Sunday mornings, about 1964

I am reading Judith Jones‘ The Tenth Muse, My Life in Food.  Over and over again I am amazed at famous food people who can recount their earliest childhood memories and their first inspirations about food so precisely.  They became “hooked” very early.  Something or someone in their purely impressionable early lives connects in some powerful way and, well, there it is, a life-long thread begins.  I guess this is just the truth about the passions in one’s lives.

I had a very complicated relationship with my Father which I won’t go into here.   We had little positive time together while he was alive, but there were many critical things I remember clearly about him – his love of gardening and his application of garden design with amazing precision, his hyper-critical eye and love of beautiful things, and perhaps most importantly, his highly adapted sensory perception as it applied to sound, smell and taste.  He loved beautiful music, but abhorred “noise”, and he had an instant and visceral reaction to the smell and taste of food – both positive and negative.  He was a perfectionist in this regard and, as a child I found his criticism of the foods he came across to be destructive in many ways.  He was hard on my Mother in terms of what she cooked and was able to zero in on what was wrong with a dish or even a fresh piece of fruit like a razor.  He would not eat a piece of cantaloupe or honeydew unless it was perfectly ripe and sweet – well, he wouldn’t eat anything unless it was perfect.  Such was his palate and his degree of response to food.   But, as time has gone on, I have come to realize that he probably didn’t mean anything truly negative, but was instead allowing his instantaneous reactions to his sensory stimuli to just flow out.

Well, I go through all of this by way of introducing one of my most favorite, but truly profound few memories I have of my early childhood with my Father – right up there with the fleeting hours of “catch” and him putting my double basket on the back of my first two-wheeler.  This involves Sunday mornings after 7am mass.  There was a bakery in Morristown, NJ that existed for only a short time – maybe 2 or 3 years.  I cannot now find anyone who remembers this place at all.  It was called The French Pastry Shop and it was on Washington Street, circa 1964.  My father would take me there after church to pick out a coffee cake.  Every single thing about this place is etched in my memory and I have thought about it hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, trying to find a place that even remotely can live up to its power and aura.  My memory involves darkness so I believe we went there often in the Winter months when it still felt dark right after 7 o’clock mass.  It was probably barely 8am when we arrived.  The bakery was owned by a husband and wife team and when you walked in the wife would greet you with her salt and pepper-colored hair in a french-twist.  She’d have on a little cashmere cardigan and was lovely.  The aroma of their bakery caught me and held me there.  Everything about this place evokes the pure definition of delicious, cozy, comfort and substance.  Unfortunately, I hardly remember the husband, the baker, but I have a very vague image of him.    I remember the layout of the front of the house and the array of items in the case.  We would look over all of the coffee cakes and carefully decide – nuts or not – yes, filling – no – well maybe sometimes frangipane, almonds, walnuts or pecans?  Most often it was almonds as that was what my Father liked best.  I would nibble on the edges of the cake as we drove home and would enjoy a piece or two in addition, after bacon and eggs.  Just, plain, Heaven.

I now find myself compelled to walk into every bakery I pass to look in the case, assess the aroma and see if I can be struck by that feeling again. (Did I drive my kids crazy last July in Milan, Venice and Florence?)  I love to see what the proprietors have chosen to present and the quality and appeal they evoke. The aura of the shop is very important to me.  Several years ago I moved to the top of my “bucket list” to learn of and visit the best bakeries in Italy, France and Austria. (Why does my husband look worried when I say I am moving to Florence to open my own Biscotti shop? Seriously, what’s wrong with that?)  I am slowly working on this pursuit.  I don’t know why this has become an obsession for me, I just have accepted that it is.  I am just happy that now I can pursue this adventure in full mode.  Lucky me.  And, thanks, Dad.  I miss you.