A Tribute to Upstate Goulash

I walked into the Salvation Army soup kitchen on Friday morning, my weekly volunteer job, to see Sue, the cook, stirring up a huge vat of tomato and meat sauce, with several boxes of macaroni sitting on the counter.  "What do you call that?" I asked her. 

"Goulash," this lifelong upstate New Yorker said.

Ha! I knew it.

Maybe one reason (among many) that I’m not a famous chef is that the only family recipe that traveled from my grandmother, to her daughters and to theirs and to theirs is goulash. And we're not talking Hungarian. This is Upstate New York Goulash, a dish reflecting the lack of interest of generations of American women who live in the colder and flatter states in spending a lot of time in the kitchen.  This was the only dish a couple of my two dozen cousins remember my grandmother cooking.  (I never saw her cook anything.)  She had six daughters who took up that slack, and, as soon my mother -- one of those daughters -- could, she passed the goulash torch on to me. I was thirteen, it was the first dinner I ever made, and it wasn't tricky:  brown one pound of ground chuck (don't bother throwing out the grease); add one chopped onion, one can of Heinz tomato sauce, one can of Heinz tomato paste, garlic salt, dried oregano, dried thyme, salt and pepper, water.  Boil a pound of dried macaroni.  Throw everything together.  Serve.  I felt triumphant.  My pleasure in making this dish way surpassed the modest experience of eating it, but it set up a lifelong devotion to tomato sauce and whatever pal was around to absorb it.  And Upstate Goulash launched my love of cooking.

Although of course the origin for this dish is Italian, a recent article in the New Yorker provided some evidence that this variant originated in the WASPier parts of the Old Country. John Lanchester, a British novelist and former food writer, opened up his article "Shut up and Eat" with a description of "spag bol," the first recipe his mother gave him.  It was the essence of Upstate Goulash: a blend of "meat ragu of a northern-Italian type with the dry pasta beloved in the south."  He went on to write that spag bol was "sometimes said to be Britain's national dish."   Not fish and chips.  Not marmite.  But my very own comfort food, rerouted from Italy to the States via England, and like any British colonial territory, subdued during this process into a polite blandness.

As further proof of the indigenous aspect of this dish, a week or so ago, Michael, and I were driving with friends through Spencertown, about a half hour northeast of Hudson, and we spotted Dan's Diner, a beautifully restored relic that looks like a time machine.  The sign outside it read "Todays Special.  Goulash." 

"We have to have lunch there!" I yelled.  "I have to see if this is Upstate Goulash!" 

The diner was great looking and it was lunchtime, so everyone was agreeable. There were no tables, just two counters, one stretching underneath the window and the other overlooking the service area, where we chose to sit.  We beaded ourselves onto authentic but pretty uncomfortable wooden stools, and I peered over the edge of the counter at a large plastic bowl that I knew immediately contained the goulash of my childhood, macaroni and meat sauce.

I could lie here and say I ordered it and that it was a Proustian moment, but I had a very nice Reuben sandwich instead.  Let's face it, over the years I have retrograded the Upstate Goulash back into its much, much tastier Italian origins. The omphalos of my vegetable garden is the Roma tomato -- San Marzano and Scattalone -- around which grow things that adorn it, green chilies and eggplant, cilantro and basil.  I roast the tomatoes on the grill and process them. I cook the sauce for hours, studded with sautéed garlic, onions, and some chopped green chilies, before adding fresh basil at the end and freezing it for the winter.  The sauce is later defrosted and adjusted with other stuff -- red wine, rich stocks, mushrooms, sausage -- and then poured over, not only pasta, but eggplant, crepes, stews, and soups. 

At my sister's birthday party last week, we watched Jim, her boyfriend, make fresh linguini from scratch as a nest for a rich ragu, which included cream and chicken livers among its fabulousness.  I watched those long curls of linguini drift off of Michael's hand as Jim gently guided patches of shiny dough into his gleaming Atlas machine and wound the crank.  I went home, clicked on Amazon, and bought one. Another way of extending my favorite dish.  

