heartburn

Wild Capers

| halfnutswilltravel

TallGirl’s friend broke my heart.

“I think I’m too old to try new things. ”  She is 22.  She was talking about butternut squash.

Maybe I was particularly sensitive to the sentiment because I’d recently had an argument with a travel article titled 30 Places to Visit Before You Are 30.  If beer-bellies can yell at TV sports, dark-rims can raise their voices to a magazine.  Only fair.  I am post-30, and I can totally justify skipping Milan because I don’t own the wardrobe befitting their sidewalks.  Besides, they have a Starbucks,  so why bother?  It’s practically Parsippany, now isn’t it?  But do they mean to tell me Venice has nothing to offer now that the bloom is off my flower?  At my age, is it so hard to believe that I might appreciate the history of Budapest a little more than I would have twenty years ago when my biggest struggle was keeping up with a scrunchy?  Just kidding.  Twenty years ago, I had a toddler and my first broken marriage to navigate.  I will concede this article wasn’t written for me, or people like me at that age.  Still, I think it was a little short-sighted to write a travel article that specifically excludes me, and people like me now, who – precisely because of age, have the time and disposable income to visit the boutique hotels being shilled in the glossy pages of this magazine.  But that’s just me.

Through middle and high school, TallGirl’s friend was a frequent visitor to our dinner table.  Scratch that.  She wasn’t a visitor.  She was family; there was always a chair for her.  Without fail, every single meal, she ate something for the first time.  When we knew she was coming, it became a game of mine to guess, while I was cooking, what would follow her, I’ve never had declaration.  Sausage, chocolate chip pancakes, pork chops, broccoli with cheese.  We aren’t talking exotic fare, here.  After graduation, they chose different paths, and she is now a vestigial daughter, visiting only once or twice a year.  We miss her, and I’d forgotten her sheltered culinary life.  That she’d never had butternut squash before was only surprising in that I hadn’t even considered it before dinner was served.

But here’s my confession.  I have passed the halfway mark in my forty-second year of life and last night, I ate capers for the first time.  Ever.  I was aware of capers.  My first knowledge of them came from Heartburn, by Nora Ephron.  I read it about two decades ago, during those tumultuous, family breaking years when apparently I should have been traipsing the globe instead of potty training my beautiful daughter.  Between you and me, I made the wiser choice.  My life is rich beyond measure because she is in it, and hers is measurably improved by being potty trained.  You’re welcome, BooBoo.

Nora Ephron has been accused for years of steering women wrong by romanticizing the troubling character flaws of both women and their male counterparts in her romantic comedies.  Forget that.  Neuroses are funny to everyone (save for those closely related to the afflicted, and to a lesser extent, the afflicted themselves), and it is exceedingly difficult to move a plot along if everyone in the story behaves rationally.  She did what she had to do as a writer, and I, for one, admire both her chops and the battles she fought to be allowed to flex them.  Where I take issue with her though, God rest her soul, is the terrible advice she gave in Heartburn.  “…The truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it tastes even better with capers not in it.”

Living in the homogeneous suburbs of the south-east, it’s not like I had to go out of my way to avoid capers.  They were always something that existed in the world but that I would likely never try, not unlike puffer fish or haggis.  And equally, I assumed I wasn’t missing anything special; possibly, I was saving my own life by not trying them.

By the laws established by the governing body of dieters everywhere, I think I am required to tell you that I am starting the Whole30 Program.  I am probably breaking some cardinal rule by not posting Insta pictures of every meal, or talking incessantly about what I am obsessing about eating, or not eating, next.  But that’s just not who I am.  I am only telling you this now because I have a cookbook that tells me exactly what to make to stay compliant and last night’s dinner involved capers.  I considered leaving them out because Nora Ephron didn’t like them.  The ghost of Nora Ephron wasn’t even invited to dinner, so is that nuts, or what?

Nuts, by the way, are allowed on the Whole 30, but not a wise nutritional choice.  Now you know.

And you know what?  I loved them.  I loved them so much that I want to invite TallGirl’s friend over for dinner, even though TallGirl is still away at school, and make her eat them with me.

wildcapers
Oh, the capers these walls have seen!

Last spring I was in Rome.  I don’t know if that is a city on that stupid 30 Before 30 list, but I can tell you, no matter how old you are, get there.  Our apartment backed up to the Aurelian Walls, and there were lush, green cascades of vegetation with pretty, wispy, white flowers growing freely from the cracks in the ancient brick.  I asked a local what they were, and she thought a moment as she consulted her English vocabulary.  More like a question of her own than an answer to mine, she said, “Wild capers?”

Because of the way she wrinkled her nose when she said it, and because of my Ephron association with the little beasts, I agreed with her that yes, those must be wild capers.  I probably even wrinkled my own nose in solidarity.

 

I consider myself to be adventurous, but just like TallGirl’s friend, even I sometimes forego new experiences due to preconceived notions, or have those intrusive thoughts that I might be too told to try a new thing.  I’ll try harder to recognize them, and nip them in the bud.

