Of Chocolate Hedgehogs and Grasshopper Pies

January 29, 2011

Hello, my Culinary Friends, I have never been more famished.  I sit here in my little studio holding on my lap your hundreds of recipes and letters, salivating over your family delights. All I have with me here to eat is an old can of cashews, Greek yogurt with early November’s expiration date, Nespresso coffee capsules, and bags of ice in the freezer.  I believe I will go dig up a TV dinner and nuke it for my midnight dinner. Be right back. …  OK, I’m back. This has been an illuminating, gratifying, deeply entertaining contest.  Because I have received almost as many recipes as there are countries.  Some countries were very well represented, such as Italy, and some woefully underrepresented, such as France. But Malaysia yes And Vietnam The Netherlands And Chile And Germany Germany Germany Mexico And New Mexico, thrice Spain and Israel Turkey and Australia The Country of Man, which submitted four Man recipes. And a voice from the great beyond: a woman named Maria Pavlova from St.Petersburg wrote to me with her recipe for Solyanka. My grandmother’s name was Maria Pavlova.  She was from St. Petersburg.  She made Solyanka all the time.  On my hungry lap I hold instructions for, among others, empanadas and tapenades Yorkshire Pud and Bread Pud and Egyptian Milk Pud Assam Laksa and Bratwurst Chocolate Sausage!!! Pizza (from scratch) Stuffed cabbage with Moose Meat Corn and Crawfish Stew Grandma’s Pie and Almond Pie And Lemon Meringue Pie Nut Rolls and Beef Samosas Casadiellas and Cucoli Fritti Hot Fudge Cake and Borsht Chocolate Muffins with Nutella inside; where are you, Nutella-loving Che, are you reading this and drooling? Oliebollen and Aalsterse Vlai Corn Souffle and College Drive-in! Melting Moments and Chocolate Bundt Cake Oatmeal Bake and Potato Bake And let’s not forget Fire Crackers. I wish I had two hundred books to give away.  Thank you all so much for enriching my life with your lives. You’ve given me a great gift, because now I’m going to make your concoctions all December, through New Years. From now on just call me Porky Pig.  I will have to walk through my door sideways.  I have written out your names on strips of paper, rolled them up and placed them in two Yankees baseball caps. I will now go and eat my cooled-down tofu with peas or whatever is waiting for me in the microwave, and pull out ten names and be right back.  Cue waiting music…