

I can still see all four of us waiting impatiently as the heavenly smell of frying potatoes filled the house. We would grab them the moment they were ready, burning the roofs of our mouths because waiting another minute simply wasn't an option. Then came the real competition: keeping a watchful eye on everyone else's plate, ready to rescue a golden fry from any distracted sibling.

Of course there weren’t enough for everyone – we were four kids, and we had to fight for every morsel, every piece of “straw”. If we were lucky we would also receive one fried egg, ou ochi – “egg eye” in Romanian. And if we were really good, pickled cucumbers, a delicacy only my gran could make. All eaten with copious quantities of bread.

When we were kids we ate a lot of bread with or instead our meals. It was cheaper and there were times when there wasn’t enough food for all of us on the table to eat our fill. Our favorite was “piine cu unsoare” – bread and dripping. With a pinch of salt, some black pepper and paprika. And when times were really bad and money scarce, bread with mustard. I’ve no idea why even during the darkest days of communism, when grocery shops were empty, you could find jars and jars of mustard on the shelves.

So today I am thankful to the humble potato because it took me on a trip down memory lane. Even though I was a child during a difficult period in Romania's history, and my childhood was different from that of many other children, it was also a time of discovery and wonder, of small pleasures and quiet joys that I will never forget.

Bitter-Sweet Memories

Image via Wikipedia

I am listening to Romanian music and I am crying...The song - "Yellow Quince" brings back so many memories...Memories of my childhood, of late winter nights when, with my nose pressend on the cold window glass I was looking for Santa's sleigh.
Bitter - sweet childhood memories, I didn't know I had them etched so deep in my soul, it hurts so much to recall them, but they come, invariably, hauntingly, to play havoc with my feelings.

Yellow quince,
bitter-sweet,
Light at the window
all our winter.

Strange, but the words don't sound the same in English, they don't resonate at all with my soul, so I think I'll say:

Galbena gutuie
Dulce amaruie
Lampa la fereastra
Toata iarna noastra

Like in the song, our grandmother used to put quinces on the windowsills and I loved to smell them, the almost bitter smell, pungent and fresh tickling my nose. I used to bite one, stealthingly and the tart flesh of the fruit prickled my lips and the inside of my mouth. Later, when the quinces were rippen, my grandmother made quince jam, and if you'd put a jar in the strong winter light and look through it, the jam sparkled in a million gem-like orange rays. And if you'd been good, grandma would open a jar and gave you for breakfast bread and quince jam, with sweet tea and a hug that smelled like cinamonn and anis seeds.

You can listen to the song here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LztM8GLrUaY&feature=related.You don't have to understand the words, just let the music flow...