Lanchester is somewhat uneasy, as I am, with our cultural obsession with food, how it's made, how it's cooked, and the current trends in food celebrity. (Is there really a problem believing that Bobby Flay beats George Clooney as the sexiest man alive?)  But even before the food rage started, I have loved cooking and all media related to it. I read cookbooks as if they were novels, starting with my mother's battered Boston Cookbook through those written by the wonderful Childs, Hazen, Wofford, and Kennedy.  I have watched cooking shows for decades the way guys watch sports; Julia Childs and the alcoholic Galloping Gourmet helped me get through a year in the mid-sixties on an Air Force base in Grand Forks. I’m not sure there's a morning during my entire adult life, which now stretches over half a century, when I haven't woken up thinking about what I would cook that night. And, even better, if what I’m cooking draws in lots of people.  Since I've moved up to Hudson, my wake-up list during the spring and summer now includes what I'm growing and in the fall what I'm processing. Even my volunteer work involves a soup kitchen and food pantry.  Cooking is therapy during sad hours and my healthy response to happy ones.

Those of us who binge on Chopped should not beat ourselves up; food is a natural obsession.  We're animals and as part of those souls, we are always looking to graze, hunt, and forage. I'm not a chef.  I'm one of zillions of women now and back into the caves who throw meat on the fire and grains in the pot for their families and, with luck, for some hungry Neanderthals who wander by.  And making that food taste better and showing other cooks how is as primal as singing and dancing around that fire pit.  It's an entirely lovable process.

Lanchester ends his article, which is mostly about the American food obsession over the past three decades, by telling the reader that he would be cooking spag bol that night "for the zillionth time."  Like me, he has offered up hundreds of variations with more depth and taste, but he always comes back to his mother's version: "onion, ground beef, tomato paste, canned tomatoes, wine, thyme, salt, a minimum of three hours’ cooking."  And his final wonderful tribute to his mother defines precisely what Upstate Goulash and this whole lifetime of cooking has meant to me: "She didn’t think she was saving the world by cooking. But she did know that it was part of the process by which she saved herself." 

How ABBA Maybe Saved My Life

The apartment is closed, the check is in the mail, and we have the money to build a house.  With apologies to any readers who have read this blog and know the background, here it is again: ten years ago, we bought about 75 acres of land, and during those years we have rented an apartment in a barn that lies within two arms of its boundaries.  The land is very pretty for the most part. Once a successful apple orchard on the north and western sections, a few trees still bear fruit, but essentially meadows, spotted profusely with shrubs and brush, dominate this part of our landscape. The highest point on the property sprouts a cedar forest, which is slowly but inexorably marching its army back down into the meadow. My favorite part of the land is a rocky ridge in the center toward the north side, which provides the best view: Catskills to the west and Berkshires to the east.  And last and least, there's the south end, a nasty no-man's land of impenetrable thorn, brush, and the horrible beggar weed.

A small wedge of our land borders Olana, the beautiful Frederic Church estate, and a chunk of the property is also in its viewshed. A few years ago, we half sold and half donated our development rights to Scenic Hudson, and as part of the deal we're allowed to build on five acres that aren't within the Eye of Olana.  The rest of it -- the fields and trees that had once been the apple orchard can only be used for agriculture and the forest can't be touched at all without permission.  We won't be able create a golf course or have neon signs. If we build a house it can't be chartreuse.  All good.

The five acres that Scenic Hudson allowed for a residence is, however, on the wretched south side in the lowest part of the property and so overgrown that during all the years we’ve been weekending here, we have thrashed our way through that vegetative garbage only a couple times and then given up.  We had no idea what it might look like when it was cleared out. 

So as soon as we knew we were going build, we found a contractor, Pete, and he hired Paul, an excavator, who, with his son on a bulldozer, in one day scooped out of that mess a landscape that looked as if it had been created specifically to contain our fantasy: a two-story glass and steel modular house with an adjoining guest house and garage, a native wild flower meadow, a pond, and a substantial vegetable garden.  We also want the house to be green, with solar electricity and geothermal heat. There's no far view, but that's ok; I am envisioning a place like a Hobbiton tucked into the Shire.

There was one tiny worrisome thing regarding the easement.  It only specifies that we can put solar panels within the allotted site, and because the land is so low, Michael wants to place them on a rise slightly outside the allowed building site to get more southern light. We can probably make them work within the approved area, but it might be harder to generate the electricity we need.

With the solar panels in mind, a few days after the machines had exposed the bones of our beautiful site, I decided to check out the uncut far western section that was still in our allotted area to see if there might be a better spot for the panels. So, I set off to chart the remaining virgin part of the building site. I started from a path that led across edge of the forest area, planning to make my way down through pristine section to the clearing.  However, once I stepped off the path, I encountered the same wasteland of thicket, brush, and briars that used to constitute the entire allowed area. I began confidently, however.  It was late autumn and the foliage had thinned out.  I stepped down upon a thick carpet of raspberry bushes, laid nearly flat from the chilling temperatures. The mass of canes was springy and so dense that I was able to walk on it without sinking in or getting stuck.  "Huh. This isn't so bad."  Wrong. 

