Tag: Hamilton

For The Love of Chicago-Style Pizza

He was like a little kid, leading me into the dark, underground restaurant where we were seated at a small, square table; his excitement overtook me.  “Have you ever had Chicago-style pizza?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, feeling somewhat guilty for having never experienced this thing that so excited him.  I opened the manilla menu covered with black print, searching for the answer to this obvious culinary delicacy that I’d somehow, in my naivety, missed.

He was undeterred:  “It’s a deep-dish, stuffed pizza.  They lay a crust on the bottom of the pan, fill it with tomato sauce and cheese and whatever you like, put another crust on top, like a pie, more tomato sauce and cheese….  It’s amazing.”

I could almost hear him salivating in his description, if such a thing is possible.  His excitement slowly transfused into me; I groped for understanding.  “Oh, kind of like Pizza Hut?”  I asked, hoping.

“No, not at all.  Their crust is somewhat fried and oily….”

The server interrupted, asking for our drink order.

Less than half-an-hour later, a small pan sat before me, filled with the obligatory baked dough and tomato sauce, cheese and spinach layered an inch-and-a-half thick, tucked beneath another crust with more sauce and cheese, the whole thing only six inches in diameter.  There was no way I was going to finish this thing.

I dug my fork into the pan, pierced the layers with knife and pulled up strings of cheese, sauce, strands of spinach falling over the tines, layers of crisp and moist crust….

Overwhelmed with flavor, with the intensity of this steaming depth of pie, the experience of the best pizza I’d ever tasted rooted itself in my memory.

―

It was all I could talk about for years.  We loved going out for pizza, starting in Montreal at the tiny shop where his friend served slices and fries; at the restaurant a few streets away where I first tasted poutine on a picnic table outside; at Pizza Hut on ‘the mountain’ in the middle of winter, where we’d devour an entire pizza between ourselves.  There was no comparison in the experience; each pizza delicious, each place beautiful for itself, for the company, for the conversation, for the simplicity.

But I’d told him about the deep-dish pizza that plugged itself into my memory, wanting desperately to share this magnificent thing.  He loved food, ate like a king when it was worthy; he would surely enjoy it.

I whined and begged for long years in Hamilton, wishing to him and to the universe for Chicago-style pizza, or at least a chance to take him to this experience somewhere in the North.  Perhaps we’d even make it to Chicago, to taste the thing in its original.

―

We ordered out often enough, and tonight we wanted pizza.  I had it in mind, as I always did, that I wanted that deep-dish delicacy, layers of sauce and cheese and stuffing.  It dawned on me, at last:  just check online.  Just see.

What are the chances that Hamilton would have a Chicago-style pizzeria? I thought, my fingers typing.

―

The delivery guy came to the door, revealed from his red-fleshed envelope a white-and-red pizza box, and handed it to me.  I was shocked at the weight, what must have been five pounds or more of meat and cheese and sauce.  But it made sense:  we’d found it.

Somehow, tucked into a brick building on Hamilton’s East Mountain, Chicago-Style Pizza (named just so obviously) existed, successful for years and seeming in no hurry to go anywhere.  Except while on deliveries.

He paid, surprised that it shouldn’t cost any more for this insanity than for a single-crusted deep-dish pizza from Pizza Hut at a fraction of the weight.

The excitement of my finding overwhelmed me; we opened the box like two kids at Christmas.  The scent of rich, spiced tomato billowed out, demanding.

We dug in, gorging ourselves incredulously.

―

It’s a thing of sharing, this pizza, this enormous luxury spilling over with love, spilling over into love, from one love to the next.  There must be something to this style of pizza, something in the original creation of overabundance of love, like the overabundance of sauce and fillings and cheese, tucked into a crust to hold all of that great love in.

For the sharing continues from our love to our next loves and to our friends and family, always in excitement that never ceases, always celebrating in wonder and surprise this incredible, voluminous thing.

The Plant Whisperers

Maybe it’s because I am one generation from farmers, on one side, and two, on the other.

Maybe it’s that I was raised traveling north to my grandparents’ and great-grandmother’s farms in rural Indiana, going south to my great-grandfather’s and great-aunts’ farms in south Georgia.Indiana Sunset

Maybe it was the mystique of soft whispers from the soybean and corn fields, of the giant pecan trees that dropped delicious gifts for us to gather, of ever-ripening pear trees, of the grapefruit and lime trees in the back yard of my grandparents’ Florida home, of miles of sweet-scented orange groves in the sandy plains surrounding.

