Peasant Woman

Kimo and I drove up to Conifer yesterday to check out Mandolina's, a great little restaurant that our friend Geno opened up a few months ago. The Peasant Verdict: two thumbs up!

If you go for brunch, you've got to check out the Giambotta egg dish, a huge platter of eggs scrambled with tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, artichokes, onions and sausage served over a bed of mashed potatoes. Totally decadent and completely worth it. And a hell of a helping, too, which, back in the day, would have been perfect fuel for a day in the fields. (A Peasant appetite, as you might guess, is nothing to be messed with.)

Plus, there's a good vibe to the place (replete with a hunky-chunky Mortadella hanging in the corner). Tasty Bloody Marys keeping pace with some nice Italian CDs , and I hear they've got live music on weekends. In fact, our friend Sherrie, goddess jazz singer that she is, is slated to play with her band in a few weeks. (Warning: Product Placement Alert) Stay posted: listening to Sherrie sing is a once-in-a-lifetime, not-to-be-missed-event!

Of course one of the best parts of Mandolina's is Geno: chef, bartender and owner extraordinaire. Quite the character if you can pin him down while he whizzes between kitchen, bar and table, hobnobbing with the customers. Old-school Italian from Philly, with the stories to prove it.

Case in point: before Mandolina's, he ran the inn and Isabella's restaurant at Brook Forest Inn in Evergreen, which is known as being haunted. Every Halloween, Geno used to run special Halloween parties at the inn, which featured fortune tellers and seances, ghost hunters and midnight tours (where we learned that the inn was visited by President Harry S. Truman and Liberace [!], gold was hidden in the walls, and the inn was once the site of secret Nazi gatherings). In fact, one of our best times with Geno was the Halloween he hired a Paranormal Investigating Team that confirmed Yes, we were indeed in the presence of ghostly spirits.

If you haven't already figured it out, food is very important to us Peasant People, and something that we spend a lot of time talking about. Sometimes, it can be all we talk about. As in: what did you have for dinner; what are you going to have for dinner; did I tell you about that amazing gnocchi I ate this weekend; my God, I wouldn't eat a ham hock from that awful new restaurant!

Non-peasant families, I've noticed, don't talk this way. Which I think means they have other things to do. But not Peasant People. Peasant People can sit around for hours discussing the finer culinary points of the food we've eaten, the food that are just sitting down to eat, the food we one day hope to eat.

Just like we sit around drinking and discussing coffee. Peasant People on vacation love coffee. Which is how you can always tell us apart from non-peasant people in a foreign city: while non-peasant people are scurrying about with open maps and tour books, trying to hit as many museums as possible in a twenty-four hour period, Peasant People spend their time drinking cappuncinos in open-air cafes, visiting.

This, I've come to realize, is one of the main differences between Peasant and non-peasant people: Peasant People don't like to plan, they don't like to hurry, and they especially don't like to be beholden to anyone else's idea of culture. A Peasant Person's idea of culture is comprised of the casual stroll around a new city--always on foot, and always without a map, the quiet exploration an integral part of the equation. Here and there, we'll stop at a new cafe (and have a juice, soda, Turkish coffee or glass of wine), then visit or chat a bit to see what's going on in our friends' lives. Then, when we're feeling rested, we'll amble on again, perhaps window-shopping, perhaps turning down some new cobblestoned street, perhaps pointing out a building or piece of architecture that strikes our fancy. The key, though, is that there's never more than an hour or two between cafes. Peasants need regular and thorough breaks, and it's never long before we've stopped at another open-air cafe, where we can often be spotted, nursing some new drink and watching the world go by.

It all started with this crazy little Adidas jacket that Kimo found a couple of years back while looking for a Halloween costume. Always on the lookout for a good disguise, Kimo went to town on this little number, a shiny blue, poly-plastic-looking thing from the 70's. Which--I swear--was made in Russia, just to lend it that extra bit of authority.

Between Halloweens, the jacket was retired, relegated to the basement, where it kept company with Elvis, a revolving head and my shiny gold-lame pantsuit, complete with matching headband.

Or so I thought. Here and there, the jacket surfaced, sometimes just for a day, sometimes for a week. But always, it made its way back into its crazy little corner home in our basement.

And then Kimo started working from home.

Yup, that's right. Working from home.

Is there any other phrase that screams sloth as much as "working from home?" That out-right admits we're sitting at the computer in our sweatpants while others are showering, shaving and driving to work?

