The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,19
are overdone.”
“That would be my opinion, too, kid, but that’s what they want.”
“Life is short, Dad. Maybe you should make the movie you want to make.”
He grunted, thinking of the mountains of responsibilities that surrounded him, not the least of which was this child. Slasher flicks seemed to satisfy something in the public right now. Maybe a reaction to the war, and he couldn’t completely ignore that.
As he gazed at his daughter, however, he realized where his resistance lay. He didn’t want to make a movie about fresh young women being preyed upon by twisted bad guys.
Huh.
“What?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll think about it.”
“Werewolves,” she said without looking away from the screen. “I like werewolves.”
He chuckled. “Of course you do.”
On Thursday, Elena set out her mise en place for the meal she would prepare for her new boss. She had to move a stack of cookbooks off the counter to the floor—big, heavy books she’d checked out of the library for brainstorming purposes—and set out the pork and onions, the cutting board and her exquisitely sharp and expensive knives, carrots and celery and herbs for a vegetable stock.
Light fell through the window, a round pale spill like a moon on the counter. Elena tied back her hair. Into the CD player went Norah Jones, soft and smoky and easy to sing along with, and she rolled up her sleeves to start cooking. There was something about this kitchen that made her think of home ec classes in junior high.
Chopping carrots into perfect rounds, she let her mind drift there. Back to school, which had bored her to death for the most part. The chalky sameness, the too-easy sums and the dense questions asked by students over and over again. Whenever the priests spoke of original sin and all the evil that had come into the world because of Eve, Elena thought of school.
But junior high threw a beautiful curve—she walked into home economics the first day and swooned over the tiny kitchens with their individual stoves and fridges and sinks. Isobel took shop, metals and wood, scorning the traditional female pastime of cooking, but Elena was in heaven. She loved the cabinets stocked with cookie sheets and casserole dishes, the drawers full of matching flatware, the cupboards with matched sets of Corning Ware that didn’t break. Every tool imaginable was there, too—whisks and wooden spoons; spatulas and graters; measuring cups in metal and glass. The knives and thermometers were checked out of a big locked cabinet, and more than once they had to wait while the knives were counted at the end of a period.
In that tidy world, she learned the alchemy of a white sauce, browning the flour just so in clear butter—“Very slowly, girls!” shouted Mrs. Mascarenas. “You don’t want it to burn!”—to make a roux. Then adding milk for a sauce, more milk for a gravy. Elena played with it, delighted by the way it could hold so many different flavors so easily, an envelope filled with cheese or onions or beef stock. Magic! She discovered that changing the butter to lard or bacon fat could make it heartier, that too much flour defeated the flavors and made anything taste dusty, that she could use the same ideas and make a satiny broth.
Twenty years later, her kitchen in the condo reminded her of that long-ago home ec room, the well-stocked smallness, the clean and orderly elegance of it. No poverty had ever wafted through these rooms, that was for sure.
Alvin strolled out to the backyard and lay down in the sun, his red-gold coat glittering, his big black nose lifting to the sky, perhaps scenting the change that blew in from the north, the possibility of autumn lurking up the pass.
Humming along with Norah, Elena poured olive oil into a heavy pot, and when it warmed, she dropped in three cloves of garlic sliced lengthwise into three or four pieces each. When the garlic was slightly tender, the flavor steeped into the oil, she dropped a thick chunk of pork shoulder into the pot and seared the meat on both sides, then scattered the chopped vegetables over it, covered it with water, and left it to stew.
The familiar, homey smell filled the air, coaxed knots of tension from her shoulders, lending enough comfort that she could carry her cell phone outside to the patio that looked south. The potted marigolds she’d picked up at the grocery store, and the geranium she