The Body in the Bonfire (25 page)

Jane Eyre arrives at Lowood and after breakfasting on burned porridge, a “nauseous mess…almost as bad as rotten potatoes,” she confronts her dinner, which she finds “to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked together.” She wonders to herself “whether every day's fare would be like this.” Alas, yes. In
Down with Skool,
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle entitled the chapter describing Nigel Molesworth's thoughts “Skool Food or The Piece of Cod which Passeth Understanding.” Certainly school food has never been associated with gastronomy, yet what we consumed in an abbreviated period of time in surroundings more likely to hinder than aid digestion is often remembered with something like affection.

My mother packed good healthy food for our lunches each morning, filling first our lunch
boxes—now bringing astronomical prices on eBay—then brown paper lunch bags, as we entered adolescence and put away childish things. We ate sandwiches made from Pepperidge Farm, not Wonder bread. Carrot and celery sticks were lovingly wrapped in waxed paper. There was usually an apple or a banana. Wholesome plain milk stayed cool in our thermoses. Of course we longed for squishy bread, peanut butter and Fluff, chocolate milk, store-bought cookies, and, most of all, school lunches prepared by the cafeteria ladies: chicken à la king, franks and beans, American chop suey, sloppy joes, macaroni and cheese, lime and cherry Jell-O cubes with whipped topping, and tapioca—“fish eyes and glue.” Meat loaf. For lunch! With gravy and mashed potatoes! I looked at kids who nonchalantly plunked down their quarters and grabbed a tray each day and thought how lucky they were. And the food wasn't bad. A few times a year, Mom would run out of bread or we'd be late, or some other reason would put me in line with my own tray. The women were good, plain cooks, despite the persistent rumors that a kid once really
had
found part of someone's finger in the beans.

I would never have given a second thought to the school lunches if I'd had a lunch box like the one Elnora Comstock had in Gene Stratton Porter's
A Girl of the Limberlost.
It was brown leather, and when opened, it revealed “a space for sandwiches, a little porcelain box for cold meat or
fried chicken, another for salad, a glass with a lid which screwed on, held by a ring in a corner, for custard or jelly, a flask for tea or milk, a beautiful little knife, fork, and spoon fastened in holders, and a place for a napkin.” This was the other end of the spectrum from a tin lunch pail for high school girls in 1909. Reading the book at age nine or ten, I thought it sounded absolutely perfect.

When I entered college in 1965, meals and how we ate them at the school I attended hadn't changed much since Elnora's era. Food at college was too good. Each dorm still had its own kitchen—no food services—and the dorm I was in freshman year was renowned for its baked goods and was presided over by a Mrs. Mallory named Dot—not that we ever dared call her that to her face. There were piping-hot popovers for breakfast, delectable lemon meringue pies, rich fudge cakes, flaky biscuits, and plenty of cookies. Collectively, we were “the freshman ton.”

There was sit-down dinner every night—and we had to change into a skirt. We all kept a basic number in the front of our closets that could be pulled on in a hurry. Tuesday nights, there were candles on the tables and you could invite a faculty member to dine. It was called “gracious living,” and it was. Freshmen waited on the tables, wearing starched buttercup yellow aprons that stood up like butterfly wings at the shoulders. From Dot, we learned what underliners were and what “Raise right, lower left” meant. Like Mans
field's “mystery balls,” we had nicknames for everything, and a perennial lunchtime favorite was “garbage salad,” a toothsome mélange of lettuce, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, strips of ham, cheese, and anything else the kitchen had left over, all hidden under a sweet dressing.

Times have changed, and the notion of sitting down to dinner every night—taking that much time to eat—must seem to today's college students positively Victorian. But for us, it was a chance to talk—and laugh. We had to stop for a while to break bread together. What could be better?

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 medium carrots, diced

1 rib of celery, diced

1 large garlic clove, peeled and diced

2 cups canned diced tomatoes with the juice

4 cups chicken broth, canned or homemade

½ pound chorizo or other cooked sausage sliced into ½-inch rounds

1 cup cooked and rinsed (if canned) cannellini or other white beans

½ cup ditalini or other short tubular pasta

Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, minced

2 tablespoons fresh parsley leaves, minced

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan, Romano, or combination of the cheeses

Four 1-inch-thick center-cut pork chops

1 large garlic clove, halved

1½ teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

2 teaspoons dried basil

½ teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon dried rosemary

½ cup flour

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/
₃
cup vegetable oil

1 cup yellow onion, diced

1 medium green bell pepper, sliced

1½ cups water

½ pound capellini or spaghetti

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan, Romano, or comination of cheeses

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons pesto

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

3 large eggs

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1½ cups flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

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₃
teaspoon baking soda

1 stick unsalted butter

½ cup chunky or plain peanut butter

¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar

¼ cup white sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Chocolate kisses

1 cup chunky or plain peanut butter

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup miniature chocolate chips

1 stick unsalted butter, plus a small amount to grease ramekins

2 tablespoons flour, plus a small amount to dust ramekins

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into small pieces

3 large eggs

2 egg yolks

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₃
cup sugar

Confectioner's sugar