What's even worse, of course, is when both of you are working from home. Now add a baby into the mix, and you'll get a good idea of why our friends have stopped dropping by before noon.

I get it of course, don't get me wrong. I mean, who wants to see their friends wearing matching track suits, looking like they just got off the boat?

I mean, that's just day-to-day life for us Peasant Folk. Back in the old country, we'd already have fielded our fellow track-suit-wearing friends and put away some serious shots well before noon.

As a Peasant Kid, you expect to spend holidays and summers doing things your school friends wouldn't be caught dead doing--it's all just part of the territory. Like the look on your friends' faces when they realize you've got dried meat curing next to a vat of homemade yogurt in your cellar (or basement, in non-peasant speak), none of it anywhere near a refrigerator. Refrigerators, as all peasants know, are for sissies.

But it's the family field trips that really set you apart. When your friends are doing things like camping or visiting the Grand Canyon, Peasant Families are driving out to farms the next state over, where they spend entire days picking bushel after bushel of red and green peppers. That's right. None of those Hallmark moments with kiddies giggling under the noonday sun, covered with strawberries they've spent all morning picking. True Peasant Families spend long, hot, serious days picking vegetables they can then take home and pickle.

It's quite a project, too. Because once you're finally home, aching to go play and return to your normal American life, out comes part two of this family project, where your Peasant Father spends the next weekend or two roasting the bejesus out of those newly-picked peppers. By this point, your neighbors are usually nowhere to be seen, having learned to stay away from such obvious-peasant madness. But every once in a while, someone will innocently wander up as you stand basking in roasting-pepper-smoke, to ask what you're doing.

Thus comes the final step of this wondrous triptych: just when you're about to go out of your mind with embarrassment, Peasant Mother has corralled you back into the kitchen, where you now spend hours if not days peeling the skin off said roasted peppers so that you mother can spend the following week canning them in oil and garlic.

And this isn't even the old country, where canned goodies like this are the only way you get any veggies with that stark winter diet. All this in the West, mind you, where grocery stores abound with year-round fruit and veggies. And don't even get me started on the Peasant Family tradition of roast lamb....

One of my favorite things about newly-come-overs are their unique interpretations of those good 'ole American sayings. Here are a few of my favorites:

The shit hit the pot.

Old-timer's disease.

Mind your own beeswax.

Break a buttock.

In the blue.

Big cheese whiz.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So c'mon folks, help me out. What else can you come up with?

By now, most of us have heard the term Super Mom used to describe moms who do it all. You've seen the picture: a woman with a successful and satisfying full-time job who devotes her every free moment to the kids, running from soccer to violin practice to running an arts & crafts hour for the neighborhood kids while a gleamingly-clean house beckons in the background, steam from a scrumptious home-cooked meal rising from the dinner table.

But what you don't as often hear about is the Super Peasant Parent. That's right! Super Peasant Parents, as you might imagine, are the new to-do, an up-and-coming breed. A blend of farm chicanery mixed with street smarts mixed with anything-to-keep-the-kids-busy mentality, Super Peasant Parents are all the rage. A must-have for any respectable new parent!

Because where else, except in Super Peasant Parent school, could you send the tykes and kiddies out into the barnyard for hours of fun? Watch them pit rooster against rooster, pig against duck, horse patty against cow dung--all while honing their analytical skills. Encourage them in the fine art of egg toss: how far, how fun! Hone their counting skills while they find and destroy as many weeds as they can in a 45-minute period: a Peasant People's version of Bush's "Shock and Awe" campaign.

I know what you're thinking: what if this isn't right for my family? But that's the beauty of it, my friend! The Super Peasant Parent Campaign is one that's tailored to you--your strengths, your weaknesses. So you don't do a lot except drink beer, you say. Think of all those countable bottles--they'll keep your kids busy for hours! What's that? You've got a precocious tyke? Well, pull out all the stops and add the vodka bottles you've been hiding under the kitchen sink. Or maybe you've got rats instead of chickens--wow! Think about the manual dexterity your children will learn as they lean left, lean right, busting around corners as they chase down those wiley little rascals! See, whatever path you choose, the Super Peasant Parent in you can't go wrong. For the Super Peasant Parent walks his or her own path--always.

So let's hear it for the new regime, people. Let's hear it for Peasant Power!