Escalating escarole.
Decades ago my aging mamma, now long deceased, used to converse by phone with her aging women friends, now also long deceased. I remember those conversations in Pugliese dialect as being discursive lamentations on the hardships of life, back pains, and for some reason that seems to remain in my mind, the then-recent increase in the price of escarole. My mother would say something dialectical like E' iuta 'ncoppa la scarola!...Escarole prices have gone up!
The world may have had numberless wars, with the threat of nuclear holocaust, but it was the steadily escalating price of escarole that signaled for her and her phonemates the arrival of doom and despair.
These days with the price of fuel affecting the economy so drastically, and the cost of home-heating oil portending my own potential death by freezing this coming winter, I have a slightly different perspective on the nature of doom, and I do not heat my home via escarole combustion.
And yet, despite this somber reflection, I feel the sudden need to sauté some escarole in olive oil and minced garlic and red pepper flakes.
The world may have had numberless wars, with the threat of nuclear holocaust, but it was the steadily escalating price of escarole that signaled for her and her phonemates the arrival of doom and despair.
These days with the price of fuel affecting the economy so drastically, and the cost of home-heating oil portending my own potential death by freezing this coming winter, I have a slightly different perspective on the nature of doom, and I do not heat my home via escarole combustion.
And yet, despite this somber reflection, I feel the sudden need to sauté some escarole in olive oil and minced garlic and red pepper flakes.