roastin pigs

I think about kneeling down next to the cinder block oven and blowing and inhaling a lot of smoke, but also seeing the coals glow, and feeling an enormous satisfaction -- seeing fire smolder curling bits of cardboard, and feeling calm. I think about standing next to the outline of bricks and foil that I measured out in the dark, and hearing the murmur of other voices out alive in the Friday night, and the crickets and the rats too -- all of that rustling around me, but the foundations of the smoker standing silent and clean.

I think about Anna bringing the poor dead bastard in the back of a cab. Rather: I think about Anna getting up before first light, hauling ass in a cab over to Eastern Market, waiting, in her brisk way, for her pig. Matter-of-factly lifting it into the trunk. I think about how she did it in a dress. I think about both of us swinging our porky bride over the threshold. Hustling him down the stairs to the backyard. How we set him down together on a table out back and cut him out of his horrible, child-sized cardboard coffin, and rubbed him down with pepper and salt, and poked the bristles left on his nose, but also were like "your ass is ours." 

This was probably not a remarkable thing for some people, or even many people, to do. Cooking a pig I mean. But I think it was for two women who had no history of this intertwined with their upbringings, who had no reason to do this other than a desire to smoke a whole animal and feed someone with it. 

I think about my mom at Home Depot lifting the blocks with me into her van, on her birthday, a couple of weeks before the party. I think about me telling her to take a break, and her telling me, "But I want to."

I think about what feeling powerful means. Is it having the appetites of 50 plus people bent to your will? Is it charring a not-small animal's flesh, is it making fires, is it using two knives at once, is it moving heavy objects. Is it telling men how you want something to be built, and showing them how to do it, and then watching them follow your directions. Is it drinking beer next to meaty puffs of smoke. Is it all some kind of posturing? Is it deciding you want something because you want it, and teaching yourself how to do it, and doing it. 

And this too, sans fire and knives, needs mentioning: the cadre of women, some friends, some strangers, who assembled in the kitchen and began to clean. Relief at the fact that just at the moment when being horizontal on the living room carpet seemed most appealing, then came their silent move in on the wreckage. Feelings of tenderness and bitterness blooming in the chest at seeing certain patterns played out on a small scale. 

I meant it when I said I would do it for a living; I meant it when I said there will be a lamb roasting in that same spot come the crispness of the last days of fall. 

how to cook in a summer kitchen, briefly

When in the kitchen in summer you must make as few movements as possible. It becomes a study in conciseness: you must chop your carrots not using your whole arm as you might do in winter but using a kind of gliding, circular motion with your wrist and some backbone provided by your forearm. You must move from your cutting board to the stovetop with the least number of pivots possible, and when there must stir like an oarswoman: once, twice, three times lifting from the bottom, getting everything as fully churned as you can because anything beyond that will have you sweating. Conciseness. Create as little extra heat as you can. You must remember this as you pluck mint leaves, must slice with forefinger and thumb flush against the stem -- must make a clean cut of the leaf entire.

You have tried to explain this heat many times many times to people not from here. The words always twist coming out of your mouth and you end up saying something like "The heat in the summer gets to you, it gets in your head," or, "People act different in summer." What you really meant to say is that the heat is violent. It mounts a sunup-to-sundown offensive, it descends from above and rises from where it has seeped into the asphalt and it traps you in the middle. It makes everyone move with a languidness that in this East Coast shrine to efficiency they would not otherwise indulge, but it traps that excess energy somewhere else, builds it up like steam in pockets all over your body.

You will find yourself adding more chiles, more hot sauce, more heat to everything you make. Whole jalapenos disappear into otherwise sensible and subtle Spanish tortillas; heaping tablespoons of red pepper flakes into mild carrot and ginger soup. What you reserve in your movements must explode outward in flavor -- to match that slow and stabbing heat.

two perfectly fried eggs are an exquisite thing; or, breakfast nostalgia

I'm careful now to follow all the steps you showed me before. Only a little fat in the pan, low flame (you in your rigid cooking philosophies refuse anything higher, get that obstinate look when I tell you you wouldn't like anything fried done over anything less than a hellfire-hot flame). Eggs cracked in such a way as to evenly fill both halves of the pan. Ying-and-yangs. A lid to nestle them, their whites spitting and hitting the top. The heat turned off just as their great yellow eyes begin to grow cloudy. I must admit that in some things I am too impatient -- I'd rather risk scorching the egg bottoms to have the yolks done faster -- but you tell me this is wrong with a solemnity and offended air generally reserved for priests describing mortal sins. You have to turn off the flame and let them sit you tell me, let the heat that has collected in the pan cook the yolks a little longer because (and this might be the most important part of your egg philosophy) there exists only one correct yolk texture, and that is thick-runny. Thin-runny looks like bile and if you wanted a hard yolk you might as well have boiled it. After two, three minutes you lift the lid and I always had to admit, still do admit when I do it myself, that the eggs are perfect. My pride forces me to say that it's not that I couldn't fry an egg myself before I met you -- of course  I could fry an egg, but they weren't perhaps very visually pleasing specimens or of consistent quality. And so when you tell me you can't cook I always think of the eggs, the unwavering attention you pay them, your engineer's love of process. How you go in every time so sure that following each step to the letter will lead to a perfect egg, and how each time it does. Your kind of structural, analytical vision turns a humble egg into its best self. How could I not love you for that? How could I not miss you terribly when I sit in a cold DC kitchen to eat two perfectly fried eggs by myself.