The Beach

the handwritten note in the cookbook said “make something healthy and good. miss you terribly.” Had it been her cookbook, this obviously would have triggered some memories and feelings perhaps of the person who dedicated these words to her, to accompany the gift of the book. She rifled through the pages going from soups and appetizers toward the middle of the book where the more substantive meals were deconstructed into their separate parts, and then straight to the back where the index was and the tail end of the dessert section. She did a quick glance at the index for garbanzo beans, and, seeing none, she turned back a couple pages to the “c’s” to see if perhaps they were listed under chickpeas. And yes, there was one entry, for an appetizer dish called pureed chickpea lettuce wraps with truffle oil and roasted pumpkin seeds. Hmm, didn’t sound half bad. 

meg had bought the book, as far as her she could remember, at a used bookstore in Champaign, Illinois, while on a road trip back in her early twenties. This was a customary activity back then for her and her friends, just jump in the car and go. “Which way we headin’?” one would ask. “Who the fuck knows?” another would answer, and off they would drive, laughing down the road. This particular trip must have been 1982 or so and they ended up crisscrossing almost the entire state of Illinois. Late one night they pulled off the highway at a place called Burnt Prairie and, it being rather pleasant out, they found a spot and unfurled their sleeping bags on the ground. When they awake in the muted dawn sunlight, they were surrounded by stray dogs who had, unbenownst to them, arrived sometime during the night and plopped down among the four young women.

they slowly awoke, yawning and stretching their arms out, except for meg who was always the last one up. the dogs awoke too wagging their tails in delight. who knows from whence they had come, these stray dogs of Burnt Prairie. Meg was the person who stayed asleep as long as possible, like there was a magnet in the mattress and a piece of iron in her abdomen. She tried to visualize herself as someone who awoke at sunrise and jumped out of bed gleefully. She really did try, for a while, to be that person, but it didn’t happen and after a while she accepted it. later that day at the bookstore, after giving the dogs some cans of spam that melissa happened to have tucked away in her backpack, they sleepily shuffled through books and old postcards. this was the best part of these trips thought meg, finding stores like this and looking through items from the past. she loved the old photos and postcards and used books of course, but also the bizarre looking kitchen items from days gone by, like an old breadbox, decorations and adornments from 1950’s homes, like orange ashtrays and costume jewelry, she loved all of that stuff.

the cookbook she ended up buying, the one with the inscription, was called Corn Soufflé and Other Beach Party favorites. the inscription wasn’t signed and there was no name on the book, but the copyright said 1953, and the book itself smelled faintly of the ocean, or perhaps Lake Michigan, although they would surely have different smells, the ocean being salt water and the Great Lakes not so. So she sniffed closer and tried to discern whether there was any sodium traces in the fifty year old aroma. there was a stain on page 19, orange/reddish it could have been some variety of tomato-based sauciness, and the yellowish stain on page 90 may well have been the much touted corn soufflé.

make something healthy and good, the inscription had said, and meg continued inventing scenarios in her head of who wrote that to whom. the car barreled southward toward Cairo. The plan was to spend the night there before heading back up north to Melissa’s house in Freeport. It was going to be a long ride and they still wanted to stop and see the Cahokia mounds on the way. meg looked at the recipes, planning to dedicate some time to making a meal or two after they got back home, as she fell asleep in the back of the car heading down I-57.