Within a few yards, the raspberries met up with and were defeated by the deceptively evil multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle vines (both gorgeous for about two hours in the spring), which encased me like one of the loser princes seeking the Sleeping Beauty.  Worse, as I wormed my way back and forth against the current of this floral horror, thorns tearing my hands and digging through my jeans into my legs, my wool jacket became coated with the dreaded beggar weed, tiny seed claws that embed themselves into your clothes and never, never, never, ever come out again.  

Saying goodbye to my beloved pea coat, I laid it out in front of me across a mess of junky sticks, vines, and prickles, with the intention of using it as a wooly bridge. It was then that I heard the noise. "Huff! Huff! Huff! Stomp stomp." Bear? The Legendary Hudson Cougar? Insanely horny angry deer (most likely threat)? Trapped within the autumnal trash, unable to move forward or backward, I pulled out my phone and called Michael, who was back in the barn. "Help!  Come rescue me!"  While I waited for him, the huffing and stomping got louder, and although not frozen with fear, I was a little nervous.  

Suddenly, I realized I had a weapon.  I pulled out my IPhone and mentally searched through my song library for music most likely to frighten bears.  Quickly, I chose Dancing Queen over Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! and pushed the volume to the max.  Whether it was that inanely cheerful beat or those pointlessly happy falsettos, the huffing stopped and I was inspired to leap up and forward, throwing myself out into the open just as Michael appeared, dragging my dead coat behind me, the only victim of my adventure.

 We'll let the solar panels lie where they might and we'll leave the Northwest Passage uncharted, but in case she's ever needed in our new remote home to pounce out cheerfully at some vague rural threat, I'll have Mama Mia squirreled away in a secret playlist called Beggar Weed.

Closing and Losing

Last Friday, on Halloween, we had the closing for the apartment, and New York, that old slut, put on a costume. The apartment gleamed as we walked out the door, with our superintendent Iggy telling us not to be a stranger. The weather was warm and gentle. On the subway, an Hispanic man gave me his seat. When we got out, a Halal food truck vendor smiled at me. During the closing all the lawyers were kind and funny. The new buyer hugged us. Behind this gentle disguise, Manhattan leered, but all I felt was loss.

I had also lost my political womb. In New York, as a thumb-sucking Democrat, all my party needs were taken care of. I closed myself in during the Reagan years, emerged to adore Clinton (who wouldn't have slept with him?), retreated again during the Bush years, and became ecstatic over Obama. But basically, I did nothing active to promote our issues. My friends and I nodded to each other in smug agreement; no discussion needed.

Up here, it is very different. They need me. When I moved to New York 50 years ago, I left 8 very old Democrats in my hometown. And, except for the city of Hudson, the numbers here haven't changed that much. Republicanism is so pervasive that I believe it has now evolved as a genetic mutation north of Westchester, entrenched and reproducible at birth.

So, over the past few months I have forced myself to knock on about 200 Democratic doors and to call hundreds of them in order to generate enthusiasm for three local candidates: Sean Eldridge for Congress; Didi Barrett for Assembly; and my personal favorite Brian Howard for State Senate. Didi was an incumbent and a solid upstater. She's tough and very local and so managed to keep her seat. Brian, a former teacher, principal, and superintendent, would have been terrific for our state, but he was inexperienced and his campaign was drowned out by Congressional urgencies, and he lost. So did Sean.

Midway through the campaign, Sean had a debate with Chris Gibson, his ultimately very victorious opponent, that I watched online. Sean appeared calm, although he betrayed some nerves by continually knocking back water from an endless supply of plastic bottles, setting each one carefully in front of him and then dipping it down somewhere by his feet after he emptied it. His answers were careful, measured, and by the Democratic Book. 

Then, in the middle of the debate, the mediator asked the candidates to rate Obama's job score on a scale of 1 to 10. Gibson, surprisingly, gave the President a six -- generous for his side of the fence. And then Sean spoke: "Well, I guess I'd go lower, 4 or 5." At that moment, I knew we were truly dead. Over the course of the next few days, a number of the Democrats in town, particularly from our most solid base -- those in the African American community -- told us they felt betrayed by Sean's low score. So did I. So did a lot of the other workers. Although we trudged on, we did it with somewhat less enthusiasm.

