Cultural Appropriation and Pepperoni Rolls

For a non-conformist, I really enjoy being told what to do. A full-time freelancer spends a lot of energy creating order from chaos and rustling up work from thin air, so when I get an assignment from a client to develop a specific recipe, I'm happy to take it.

One of my clients, a large retail corporation, often gives me assignments to develop recipes for a mainstream American audience. I love working with the company, but I sometimes feel conflicted about developing recipes for an "Asian steak bowl" or a "Mexican rice skillet." The steak bowl is Asian because it features rice and some kind of soy marinade on the meat. The rice skillet is Mexican because it has corn, cumin, and chili powder. 

As a Caucasian mutt, I don't have a specific cuisine tied into my identity and family tradition, and so I never felt the sting of an outsider swooping down and flower-picking various ingredients and techniques for the sake of novelty...until a few weeks ago.

I grew up in Southeast Ohio, across the river from West Virginia. Four years ago, I moved back. It's more Appalachian than Midwestern, though in many ways it's simultaneously both things and neither of them. I call it the Appalachian Interzone. My parents, both native Ohioans, moved here 37 years ago, and people here in town still consider them outsiders. "Bir?" they'll say when I answer their inquiries about my last name ("Who are your parents?" is not a big-city question, but a small-town one). "Hmm, I don't know any Birs." While I find this scrutiny amusing, I see its usefulness; it's a simple attempt to tease out connections, create a community context. 

So I, too, am now an insider-outsider. Certain aspects I thought were universal during my youth I now see as highly regional, and one of those things is the pepperoni roll. 

There is nothing not to love about pepperoni rolls, unless you are an avid fan of nutrition, because there is nothing beneficial about them in that aspect. They are wads of cottony white bread stuffed with greasy, salty cured meat. A tiny bakery here in town made them; their version featured two pencil-thin sticks of pepperoni encased in the fluffy roll. One made an ideal snack; two, a satisfying lunch.

Pepperoni rolls hail from West Virginia. The lore says an Italian-American baker in Fairmont created them so coal miners could have a filling and portable lunch down in the mines. These days, you are more likely to find pepperoni rolls at a gas station or grocery store, but small-town bakeries still make them, too. Sometimes there is cheese in or on the roll. Sometimes pizza sauce is served on the side, or--gasp!--in the roll itself. I am a purist, and I like the rolls buttery and soft, with only pepperoni inside. 

There's also a sticks vs. slices debate. Though I once preferred the pepperoni sticks (the lunchmeat version of a chocolate baton in a pain au chocolat), I am now a convert to the slices, because they are better distributed in the roll and thereby leech more of the flavorful, bright orange grease into the bready interior. It's a déclassé version of brioche, almost. I love brioche. 

Currently I am working on a cookbook called Tasting Ohio: Favorite Recipes from the Buckeye State. The book collects recipes from chefs and food producers all over Ohio; it's meant to be a survey of Ohio's abundance and diversity, not a definitive encyclopedic tome on Ohio's regional foods. Pepperoni rolls initially didn't seem to be a good fit for the book, because they are the official state food of West Virginia (I say this literally, not figuratively--the WV state legislature passed the resolution marking it such in 2013), and Tasting Ohio is an Ohio cookbook. But I grew up in Ohio, eating pepperoni rolls. Ohioans up and down the Ohio River Valley did, too. Who am I to deny the Appalachian Interzone a voice in Tasting Ohio? It exists! I exist in the Appalachian Interzone at this moment!

I gave in to my misgivings. The rolls are going in the book. The classic homemade pepperoni roll recipe is insanely simple.

1. Buy Rhodes frozen dinner roll dough.

2. Thaw it.

3. Shape it into rolls with either slices or sticks (and perhaps, god forbid, cheese).

4. Bake. Cool somewhat. Eat.

I wanted to start with homemade roll dough, so I sniffed around for source recipes to compare, and in my research I came across a pepperoni roll recipe in Cook's Country. Cook's Country is the less austere sister publication of Cook's Illustrated. Both magazines take extreme pains to build fail-safe recipes that deliver what, in their eyes, are the best results possible. The Cook's Country pepperoni rolls had sesame seeds on top, which instantly tipped me off. They could not be the real deal! Never, ever have I seen pepperoni rolls with sesame seeds on top. Who did those Massholes think they were, plucking one of West Virginia's fine traditions and mucking it up to suit their elitist tastes?

