La Macchina Fotografica

There is a tree in the town park about which I often write. Tall and singular, it is an easy object of affection. Meanwhile, another tree, a tiny one in a clay pot, has been growing lemons outside our back door. This week it has given forth a basket of perfect Meyer lemons. Have I neglected this selfless little citrus?

I fear that I have. The other day its basket simply appeared on the kitchen table, the second significant winter still life in as many days. It turns out that my wife has been nurturing the tree all year, waiting for this moment. At this rate I’ll have a show’s worth of photographs in a month. Sometimes these things just happen.

Citrus trees buck the trend and bear fruit in winter, a minor miracle. My New Jersey upbringing conditioned me to thinking of fruit and color in summer and bare twigs in winter. I would read about citrus trees in grammar-school geography books during our long winters. In our land of apple, peach and cherry trees, citrus groves were as exotic as camels in the desert.

On our small radio in our small kitchen we’d hear the news reports after a run of Sinatra songs. Those reports, during winter cold snaps, included stories of worried, Florida citrus growers. We’d hear of smudge pots in the groves, burning all night to ward off frost. I think New Yorkers secretly liked knowing that it got cold in the Sunshine State, regardless of the price of orange juice.

“Children growing up in Florida have never seen snow!” my second-grade teacher proclaimed one day. This seemed impossible. So too was it impossible to think of trees growing fruit in winter, but that’s what geography books were for, dreaming of the faraway places where such things happened.

Staring into my bowl of lemons I come back from the winters of my youth—a rambling stream-of-consciousness evoked from an overflowing basket on the kitchen table. I look around and realize that I, myself, now live in an exotic land of winter fruit.

I stare at the bowl, give thanks to the little tree in the clay pot, set up my tripod and make a photograph.

Sunday I bought a fish. Sick of Safeway and its hermetic seals, I went to the farmer’s market. There you know what the food is and from where it comes. Contrary to the Safeway illusion, meat is not born in plastic trays. It comes from animals that once lived.

I am not a vegetarian though I respect those who are. Vegetarians are keenly aware of the sources of meat. Most markets in most other lands display meat more honestly than we generally do in the USA. Heads are still on many of the carcasses. Sometimes the animals are still alive at market. I’ve always believed that this is a more honest way to deal with meat, everyone should know from where it comes.

After I bought the fish, a young man cleaned it for me. I couldn’t help but think of our Native Americans and their sacred food ceremonies. Native Americans only killed what they absolutely needed. They treated the animals they ate with reverence, some as deities. The young man cleaned the fish efficiently and quietly. I watched him from behind a mesh curtain. The screen separated me from the act and made it feel more ceremonial. That fish died for me, a realization I’d never know in the Safeway aisles.

Hot-house tomatoes come to market early in spring. This is too early for a tomato. Tomatoes herald the beginning of summer—real summer, not some fabrication designed to hurry along a year before its time. Hot-house tomatoes remind me of Christmas decorations that show up before Thanksgiving. Sadly, too many patrons of the farmer’s market succumb to the temptation. “Look!” they say. “Tomatoes!!!!!” And they go buy the mealy, half-green half-real approximations of the real thing.

But then, one day, one does see the real thing. Real, vine-ripened, grown-in-dirt-outside-where-they-were-meant-to-be-grown tomatoes show up at the market. There is a reverence to picking out the perfect tomato. It is different than stuffing one’s bag with string beans or broccoli. The tomato is so seductive, so anticipatory, and its color is the most beautiful of reds.

Tomatoes can be photographed and painted forever and they remain the most perfect of still-life subjects (with apologies to Edward Weston and his peppers). Just writing about them compels me to buy some, put them on a table and shine a light onto them. But, it is only late June and I am still wary. Why rush it? There is nothing worse than buying what looks like the perfect tomato and then having it taste like cotton. I’d rather stick with brussels sprouts a few weeks longer.

Hands are the most fascinating part of a farmer’s market. This is a recent discovery of mine, thanks to the telephoto lens. I started watching the rummaging hands of market shoppers only a few weeks ago when I zoomed in to reveal a few paws hard at work searching through tomatoes—a show that I’d never noticed before. The hands are like puppet shows. Young, old, deliberate, or frantic, they dart around with anthropomorphic personality. Hands search for the perfect tomato. They grope for the reddest of cherries. Some remind me of the giant claws that grasp for treasure in those old arcade machines at amusement parks. Hovering over the green beans, they plunge down into the center of a huge pile of them. Up come the hands, dropping half their load as they maneuver the lode into plastic bags. Then they repeat the cycle, seemingly insatiable in their appetite for more.

