Ask Jeeves

I remember watching a TV show in childhood where a little redheaded boy and a girl with short blond pigtails lived in a mansion with their uncle and spent most of their time with their English butler. I always thought it would be cool to have an English butler, but back in Iowa, we didn’t have such things.

If you’re a regular blog follower of mine (thank you!), you’ll note that I’ve been processing a lot of “Mom material” since her death three years ago. In so many ways, she was the hub of the family wheel. She had her kids, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren believing she had an answer for every question. It’s true, she did. I don’t know if they were always accurate, but she had answers. I was married to a guy once who had a similar propensity for supplying answers to any question and citing the Readers Digest as his source.

Back to Jeeves. Since Mom is no longer around, to whom do I ask questions like, “does eating spicy food make you dream?” I treated myself to dinner at a local Ethiopian restaurant last night after a long work week. I tried the honey wine—truly a different taste sensation, sort of like beer and rubbing alcohol infused with honey, served at room temperature. Not as bad as it sounds. I know nothing about Ethiopian food, but love Moroccan cuisine, and figured it would be similar. I’ve always been an adventurous eater. Bravely, I ordered the combination plate with three different lamb stew tastes, one beef contribution, and a mini chicken (?) leg, along with an amazing stewed cabbage something-or-other, all eaten by scooping the food onto pieces of flatbread. Like with Moroccan food, they bring a warm fragrant towel for hand cleansing before the meal. I like eating with my fingers—it puts me in touch with my more primitive side.

After dinner I commented to the very solicitous waitperson that the food, while delicious, was much spicier than Moroccan. “Really?” he said, with arched eyebrows. “This is our very toned-down version, to please the local palate.” His smile said, “Lady, you think that’s hot, you’re just a plain old sissy.” Although I’ve never been prone to dyspepsia, I had some concerns about whether or not my digestive tract would survive unimpeded throughout the night. I did, of course, expect (and receive) an increase of hot flashes.

My stomach survived just fine, but OMG the dreams . . .

The whole night was filled with dreams of confusion, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, not finding what I was looking for, coming in at the end of an event that I was supposed to host, losing my direction, forgetting my script for a performance—on and on, until I woke up feeling more exhausted than when I’d treated myself to dinner after the long week.

Back to Jeeves. Since I couldn’t call Mom and ask her if this was a direct result of having eaten spicy food at night, I turned to Jeeves—the perfect (in my imagination) English butler with all the answers, even if I don’t have cute little blond pigtails.

“Hey Jeeves,” I typed in, “does spicy food at night make you dream?” And just like my mom, and just like my ex-husband, Jeeves had an answer for me:

“When and what we eat may affect our nighttime rest, if not our tendency toward bad dreams. A small study published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology had a group of healthy men eat spicy meals before bed on some evenings and compared their quality of sleep on nights where they had non-spiced meals. On the spicy nights, the subjects spent more time awake and had poorer quality sleep. The explanation is that spicy food can elevate body temperatures and thus disrupt sleep. This may also be the reason why some people report bad dreams when they eat too close to bedtime. Though few studies have looked at it, eating close to bedtime increases metabolism and brain activity and may prompt bad dreams or nightmares.”
Via http://www.divinecaroline.com/22201/62493-six-reasons-dreams#ixzz1UGRSPBXv

That’s probably more than Mom would have said. Her answer might have been more along the line of, “Sure does.”

So, if you have any burning questions and no one to answer them for you, I’ll lend you my English butler. He knows stuff. Just type in Ask Jeeves.

Food As Creativity

I lived in Berkeley, CA in my mid-twenties. It was wonderful and the inspiration for many of my stories. I shared a big house with a bunch of people; we’d have spaghetti dinners at two a.m., long lazy Sunday brunches where we’d munch on lox and bagels while scanning the New York Times and the Berkeley Barb.

One of my housemates, Les, was an incredible cook. Beef Burgundy and French Chicken were his specialties. Looking back, the household was loosely organized around food, the preparing and consuming of rather large quantities of it. I learned to eschew the scant portions and irrational focus on presentation of California nouveau cuisine. A good jug wine sufficed—no pretentious labels or conversation about bouquet and palate in this household.

Chez Pannise had just opened over on Shattuck Ave. It was the be-all-end-all must-try place for anyone-who-is-anyone in the Bay Area. Alice Waters was becoming an upscale household name. We had to check this out. I took my personal scorn and sat across from my housemate, leaning my elbows on the white linen tablecloth. I couldn’t hide my disdain (and as a twenty-something year old, I had plenty of disdain) at the “salad” I’d ordered. Give me a flippin’ break already—this is a lettuce leaf, or leaf of endive, if I’m to be accurate—with a cube of something, a scallop perhaps, and with some other unidentifiable substance drizzled over the top in a decorative “z” pattern. I rolled my eyes over that for months.