Maybe it was the grove-side stands that sold the sweetest orange juice I’d ever tasted, the road-side shacks with delicious, hot boiled peanuts, fruit, corn, honey – even a few miles from our Georgia home.

Or maybe it’s the simple honesty of farmers I encountered that instilled in me an eternal love, respect and gratitude for those who till their acres, plant and tend their crops, offer food for sale in humble ways, gift them to neighbors and friends.

In Ontario, years later, I had the opportunity to work at a few farmers markets, selling freshly-baked artisan breads, pies and muffins for the restaurant where I worked.  I didn’t make much money doing it; I could have easily earned thrice what I earned while setting up and standing for hours on a large patch of grass or in a gravel driveway, repeating, tick-tick-tick, the seven or eight varieties of breads and pies to inquiring passers-by.  But it was beautiful; I loved every minute.

I’d sell out regularly, our bread was that good.  When I’d sold out, or nearly so, I’d walk the patch and visit the other sellers:  farmers with tables laden with fruits and vegetables familiar and not-well-known.  I was a child, standing at their tables, as childish as the small ones who’d come to my table, eyes wide and excited at our fruit pies and apple-cider muffins, at our bountiful breads.  For me, it was the colors, the piles of leaves and rolling mounds of fruits, tomatoes, tomatillos, corn, squash, varietals of mushrooms – all things I could put together, cooked or raw, and create something to make my imagination and my palate explode with something new, delicious.

I was as shy as any other customer, perhaps more so, since I was a neighbor and understood the value of their precious time, when I knew I’d pay less because I was a neighboring vendor in this community, and that is what is done.  But I wanted nothing more than to stand, as any regular customer, admiring their bounties, loving them for the time they’d spent caring for these plants, for nurturing their soil despite the difficulties, despite the minimal pay.

I wanted to buy everything they had and knew I had neither funds to do so nor mouths enough to feed.  So my mind would race as I stood spellbound, letting others pass before me as I let my palate choose for me, salivating over the ground cherries this week, the tomatillos and onions and garlic in a dream of fresh green salsa the next.

Only a few truly understood my great love and respect, I think:  the apple farmer who always looked a touch grumpy, who sold his apples for $5 a pint and always had so many left, whose fresh, thick apple cider he sold for $6 a gallon and was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted – all the sweet, honeyed goodness of a freshly-picked apple pouring endlessly into my mouth, with none of the time lost on chewing.  I bought apples and cider from him every week; I’d look him in the eyes and tell him “Thank you” and he’d look on to me curiously from beneath his disappointed shroud and thank me back.

And Russ, Mr. Happy-Farmer himself, founder and owner of Hamilton’s Backyard Harvest, who befriended me on one slow afternoon filled with the vigorous-but-friendly banter of my libertarian views while I challenged the German cheesemonger’s more liberal ones;  Russ of the always-naturally-grown vegetables, of squash and melons and tomatoes you’d never before seen that tasted as good as the prices you’d pay – which were not too much, but were never “cheap.”  I always felt I was getting a steal, walking home in the early Thursday evenings, laden with $50-worth of vegetables and fruits in re-usable bags from Russ and the other two or three farmers, most of which was organic.

Russ would teach me about growing while he could, between pleased customers whose names he always knew, whose hugs he’d always earned.  Russ is an entrepreneur and a musician, complex and freshly antique in his reserved openness, in his beatnick-hippie ways and bright, observant eyes – as complex as the flavors of some of the fruits and vegetables he grows in the city’s neighborhood backyards, working the soil for people who want vegetable gardens and have no time to tend them, earning his keep from the harvest he sells as his only payment for tending them.  Novel, beautiful, I thought.

There is a stillness in the minds of farmers, a grasp of things that no one seems to see.  These are the plant whisperers, who urge a seed to grow, to take itself upon green wings and fly into the sky though rooted to the ground, to bloom in fragrant flowers and carry heavy loads of plump fruit upon thin stalks and vines.  These are the ones who know the sun and the wind, the clouds and the rain; who know the many bugs in the ground and the animals around; who feed all of humanity with more than sustenance.  These are the friends of chefs, of cooks, of mothers and children; these are the founders of society and beginning of art and beauty.  These are the original creators – these farmers who take neither too much nor too little upon themselves to deliver up to us their bounties, but work from dusk til dawn, from the beginnings of civilization through to today.