There are four types of Democrats in the region that form our base: old, brown, eccentric/artistic, and weekenders. That's about it. In town, the local Bangladeshi population was 100% behind us, and so were most of the African Americans, the local artists, writers, and all the men who wear boas and spikey shoes to the supermarket. On my own road, three out of the six Democratic homes, including ours, were owned by weekenders.

As for the aged voters, the responses from many of those whom I called, especially from Olga, 84 years old, suggested to me that a part of this voting population might be straying from the flock. Olga has supported the party all her adult life, but she "wasn't sure she was going to vote Democrat this year " because Fox News seemed to give "a pretty poor picture of Obama and I thought they were pretty balanced. And I voted for him twice." I learned that her beloved husband had recently died, that she had fallen in the bathroom and lay there next to the cat litter box all night long, and it was her belief that shooting every person who tried to cross the border was a simple solution to all our problems. Her best friend, also in her eighties and a Democrat, watched the same balanced news and had also turned on the President. I told Olga she should stop watching Fox News and didn't offer her a ride to the polls. Because we called everyone at least twice, I got Olga again on election night. This time I learned she was having a terrible time with her dentures and couldn't find a dentist who could relieve the pain they were causing. I asked around the headquarters' room for referrals and someone suggested "Nothing but the Tooth", a local practice, but she had used them already and they were unable to help. I commiserated about her teeth but didn't ask if her opinions had changed nor offered a ride to the polls.

During this final desperate weekend, I served haphazardly as the canvassing captain, and was in and out of the local headquarters from 8 AM to 6 PM for the first three days and 8 AM till 11 PM on Election Day. We were only calling our fans, the loyal Dems, but it was still tough. We had hit them so often, and they were getting pounded, as I was, by so many other political calls and emails, that, in the end, I could sense from their growls and desperate responses that they were becoming resentful and even bitter. And I couldn't blame them.

After the election, I kept hearing political experts claiming that one of the reasons we lost was because Obama hadn't communicated his own positive record strongly enough. But why should he? He has to run the country. Communication is what the party strategists are for, the hacks who sent out the 60 daily hysterical, whining, panicking, desperate daily emails, the shrill death throes of the election. I would think that, given their powerful verbal swords, these articulate and professional Democratic marketers could have swash-buckled both supporters and opponents effectively with Obama's important successes and political feats, with his attempts to reduce disparities between rich and poor. But they didn't and neither did many of their candidates, who simply mouthed in ads and in person the same mechanical liberal catch phrases over and over until everyone became tone deaf.

The idea of backing away from Obama was an insane strategy unless the Democrats were hoping to get Olga and her friend to the polls. But for the rest of us, who are in there for the long haul, we really like our President; we think he's done an amazing job in the face of racist, vicious, and stupid opposition. Even if we couldn't win, the best the Dems could have done this season was to embrace Obama, his record, and his efforts to reduce the wealth gaps, and then go with God. Losing would at least have been honorable.

Don't get me wrong. I like Sean a lot. He is earnest, honest, has good ideas and intentions, and his wealth allows him to be independent. However, he didn't stray far from the party pack (I longed for him to produce a spontaneous sentence). Some people complained to me that when he visited local stores and restaurants, he was too distant and he didn't buy anything. Sean also has the disadvantage here of being gay and, worse, perceived as a weekender. He owns a house upstate but, like me, he is still a cidiot, a Manhattan expat. Finally, and fatally, Sean was pitched against a large, genial military veteran, a family man, and an incumbent who personally knows half of the people in the district. In spite of Gibson's generally nasty voting record, he crossed party lines a couple of times so he could claim being a moderate. Therefore, at the end, he took all of the Republican and yanked in some Democratic votes and won.

I would like to see Eldridge run again, but by that time he needs to be rooted, friendly, and entrenched in the lives of his neighbors. And his young smart campaign workers must not be fighting the last war. The intense grassroots grunt work with its multiple hits on well-researched targeted voters that worked so brilliantly for Obama didn't this time. Our targets considered the knowledge we had of their ages, addresses, phone numbers, and voting history invasive. In addition, with the introduction of multiple emails on top of ads, phone calls, and door knocking, the noise became deafening. Certainly during the next race, Sean needs to sit down at Tansy's and have a bowl of her wonderful home made vegetable soup, even if he's already eaten Earth Food's fabulously rich Veggie Supreme for breakfast. And he also needs to find Olga a good dentist. So if Sean wins then, like the fabulous Sally Fields did at the Oscars, he will be able to yell, "You like me. You really, really like me."