Thank goodness we grow up, expand our awareness and our palate, step out of our self-important lives and take in some of the bounty of what culture has to offer or I would have missed one of the most exquisite experiences of my adult life. Some years ago, my friend and I, my daughter, and a friend of hers drove over to Yountville for a late night reservation at The French Laundry. There were seven courses—thank goodness they were all minuscule—each bursting with flavors to die for, beautifully presented, and paired with just the right wine. This was culinary art at its finest, and its most expensive. It was a glimpse of heaven on earth and set in my soul a craving for fine dining.

Give me a raw oyster bar and a good chardonnay, or an exquisite chocolate mousse and a fine cup of coffee and I’m a happy camper.

All this is a lengthy introduction to an excerpt from my story, The First Step, which illustrates how I call upon my life for background material in writing. In this chapter, Shalese, a no-nonsense, blue collar social worker from south side Chicago meets Jenny, a trust fund baby for whom fine dining is a given, and Florence, a wealthy octogenarian obsessed with power and control, at an upscale wine bar in northern California. Shalese’s goal is to create a half-way house for female ex-felons of which Jenny is. She’s also beautiful. Florence has more money than God to invest in a project that will further her own hidden agenda.


In the tiny parking lot of K Syrah there was an open spot next to Jenny’s silver Miata—a car that smacked of white privilege in Shalese’s book. She eased her old Honda in, turned off the ignition, and sat listening to the chatter and laughter of the early crowd on the patio. She unbuttoned the top button of her shirt, took a deep breath, slung her dressy jacket over her shoulder, and gently opened the car door, hoping to avoid the usual skreek of the hinge. Skreek. “Damn,” she muttered.

The old stone building looked like a place where you’d find big bosomed wenches draped over fat squires drunk on ale. The cobblestone pathway led to an intricately engraved oak door that opened into a dimly lit bar. Small red shades dripping crystals hung over low watt bulbs giving the bar a womb-like feeling. Wine glasses glinted overhead suspended upside down from a light oak rack. Soft music, something mid-eastern with zithers, gongs, and chimes subdued the clink of glassware and china.

Shalese spotted Jenny and Florence at a corner table. Introductions were made and the usual small talk gotten out of the way while they squinted in the dimness at the over-sized menus. A New Age Earth goddess named Brie guided them through the specials and returned shortly with the first round of wine and a variety of tapas to begin their evening. Shalese felt like she’d stepped into an ad in one of those pretentious California living magazines, but Jenny seemed quite at home, as did Florence in her matching sweater set and pearls.

Florence swirled her Cabernet, checked the color and clarity, and took a sip. "Mmm," she moaned, "when you start with the best, where else is there to go? So tell me dear, how did this dream of a halfway house come about?" She leaned back in her chair, hands folded in her lap and looked at Shalese in the way people watch pigeons from a park bench.

Jenny was absorbed in spreading soft smelly cheese drizzled with truffle oil on a crisp of bread, her mouth puckered in concentration. She wore a serpentine green sleeveless dress the color of her eyes, and her long blond hair was caught back in a casual bun with wisps curling along her cheekbone.

If I were in the desert, she’d be one long, cool sip of water, Shalese thought. She unglued her eyes from Jenny and with difficulty fixed them on Florence. "Long story short," she said, "a friend of mine was married to an abuser. When she recovered from the latest near-death beating, she bought a gun and shot him in the…well, crippled him for life. Went to prison, and a week after she got paroled, he hunted her down and killed her." Shalese sat back with a sigh, reached for her chardonnay, and then changed her mind, unsure that she could swallow right then. Memories of Vanessa’s petite body lying in a pool of blood on the living room floor came rushing back. She shook her head slowly. "She never had a chance to start over."

"So, that's what you want to do—give women a chance to start over," Florence said, "create a different life for themselves." She forked a bacon wrapped scallop into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Shalese nodded.

Jenny swallowed a bite of butternut squash orzo and smiled. She fingered a strand of small amber beads that hung around her neck and looked at Shalese from under long blond lashes. "Where did she go when she got out—your friend? Where did he find her?" she said, joining the conversation.

"My house. I was at work. I couldn't protect her. Will you excuse me for a moment?" Shalese said, blotting at her eye with the corner of her cocktail napkin as she left the table.

"Oh dear, that poor girl," Florence said.

"Shalese or her friend?"

"Both," Florence said and took another sip of her Cabernet.


My future plan is to combine this story with two other novella-length pieces, Grapevine: A California Family Tree, and Sojourn, into a collection that will be called Best Laid Plans, dealing with the undiminishable spirit of women as they navigate the challenges of life. Watch for it.