We are never too old for wild capers.

As a cautionary side, Whole30 was a terrible time to try capers.  They have the same effect on my breath as a pickled garlic-onion might, and gum – all gum – is forbidden.  If I accidentally breathe on you this month, I apologize in advance.

 

 

I’m not gassy, I’m American.

| halfnutswilltravel

Some words are universal. I’m sure there are examples of Italian words that we leave alone, but I cannot think of any. In English, one such word is Pacemaker. It is the same in every country, though investigated far more thoroughly in Europe than I’ve ever encountered in the States. Here, I can declare my pacemaker and be waved around any metal detector. After making my declaration over there, I had to show my Medtronic device card and passport. I was escorted around metal detectors then patted down, where available by female police or security. Thoroughly. So thoroughly in the Naples airport, in fact, that I learned exactly where I fit on the sliding spectrum of sexual preference. Let’s just say Mike enjoyed the show and I needed a drink when she finished.

We were told in advance that there was no real reason to learn Italian because everyone speaks English and is eager to help. With a handful of exceptions, most of whom were Gypsies, this was blatantly wrong. We ended up playing a lot of charades, the most futile game of which took place in a Naples farmacia just seconds before they locked their door for the night. I hurried in and asked the pharmacist if he had any Tums. The café and wine based diet has one major disadvantage. He gave us the universal non comprendo shrug. It made sense to me that if pacemaker was universal, heartburn would be as well, so I said it while rubbing my tummy.

He smiled, went to the back and left me standing with his cashiers for an awkwardly silent amount of time, then returned with an item in each hand; panty liners in the right, tampons in the left. Later, Mike tried to spin this into flattery. “At least he thinks you look young enough to still need those.”

I reminded him I am still young enough to need them, just not right that moment. The interaction left me grumpy until our next bottle of wine.

Back to the farmacia. I said no with my mouth, my head, and my hands, and tried again.

“Heartburn. Stomach acid.” This time I rubbed higher up, on my rib cage. He retreated to the back again, and returned with a green box labeled Anacidol.

That seemed like a reasonable translation of anti-acid, so I said grazie, perhaps overly enthusiastic to end this game of charades, and paid the seven euro.

The seven euro was my first hint that I was not buying the right product. So far, everything had been much less expensive in Italy. By my calculation, Tums should have been no more than two euro for a box that size.

The box was my second clue. Tums doesn’t come in a box at home and by what I’d seen of Italians so far, they shunned unnecessary packaging. Hell, sometimes they shunned sanitary packaging. When we reached that next bottle of wine, I investigated my purchase. Magnesium and dimethicone. Constipation and gas.

That’s when I decided to smile more, so as not to look alternately menstrual and constipated. And that’s where the wine came in handy.

Now, this tidbit of information may only apply to the parts of Europe we were roaming last week, but Mike, with his silver hair and Carribean Sea blue eyes seemingly has the word ‘American’ stamped across his forehead in blazing, capital letters.  I, on the other hand,  with my muddied DNA, could be (and in varying degrees, am) almost anything.

I watched as multi-lingual beggars, aggressive street vendors, and other peoples with questionable motives approached him and, in decent English, asked for money, pitched their wares, or attempted their ploys to lure tourists into dark alleys. These are tenacious people who do not take, ‘no,’ for an answer. When walking alone, just as many people made their appeals to me in God-only-knows what languages, but never in English. On our first morning in Rome I realized there was no language in which I could rebuff them that they don’t speak better and could continue their spiel. So I made one up.

Raise your hand if you remember the Ricky-Martin-spawning, Puerto Rican boy band, Menudo. If you don’t, I’ll give you a minute to familiarize yourself.

All caught up? Good. So, Menudo doesn’t sound like a real word, right? With each unwelcomed entreaty, I gave a sympathetic shake of the head and said, “Menudo.” Sometimes I felt a shrug and a, “No, menudo,” was a better response.

I got only baffled looks in response as my accosters retreated. It worked so well that Mike started using it.

Only once we reached Naples did it occur to me that I might have inadvertently been saying an actual word. How would I know? I turned to Google Translate. Great app; I recommend it for everything from ordering lunch to deciphering graffiti.

“Menduo,” as it turns out, means nothing in Italian. However, “Ma nudo,” which is how it is pronounced, means “but naked.”

So for four days we had been startling street people around Rome.

“Can you spare change?”
But naked.

“Do you need tickets?”
No, but naked.

“Have you any bread?”
No, but naked.

“Selfie sticks, five euro!”
But naked!

“Have you seen my daughter? She’s this tall with brown hair.”
But naked.

I really have no idea what was being asked of me when Mike wasn’t around, telegraphing his Captain America beacon. But, I learned that in dealings with people whom you cannot understand, instead of pretending to speak a language they’ve never heard, it is perhaps more effective to appear insane in a language they know well.

And only now does it occur to me I’ve been doing that for years.