It was my turn to be on the receiving end of Asian Steak Bowl fury. It riled me up enough that I didn't read the Cook's Country recipe, or the accompanying short article setting it up, so I can't go point my finger at them and cry "Columbusing!" That, by the way, is a newish term for appropriating an aspect of one culture and acting as if you discovered it. West Virginia, and Appalachia in general, is tragically misunderstood by most people in our nation. It's thought of as white trash, politically backwards, culturally bereft, and appallingly unsophisticated. Some of those assumptions are founded in reality, but West Virginia is also rich with folklore, extremely fertile in all aspects of the arts, and home to its own legitimate foodways. I know many smart, proud, and delightful West Virginians. Every time something good about West Virginia sneaks into the national consciousness, I want to give the state a fist-bump. But, just as the natural splendor of the state has been mined by greedy outside interests for its fossil fuels, so to have its food traditions been mined by superficial foodies who, say, want the cachet of ramps without understanding anything about the cultural meaning the plant has to rural mountain folk. I want pepperoni-loving people everywhere to be embrace pepperoni rolls, but I also want them to understand that they are a salt-of-the-earth delicacy, the street food of the coal mines. To render them foufy with sesame seeds is missing the point.

In my pepperoni rolls for Tasting Ohio, I use the fancy deli pepperoni slices, not the so-so Hormel stuff. I add honey and full-fat buttermilk to my dough, and brush the proofing rolls with melted butter. None of those things are standard issue in a typical pepperoni roll, but I feel I can get away with it, because I'm from here. Does it all come down to feelings and birthrights?

I attended a great panel discussion at this year's IACP conference called "Is What's Mine Yours? How to Avoid Cultural Appropriation in Your Writing." One of the speakers (I think it was Andrea Nguyen, an expert on Vietnamese cooking and never one to shy away from critical thinking) pointed out that appropriation is taking, while collaboration is giving. Giving credit, giving context, giving goodwill. Being mindful that a recipe is never just a recipe, and a seemingly innocuous white bread roll stuffed with pizza toppings is never just a roll. Is it okay to fling sesame seeds over them if you don't have roots in the Mountain State? Is it okay to include them in Tasting Ohio when you're a fringe element in the Appalachian Interzone? Is it justifiable to look Cook's Country in the eye and ask, "Who are your parents?" Good intentions go a long way, but good research goes further. What I can pull off in the privacy of my own home can't always be explained away in the few short sentences of a recipe headnote. Someone could write an entire book on pepperoni rolls. Someone should.

Maybe it shouldn't be me.  

One Pound, Eight Ounces of Parsnips

The parsnip seeds were about three dollars, purchased from a bulk bin at the hardware store. I’d bought them, along with some carrot and kale seeds, late in the summer for a second planting in the garden I shared with my dad. He spent hours tilling it, and then—with a little help from me, but not much--erecting a tall and sturdy fence to keep out the deer that gleefully munch at any blooming plant, decorative or not.

Dad and I share the garden because, here at my house across town, there’s not much of a yard, and I wanted more planting space than our small raised bed afforded us. Dad planted black-eyed peas and onions; I planted a ton of greens, along with peas and beans. The collards did well, as did the black-eyes, but nothing else thrived. In years past, my parents had multiple plots, in the largest size available, in a Columbus, Ohio community garden. They enjoyed bumper crops, which my mother canned in between nursing me and making healthful snacks for my older brother, who was a toddler at the time.

Decades later, I had spotty luck in my own past gardens prior to moving back here to Ohio, but I always got enough to feel it was worth my time and effort. I’m not sure what happened, but I do know we will do a soil test well before planting next spring.

The aforementioned parsnip seeds did nothing last year. This spring, I planted the remainder of the seeds in a row with the carrot seeds, to Mom and Dad’s objections. Why waste valuable garden space on pedestrian root vegetables? But I love parsnips, and at an average of $1.99 a pound at the grocery store, I don’t make a practice of buying them. I dreamed of the culinary possibilities of growing lots and lots of parsnips, which I would roast or puree. Parsnips to add to a white mirepoix, parsnips to grate and fry in non-conformist latkes, parsnips to add to simmering pots of braising meats. They are curious vegetables, at once mellow and sharp, at once creamy and fibrous. This dual nature amuses me. I enjoy how they keep me on my toes.

Lo and behold, both the parsnips and carrots grew. The carrots I harvested in August—they were petite things, and it took about half an hour for me to liberate them from the firm clay of Southeast Ohio gardens—but the parsnips I kept in the ground, imagining them growing into hearty, club-shaped things.

This weekend I dug them up. All one and a half pounds of them, and they had the willowy builds of runway models rather than the sturdier, more robust figures I’d been dreaming of. Smaller parsnips tend to taper off dramatically at their tips, quite unlike carrots, and so it’s challenging to get a consistent cut on them (important especially when roasting, for those narrow pieces tend to burn and shrivel rather than brown and crisp.) It took me about half an hour to wash, peel, and chop them into the 2-inch sticks I was planning to serve alongside our pot roast.

