Heart-Shaped Peppers

So much has been written about food, and in another life I’m sure I was, or could be, making a living through food. I could have been a photographer of exotic markets with exotic fragrances and myriad colors, where you could taste the air. Maybe the next time around. I left part of my heart in a little place called San-Antonin-Noble-Val in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in Occitanie. Even the British ex-pats in that town didn’t ruin my photographs.

Maybe the next time I could be a travel writer who focuses on food. Not just fine dining, because the term sounds arrogant, I’d look for places with authentic dining, out-of-the-way spots like a little restaurant I stumbled upon in Warsaw. The food was more than I deserved, being an ignorant tourist with five words in Polish to my name. It was also incredibly cheap. Mostly I recall the décor with handmade woven and painted items and how happy I was to have those two hours all to myself to just sit and look in silence.

I could have photographed food for magazines. It’s the main reason I read Down East magazine and others like it. Some of my shots are probably publication quality, or I like to think so. Not so the ones I took in Cyprus, because the heat from that country still burns my eyelids and drained the color from the slaked landscape. All I wanted there was to drink: first as much water as possible, then a beer, then more water. It was too hot there for me to remember the food. Everything tasted scorched, I guess.

I do have memories of so many flavors and dishes from places, however. Honduras is unforgettable for its repetitious menus of pupusas, rice, eggs, curtido, soft cheese, and avocado. Oh, and bananas. Still, it’s better not to think of what else was happening in that country and still is happening. It’s hot there, but the heat is steamy, as if something up high were trying to remind you to keep your eyes open. There is a real danger of eating something that will make you sick. It isn’t fun to be worrying about that every time you put something in your mouth. 

Yet these are all experiences from traveling in other countries. You might have noticed I haven’t mentioned Euskal Herria, Galiza, or Portugal, where I’ve had more than a few perfect meals, but there’s something very different in a dish that came from New York State, where I grew up. Notice I said State, not City. I am from far away from the City, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you. Anyway, I see my meal has arrived. I just ordered a big salad, as big as the restaurant could make it, but the person at the table off to my right has ordered stuffed peppers. I need to pay attention…

They’re big, green, and puffy. They’re drowning in tomato sauce that might very well be from a can or jar. They’re too garlicky, if I can smell them several feet away. That might be some sort of cheese on top. The person who ordered them seems satisfied and is eating with enthusiasm. Fork in the hand, remove part of the wilted, puffy pepper that is looking more gray than green. Then, raise the full fork to the mouth; open the lips and swallow. (By now I must be staring, because the person eating the stuffed peppers is looking at me oddly.)

My salad is looking at me disdainfully, and it must be because I’ve lost my appetite and have no interest in eating it.

The boat is packed and the tarp tightly tied around it. It’s Friday night, late, and I’m tired. We’re all tired, even our dog. My mother is already talking about lunch tomorrow.

Lunch? Already? Yes, she says and laughs lightly. I know why.

I know what I’m ordering. She doesn’t mention the name of the place, but we know the one she means. She says it’s her favorite restaurant to eat in. She goes once a year, after the boat is packed and the tarp is tightly tied down. The next day.

It’s the end of August, and end of August I expect will happen every year in exactly the same way. Eternally, if possible. The boat is packed, we go to bed and wake up early, leaving at eight o’clock. It’s always sunny and warm. We go due east for about an hour, on the Thruway. Around Syracuse we get off and head north. It might be Route 81, but the point is, after Syracuse comes an hour or so more of driving that brings us to my mother’s favorite restaurant.

The restaurant that probably is no longer there after eighty years, but in her mind and mine, it is. The peppers are still there, too. Not puffy and gray, but strong, upright, larger on top because of the stuffing. Rice and ground beef and oregano. Just the right amount of oil. Now I realize it had to have been olive oil, which at home never crossed our lips. That might be the difference. The peppers off to my right don’t have that olive oil, I’m certain. Nowadays places can get away with cheap oil; more than seventy percent years ago, you only had one choice. It was good oil, Italian, no additives. That was the only way people knew how to produce it.

The stuffed peppers from Route 81N are so good and the sauce is definitely not from a can or jar. I know this now and knew it then. I order the peppers sometimes, and will probably order them this trip, this year. (Who knows what I’ll decide next year?) But sometimes I order the spaghetti and meatballs, which nine times out of ten my father orders, maybe in solidarity with him, maybe because I love both dishes equally and it’s hard to decide. Once a year - I need to trust my gut (yes, not funny) and order what I want most this time. 

Stuffed with rice, hamburg, onions, etc. I sure love hamburger, loved it any way it could be served. Not so much now. I rarely eat red meat or any meat. Maybe my food exploration days are over. Maybe I’ll have to stick to photography in the future if I want to make a living based on food. I’ll take nice pictures; just don’t expect me to eat it if there’s meat in it.

Now I can’t bear to see peppers on plates when I eat out. If it’s an Italian restaurant, there is a definite risk, so I avoid those places. The poor, puffy, tower-of-Pisa gray blobs make my stomach churn. If I crave the originals, either I try finding that distant Route 81 leading to and out of Watertown, or I make them myself. There is a reason why I can do this, yet have never seen a written recipe.

Like Route 81, I do not drown the peppers, not in oil and not in water. Certainly not in jar-based tomato sauce. I place them in an oven at low temperature and wait. They aren’t garlicky and they have more seasoning than you get in those envelopes for making spaghetti sauce. Those envelopes probably didn’t exist back in the early fifties. But about the peppers: I will wait, and will be watching my mother, a big smile on her face because there was a big smile on my father’s face and they loved that food so much and they loved each other even more. And I was in the middle, warm and safe, happy no matter which of the dishes I chose, although this was a special moment with my mother for some reason.

My mother didn’t make stuffed peppers very often - maybe only half a dozen times - and she never realized instant rice doesn’t taste at all like the regular kind. She did a better reconstruction of the Route 81 sauce. I don’t have it, so when I do decide I can manage the meaning of those peppers, I recreate the original flavor, the one I knew first. I have to do this, in order to keep going back, like the first time I remember the smile on each of my parents’ face as they ate in a place now with no walls.

This is my defense against peppers like the ones over to my right (but now gone, which is fortunate at least for me). 

This is one of my last reasons for living.