Aunt Fanny (and her Italian Sandwiches)

Frances Butler Sherer was my maternal grandmother’s maternal grandfather’s brother’s second wife. 

Got that?

She had no children, was widowed in 1946, never remarried, and lived to be 105.  I was in high school when she died. 

When my mother was a girl, growing up as one of five kids (or more, depending on what poor unfortunates her parents had taken in that week), Aunt Fanny spent a lot of time helping my grandmother with the housework and cooking. 

                                                       

She was a family institution and is very much a presence, to this day.  Everyone remembers how she would put a bit of vinegar into an almost-empty catsup bottle to stretch it.  And her sayings – like “use your head to save your heels.”  And her recipes.

Hereabouts we have a tradition of “Italians” – these are small sandwiches of meat and vegetables on a soft white roll, and bear little resemblance to anything actually from Italy, but fifty years ago salami was exotic and we had to call them something. 

This is how Aunt Fanny made Italian sandwiches.  She didn’t have a recipe per se; she said you just had to remember that there are seven ingredients. 

(I can remember that there are seven ingredients, but I can rarely remember what they all are.  It’s like trying to name the Von Trapp kids or the damn dwarves.)

Aunt Fanny’s Italian Sandwiches

Sliced salami

Sliced Provolone cheese

Bell pepper

Red or sweet onion

Tomatoes

Whole dill pickles

Iceberg lettuce

Top-sliced frankfurter rolls

Salad oil

Salt & pepper

Cut the salami and cheese into strips.  Thinly slice the pepper, onion, and tomato; slice the pickles lengthwise.  Tear the lettuce into manageable strips. 

Put a little bit of everything into the frankfurter rolls.  Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

The best bread evah

I don't have the patience of a food stylist, sorry.  Many people do it much better.  But you get the idea.  This is the bread I made yesterday, requested specifically by the friends we visited for dinner.

We make a lot a lot a lot of bread, usually of the French/Italian peasant free-form variety - I have maybe three or four recipes that I turn to regularly. 

The New York Times' 2006 no-knead bread recipe is a favorite:  easy peasy (as long as I can plan a day ahead), no fuss, and consistently produces the kind of loaf that prompts questions about which bakery I bought it from.

I've used all-purpose flour and bread flour with equal success, but for the ultimate rusticity (is that a word?) I substitute half a cup of white whole wheat flour for the white, and throw in a pinch of ascorbic acid.  The antique cast iron Dutch oven serves admirably for baking.

Our "friends" kept the half of the loaf we didn't finish last night, darn them.

Wondering

During last weekend’s dance shoe ordering fiasco, I discovered that this…

...is now within half a shoe size of me.

When the hell did that happen?

Shameless Plug: Matinicus

Matinicus is an island about 22 miles off of Rockland.  It’s remote to the point of frequent inaccessibility and the climate is brutal, unless 60-knot winds and 20-foot seas are your thing.  Only a few dozen residents have the intestinal fortitude to stick it out year-round. 

The place has quite a reputation.  It’s been in the news most recently because of a flare-up of lobster wars.

Eva Murray went out there in 1987 on a one-year teaching contract and has lived there ever since. 

(It is said there are two things which never come back from Matinicus:  a piece of lumber and a woman.)

For a number of years, Ms. Murray’s columns about life on Matinicus (everything except the lobster wars) have appeared in local publications.  She is insightful, sometimes blunt, frequently funny, and always honest. 

A lot of her writing gently prods this dichotomy:  In order to survive in a place as isolated and harsh as Matinicus, the same people who drill holes in each others’ lobster boats also have to pull together and work (sometimes literally shoulder to shoulder) for the good of the community. 

It’s fascinating.

Ms. Murray has (finally) published a collection of her columns (Well Out to Sea:  Year Round on Matinicus Island).  It’s a candid look at what is required, mostly behind the scenes, of everyone who lives out there.  Read it, and be prepared to feel inadequate and just a teensy bit spoiled.

Movie Night

Is it just me, or is one of the greatest joys of parenting introducing your kids to all of the movies and TV shows that you yourself loved in the ’80s?  Behold the magic of DVDs and Internet streaming, which allow one to inflict all sorts of classic programming on one’s offspring.  Family movie night at our house is a blast, and not just because for once everyone is allowed to eat dinner in front of the TV.

Me:  “Okay, guys, the deal here is the car actually talks and drives itself.  Isn’t that cool?”

Them:  “They don’t make Pontiacs anymo–  whoa, that’s, like, an analog display on the dashboard.”

Me:  “Don’t think about that.  It was really high tech 25 years ago.”

Them:  “Hey, isn’t that the old dude that we saw eating a burger drunk on YouTube?”

Me:  “Did I mention the car talks?”

Them:  “Here’s another glass of wine, Mom.  Can we play with the Wii now?”

Seriously, they’re good sports and some of my favorites have become their favorites as well.  So now I have good excuse to watch them.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Halloween at 44ºN

The people who come up with Halloween costumes evidently all live in very warm places. 

Diaphanous fairy gowns and flimsy little Power Ranger bodysuits are simply not designed to protect small children from temperatures which, fairly reliably on late October evenings in Maine, hover around the freezing mark. 

Every year we face the same challenge:  Convince the children to trick-or-treat in Sasquatch suits.

(“No, mommy, noooooooo!”)

This year Thing One decided he’d be just as happy buying himself a bag of candy and staying home, so we only had one potential frostbite situation.

Thing Two put a heavy black cape over a thick sweater and long black skirt – long johns underneath, and gloves, of course – and topped it with a fun witch hat for a decidedly Professor McGonagall look.  Thus did she, lone among the herd of fifth-grade girls with whom she foraged, stay toasty warm.

Dance shoes

Thing Two has outgrown her dance shoes. 

Our children’s above-average height combined with extreme slenderness presents a challenge when it comes to fitting shoes and clothes.  The dance teacher (a wonderful instructor and otherwise very patient and kind human being) has in fact thrown up her hands when it comes to finding dance shoes for Two.  So I am on my own. 

We have lots of things locally but a dance outfitter is not among them.  I must utilize the Interweb.

Now, street shoe sizing bears little to no resemblance to dance shoe sizing.  Finding the correct fit requires one first to convert the child’s street size to an adult street size through a complex mathematical calculation which varies according to the manufacturer. 

Next one either adds or subtracts sizes depending on how each brand’s size compares to street size. 

And of course it works differently for ballet and tap, so I get to go through this exercise twice. 

Two’s aforementioned aspect ratio complicates this even further.  We can easily find shoes of adequate length, but they are designed for feet twice the circumference of hers.

Thus it becomes so complex that it requires a NASA engineer to figure it out, but we don’t have those locally either.

What I have ordered is Bloch women’s size 4 Narrow split sole ballet shoe with drawstrings and elastics that hopefully will hold it in place securely enough that she won’t fall flat on her face executing her next pirouette, and a Sansha women’s size 9 (!) Medium T-split lace-up tap shoe. 

They will arrive later this week, whereupon we will try them on, shake our heads, send them back, and start over again.

Is it too early for a glass of wine?