And a few of the parsnips I had to toss altogether, because they had a noticeable petroleum smell; most parsnips have a hint of this, but in older ones it’s especially prevalent. And parsnips often have woody cores running through their centers, so it’s best to cut those out and discard them. My yield from the initial 1.5 pounds was a generous handful of prepped root veg.

After roasting them at 400 degrees F for about 20 minutes, I pulled them out of the oven and chewed a sample. And chewed and chewed. It seems I’d made parsnip jerky. Gamely, I still heaped them on our dinner plates—I’d have been better off simmering the roots with the lovely red wine and onion broth that bathed out delicious pot roast—and I masticated through a few roasted parsnips batons.

My gardening know-how is low, mostly because I approach it in a very impulsive, slapdash manner. This is the way many people cook, so I can’t hold it against them. I don’t imagine I’ll have the time or drive to become a master gardener, or even a fluent one, but I’ll keep on trying, because it’s fun to see things grow…when they actually do. The parsnips were more like pets or amusements than anything else. Some people knit, some play Worlds of Warcraft, some go to NASCAR races. I grow edible plants, and badly at that. But I may even plant parsnips again, just to see if I can do better next year. The goal? Harvesting two pounds.

Pawpaws Behind the Shopping Center

Look closely. Do you see them? The pawpaws are back. This native North American fruit grows in deciduous forests all through the eastern United States, even though hardly anyone knows about them. From those who do, I hear a lot of “oh, I remember that pawpaw song.” It’s a goofy old folk song. Myself, I don’t remember it, but it goes like this:

Pick up a pawpaw and put it in your pocket…

Right now I will tell you not to put a ripe pawpaw in your pocket. Also, most of the pawpaws you find on the ground are bruised and just a hair or two past ripe. There’s something cloying and bad-funky about them. A perfectly ripe pawpaw will fall off the tree, but you probably can’t be there to catch it when it does. The next best thing is to harvest the pawpaws that separate from the branch with no resistance. They yield to your nudge.

The pawpaws in the bag surprised me. I went to scout out a nearby spot rumored to have lots of fruits, and the rumor was true. Those suckers were ready, and when a pawpaw is ready, it will not wait. You have to pick it right then. So I did.

This is my pawpaw anniversary. I’d never tasted one until this time last year. It was purely an accident, just me walking in the woods and running across this goofy fruit a few friends had told me about. I wound up succumbing to a manic pawpaw state. It’s not just about fruit. It's about total immersion in one moment. Gathering pawpaws, I don’t think about what music to listen to or what I should make for dinner or the people I need to send follow-up emails. I just think about getting more pawpaws. Pawpaws are around for a few short weeks, and then they are gone. After that, most of the leaves have fallen from the trees, and it’s cold and the skies are grey and the grass turns brown and everything’s a giant bummer until late March. I feel like pawpaws are summer’s last hurrah.

Pawpaws are homely little fruits with a distinctive tropical flavor. A longtime sucker for misfits, I fell for them hard. Last year I decided I should write a pawpaw cookbook, which lends this pawpaw season an even greater sense of urgency. At times, I’ve wondered why I’m so compelled to write a pawpaw cookbook, when other, more normal people write cookbooks about gluten-free brownies or Paleo salads. And then I realize I’m the normal one.

These pawpaws came from the woods behind a shopping center I’ve always hated. There's a grocery store and a DMV and a laundromat, and past those a compact network of hiking and biking trails. The trees back there are crawling with pawpaws. At first you don’t notice them, but once you do, you spy them everywhere. It’s like earning a set of pawpaw goggles. I got all scratched up from rummaging through multiflora rose and poison ivy to get to the pawpaws. It’s prudent to wear pants, not shorts. Next time, I will. And the time after that. Having the fruit is only half the point. Getting it is the real treat.

Pasta with Tomatoes, Corn, Herbs & Feta

I am guessing it’s not easy being married to me. My temper can be short, and I have a habit of insisting on getting my way. But Joe’s soldiered on in our union for nine years. There are times I figured we might not be married by now, still. This may be normal, as far as marriages go. That every marriage is a locked box both perplexes and delights me, because there’s no need to measure what Joe and I have against larger yardstick: if it’s working, hey, go with it. I have friends who I look at and assume they must be living in harmony and bliss, but you never know. I have other friends who I marvel are still together. Knowing why and how is not my job, though; it’s theirs.

In those heartfelt odes to spouses I see people post on Facebook, this notion of a husband being “my best friend” comes up a lot. And fine if it is true for them, but Joe is not my best friend, because I already had a best friend when we met. There are things I tell Joe that I’d never tell a friend, and there are things I tell friends that I’d never tell him. It works because he gets that. I don’t want Joe to be everything to me. That seems unfair.

Today’s our anniversary. Earlier, I’d told Joe we were going to have tortilla Española with romesco sauce and a big tossed salad for dinner, and he was enthused. Our initial hope was to go to the Buckley House, which is our town’s dependable fancy-pants restaurant, but we’re low on cash at the moment, and a Buckley House dinner is not for lean times.

