Home Cooking

Mmmm...gotta love that home cookin'! I once overheard my mother, who never liked to cook, tell a visitor that she was very grateful to be living with a daughter (me, her only child) who enjoyed cooking. So true. If you do not cook, how ever do you feed yourself well? You can partake of restaurants (of varying degrees of excellence, depending on your pocketbook) or visit family/friends with, perhaps, irritating frequency until all standing invitations are withdrawn. Otherwise, you might exist in an ever-narrowing field of mediocre, to bad, to inedible, to positively poisonous food. Or, you could learn to cook. But maybe not the cuisine of the lady in tonight's collage.

Apropos this image, I should defend myself by mentioning that I am currently reading a bio of Charles Addams, "Charles Addams:  A Cartoonist's Life" by Linda H. Davis. Well, I wouldn't put CA in the same class as Edward Gorey--he was much too attached to mainstream living, and a bit of a poseur--but, his work  was known to a much broader audience, and perhaps initiated more folks into the mind-set of the macabre, who would not have otherwise stepped into that realm. Charles Addams was, in spite of his openly celebrity-cultivating habits, as much of an original as EG. Should he have followed EG's example and chosen the more reclusive route in life, he might have suffered less. But he also might have had less fun. To live is to grieve, as well as enjoy. (Curiously, it appears that Addams and Gorey never met; unusual, considering that they operated in the same time frame and place, and had stylistic correspondences.)

Tonight we had an unexpected visit from a friend, and his teen-aged daughter, arrived to pick up a computer that my son had repaired. Due to some miss-communication, said son was late on the scene, and my Mother and I got to visit with said friend (actually a divorced relative-by-marriage--but forever biological uncle to my children) and his daughter. She is a remarkably personable young woman, with excellent manners and none of the morose, sullen attitude that condemns so many contemporary teens to dismissal by those who might otherwise have something to offer them. During the course of the evening, I brought up the Chas Addams bio  to Dad, which discussion led to an opportunity to introduce the young lady to the original CA work, via one of the printed collections of cartoons. When the link with the two Addams Family movies was established, she understood who her Dad and I were referring to, and perused the volume of drawings with attention. Who can describe the delight and triumph of actually engaging the interest of a contemporary teenager in something rooted in the past, which has long been a source of one's own  pleasure? 

So tonight I return to what I am again confirmed in believing is my true metier--the realm of the macabre, where the mortality of the flesh is not only met, but greeted with twisted glee,  a la Addams and Gorey.  Bon appetite!