It is no wonder they worship, so many of them; that they give thanks to whatever spirit blesses their fields, for their gratitude and humble care is translated in every stalk of heirloom wheat, in every fat and multicolored tomato that tastes as good by itself as the most exquisite dish, is evinced in the makings of masterpieces.

They worship the sun and the rain, the soil and the seed; are grateful to spirit and land.

And I feel the same, once removed:  my gratitude, my heart is with them.

Backyard Harvest - Locke Street Farmers Market 2011
Backyard Harvest – Locke Street Farmers Market 2011

The Art of Sitting Still

Memoirs of a Store-Front Mannequin:
Thoughts and Observations from a Live Window Model

Yes, I’m that girl-in-the-window who sat with hot-pink bow in my hair, rattling presents and waving at passers-by of Hawk & Sparrow on James Street North; the lady in white sitting miraculously still while searching my heart and mind and all of you for something to write in my pretty brown notebook; the statuesque woman in an antique brown gown perched ever-so-silently on a vintage cream-and-yellow settee.

I sit and watch all of you, wondering at your bustle, peering just as queerly at those children and teenagers making strange faces, jumping up-and-down and beating on the window just to get me to blink. The window is old, and so I ask that you not beat upon it just to get a reaction from me – as that glass might break before I do.

You make me blink, I assure you; I just manage to hold it within until a better time. Now seems such a time.

“How does she sit so still?” I hear children ask mothers and mothers ask Sarah Moyal, the owner of Hawk & Sparrow. There was a time in history, I’ve read, when ladies used to sit with poise and grace for hours, needing not to speak nor to be spoken to, when we were content with simply observing. Such times fascinate me, have always fascinated me; sitting still, I’ve learned, provides more opportunity for discovery than motion, talk, bustle.

I wonder, when I hear mothers comment to their children that they wish the little ones could only sit so still as I: are these children ever taught the value of sitting still? With constant motion, constant activity, constant stimulus through TV, movies, computers, video games, baseball, basketball, hockey – when do these children ever have a chance to sit? I remember, as a child, I sat and read; I sat in trees and watched the bugs; I sat on my mother’s antique settees to escape the bustle and noise of my seven siblings, and was grateful for the silence. I sat in the car or in our van on long road trips and watched the Florida palms, the passing cars, the billboards. I learned to sit and sit and sit, to take in details and beauty and all the world.

I would ask you mothers of bustling children: when do you sit? When do you stop moving, stop going, stop running from place to place to place? When do your children ever see you enjoying your time by yourself, that they might learn to do the same?

I watch these children-turned-teenagers who cannot believe that a person can sit so long, never moving a visible muscle, never giving evidence that she lives or breathes, never showing a thought on her face or in her eyes; I see these restless beings bouncing, beating violently upon glass, begging and demanding for attention, for a response; and I wonder if they have ever been asked to find a response of their own, within themselves. I wonder if they have ever given attention to themselves; I wonder how violently they beat upon the glass of walls around themselves, that they may be free.

It is likely no wonder to those who can sit and marvel at such things as the patterns of growing condensation on drinking glasses, that one might sit and sit as I do in the window of Hawk & Sparrow each ArtCrawl. For those with deep interests, deep lives, deep hearts, the sitting comes naturally, and life in all of its variegations pours in relentlessly.

For those who yet wonder: I sit to model clothes that I find beautiful, for a store that I find beautiful, so I might share and help share with a world that can be beautiful a place that I find beautiful. I am nothing but a model; and so I can sit for hours and be nothing but a model.

Why then should I move? Why should I react, and how can I, if my purpose is to model?

Hawk and Sparrow

What’s your purpose, little ones? What’s your purpose, young ones who twist your faces and beat and shout? What’s your purpose, mothers and fathers with wishes for still children? What’s your purpose, all of you who walk in front of my view upon the world, all of you meandering from place to place to place, wondering and marveling momentarily at one who sits and sits and sits…?

Thanks to Sarah Moyal, owner of Hawk and Sparrow on James Street North in Hamilton, Ontario for the photo and experience, and to all of the visitors to Art Crawls who enjoyed watching me do what comes naturally.