The produce is the star of the market so the hands are somewhat invisible as they do their thing. Like the curtain pages at the opera, the hands do the necessary work to keep the show going, but with all the glorious shapes and colors and distractions, they are generally nothing but a blur. Yet, they reveal a truth.

It is through the observation of market hands that I have come to realize that we are taking our markets more seriously as of late. It’s obvious that the Sunday market has been getting more crowded. It’s getting harder to park. The pressure has been building to get there earlier and earlier. Yet, I didn’t realize the passion people were developing for their produce until I really, truly began watching their hands.

Hands motion to a lover to come see an artichoke. Elder hands guide the soft hands of a child towards the knowingness of ripeness. A nimble hand can judge roundness by rolling a round fruit around inside a palm. A quick hand can separate out the good from the mediocre with lightning speed. An analytical hand can feel the weight of a bag with uncanny accuracy by employing a deliberate up-and-down motion. A sly hand sneaks a berry for tasting, like a nervous bird that pecks at seed in a feeder.

Photography is a wonderful way for us to find gems of life such as these. Normally they remain undetected, so obvious that we take them for granted. Then, along comes a photo that reveals the miracle and turns the quotidian into something profound. It all came before me in a moment, when looking at my life through a lens.

Returning from the farmer’s market on Sunday, I felt a moment of great abundance as I laid out the booty from my expedition. A kitchen glows when fresh produce arrives. It is a moment of great anticipation.

I’d brought my camera with me to the market, hoping to find an expression of the spring season at its peak. Artichokes, asparagus, strawberries, and peas screamed out to me that the seasons had emphatically changed. They teased me with their colors and shapes. Yet, the one photo that said it all had eluded me. It just wasn’t there.

Later in the day, I decided to make carciofi alla romana, Roman Artichokes, with my collection of tasty thistles. In a quiet moment of collection, I laid out the vegetables, preparing myself for the task at hand. A lovely still life formed, something that cannot be contrived in the studio. Sometimes it just happens. There before me was what, to me, the expression of spring—artichokes awaiting their cleaning and transformation into a timeless and glorious dish.

The culinary world calls it mise en place, the placement, preparation, and organization of ingredients before cooking begins. It is a time when the cook, more than anything else, organizes thought and intentions. Sloppy preparation results is stress, and a dish that is muddied in concept and execution. Mise en place is a sacred time where the ingredients are first introduced to one another—a communion of essence, color, flavor, and nutrition.

In the past I’d never thought to photograph my own cooking process. But, the artichokes were too beautiful to resist. Within minutes they’d be cleaned and transformed. But, for a peaceful moment they were there to be appreciated for what they were.

The human race is more connected than ever. Go to a bar on a Friday night and everyone is texting everyone else. The antennae are up. You can contact more people on the planet than ever before. That’s not all. Soon, aliens from distant stars will be texting hot girls in bars. Single men of Planet Earth won’t stand a chance. Already, the girls text one another across town when the guys start to bore them, about five minutes into most conversations. Oddly, the guys don’t seem to mind. Maybe that’s the problem.

Texting, blogging, surfing, and googling. There are more people and more information at our fingertips than we can handle. I connect with my Facebook friends more than I actually talk to people—you know, face them in real life and listen to their stories, their hopes, wishes, and desires. I’m not complaining. I think the world is ever expanding, constantly getting better. But, sometimes, we need real human contact.

The market is our only hope. That’s why I had to go back to the farmer’s market last week. I couldn’t stand it anymore. Going to market is one of my few chances these days to connect to real people. And if Safeway were the only place for me to go, well, I’d rather shop online. The life of an artist is a lonely one and sometimes we need people to talk to.

I see the smiles of people at the farmer’s market and compare them to the grimaces at Safeway. There are fewer people at Safeway but we are always bumping into one another. We all have this common, mental wavelength. “Get out of the way,” we grumble to ourselves. “I need to finish shopping and get out of here.”

No one seems to be in a hurry at the farmer’s market. There, you can talk to the people who grew your food, get a recipe, see your friends, take a bite of sheep’s-milk cheese. You can smell the air, touch a tomato, notice the flowers in the flower vendor’s hat. I don’t see anyone texting either. Mostly, cell phones are away, people are strolling, like they did on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore when I was a little boy.

I marvel at how readers find me and my blog from around the world. And I feel gratitude for the whole concept of blogging. Our connectedness, even if by glowing computer displays, is making the world a better place. But, when I see young people at a bar texting rather than communicating face-to-face, it makes me sad. When I resort to buying my produce at a corporate entity that crams my brain with canned commercials over its sound system, I feel resigned. So, I have rediscovered the market, where people are people—real live people selling real live produce.

The dailiness of life has this hum to it. Like an old refrigerator on its last leg, it drowns out the nuances of life. Then the fridge finally dies and…quiet. Birds chirp, you can hear the breeze again. Turning off the electricity might be a prescription for sanity.

For years part of my weekly routine was to visit the Sunday farmer’s market in San Rafael. The catch is that one needs to get there early, preferably by 8:00 AM. Lately life’s tasks and goals seem to have ensconced themselves between me, the farmers and their market. Sunday morning comes, I take a look at the clock, I passively watch 8:00 come and go. I go to Safeway instead.

The local Safeway has been slowly killing my soul. The music, the bad produce, the indifference, the ads over the sound system, and the corporate sterility all combine to put me in a grumpy mood. This past Sunday I woke up and told myself, “No more Safeway. Can’t do it.” I found my market baskets and drove up to San Rafael.

My heart swelled when I drove over the small hill at the Civic Center and saw the tents and canopies of the market. A stuffed produce truck meandered ahead of me, casting off a few lettuce leaves in its wake. Patrons scurried from their cars with empty baskets in hand. The warm sun was basking the market in springtime glow. People were smiling. I felt like I was home again.

Every season is different at the market. The dance of the seasons are always in full throttle. In March it is asparagus. Asparagus is like the trumpet section of an orchestra. It blares out, heralding spring’s arrival. When local asparagus comes to market, we know that everything is changing. Could summer be far behind? What next? Tomotoes? Sweet corn? Eggplant?

There’s no need to get ahead of ourselves with the bright colors of summer. Spring’s pastels mean fava beans, tender onions, leafy lettuce, artichokes, and so much more. Summer’s assertiveness can wait. There is asparagus to eat! And what could better to celebrate my reunion with the market than to share with you this recipe. It is an asparagus salad with chopped, hard-boiled egg? It makes me think of Easter. It makes me ponder the wonders of rebirth. It brings out the old cooking teacher in me. Enjoy!

Asparagus Salad with Olive Oil, Lemon Juice and Hard Boiled Egg

Serves 4.

2 lbs. fresh asparagus
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
lemon juice – freshly squeezed from 1/2 lemon
salt – to taste
3 eggs – hard boiled and finely chopped

Cut off the bottom inch of the asparagus spears. Peel the lower stem portion of the asparagus with a paring knife so that the tough outer skin of the asparagus is removed. Do so by setting the knife about 1/8 to 1/16 of an inch into the base of the asparagus and gently pulling the knife up towards the tip end. You will want to hold the spear with the tip pointing towards you while doing this. The knife will guide itself and remove only the tough, outer portion of the asparagus. Depending on the freshness of the asparagus, you will remove several inches in length of the skin.

Soak the asparagus in fresh water for about ten minutes, removing any grit that may have lodged in the tips.

Heat a large 12 inch pan filled 2/3 of the way with water until it boils rapidly. Add about a tablespoon of salt to the water and then add the asparagus. You may have to cook the asparagus in several batches depending upon the size of the pan. Boil the asparagus until it just begins to turn limp and then remove it from the water. Drain the asparagus and arrange it on a serving platter. An attractive way to arrange it is to lay down a first row of asparagus and then lay subsequent layers so that they cover the preceding layers beneath except for the tips.

Put the lemon juice in a small bowl. Add a generous pinch of salt. Slowly add the olive oil, beating the mixture vigorously while doing so. Taste the mixture and adjust the ingredients if necessary.

Pour the dressing over the top of the asparagus and sprinkle the chopped egg over it. Serve the dish while it is still warm.