Some unexpected construction at my daughter’s daycare facility threw off my schedule, though, and I realized making romesco sauce would take longer than I’d like and create unwanted stress. So I switched to pasta with sweet corn and tomatoes instead. To me it’s the pinnacle of Ohio recipes, because sweet corn and tomatoes are the best we have to offer. Joe didn’t want to move here to Ohio, but he did. He’s still ambivalent. But I feel like I’m in my element. How can two people be so compatible yet never fully happy in the same location?

Joe does not do well with sudden changes, but he was okay with our dinner switchup. It resulted in fewer dirty dishes to clean, always a plus. We drank a $5.99 bottle of Spanish Tempranillo with our pasta. The herbs and tomatoes had come from our backyard; the corn, from a field somewhere in our county. It’s definitely GMO corn, engineered to be as sweet as a cold glass of Southern iced tea, but you can’t win ‘em all. And so goes marriage. You can’t have everything in one person. Spending life with a boring husband, to me, would be a terrible fate. Out marriage has been anything but boring, so we must be doing something right. Maybe I’ll make this pasta again in another nine years, for our 18th anniversary. Maybe we’ll go to the Buckley House instead. Does it matter? An anniversary is one day a year. It’s the other 364 days that really count.   

Pasta with Tomatoes, Corn, Herbs, and Feta

Serves 4

It was only after residing in a handful of other states that I realized the superiority of Ohio-grown tomatoes. This pasta cannot be made with grocery store produce; it is a summer-only dish. You can throw together sweet corn and beautiful homegrown tomatoes—the most coveted of summery Ohio foods—to make an incredibly fresh, flavorful pasta dish in a flash.

• 3 to 4 large, ripe tomatoes, cored and chopped
• 1/8 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
• 2 to 3 ears fresh corn, or 1-2 cups cooked corn cut from leftover cobs of sweet corn* (and cripes, please don’t use grocery store corn or frozen corn. Not this time.)
• Kosher salt, as needed
• 8 ounces angel hair pasta
• 4 large cloves garlic, sliced very thinly crosswise
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced, or a combination of fresh basil, thyme, and oregano (go heavy on the basil and lighter on the other herbs)
• 4 to 6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

Place the chopped tomatoes in a medium bowl. Add the Aleppo pepper; season generously with salt. Toss to combine and set aside.

Bring a large pot of salted water on to boil. If the corn hasn’t been cooked already, plunge the whole ears of corn into the water and cook for five minutes. Don’t drain the water; you’ll use it for cooking the pasta. When cool enough to handle, cut the ears from the corn and set aside.

Cook the pasta until al dente; drain..

Meanwhile, in a 9- to 10-inch skillet, heat the garlic and olive oil over high heat, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is a light golden-brown (do not allow to burn). Add the corn and cook until it’s heated through. Add the tomatoes and cook for just a minute. Remove from heat.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it. Add the saucy tomato-corn mixture; toss with the feta cheese and basil. Season to taste with more salt and pepper. Cover for a minute or two to let the pasta absorb the juices form the tomato sauce.

Divide the pasta among serving dishes. Crumble the feta cheese over each bowl and serve.

*Sometimes, leftover corn that’s been cut off the cob and stored for several days (or frozen and thawed) can be soggy. To dry it out and perk up the flavor, I toast it a heavy, dry medium skillet (preferably cast-iron) over medium-high, stirring occasionally, until charred spots appear on the corn, 2 to 3 minutes.

Are Ohio Tomatoes Really the Best?

In the public mind, Ohio is not ubiquitous with tomatoes. You don’t read heartfelt odes to Ohio tomatoes in Saveur or see them on the menu in some Wagnerian dining experience at Alinea. This lack of attention from the non-Ohio world makes Ohio tomatoes the country’s biggest secret amazing food. Here, it’s a given. Tomatoes are the state fruit.

Ohio is not keeping these tomatoes secret on purpose, mind you. I didn’t even care about them myself until I moved out of the state; as a girl, I recall the South Carolina friends we vacationed with every year raving about the cardboard box of homegrown tomatoes we brought down to the beach house. “Ohio tomatoes!” they’d sigh, and it baffled my youthful mind that people who lived within spitting distance of a wonderful beach and wild-caught shrimp could crave anything from my humble home. I didn't become a tomato convert until I grew up and moved across the country to the San Francisco Bay Area, where gem-like heirlooms of every shade were bountiful at markets and grocery stores. I bought them and enjoyed them, but they didn't make me dizzy like the unassuming red globes I savored on visits back to Ohio. Scarcity leads to mystique. There is no Ohio tomato like an Ohio tomato in the palm of a expat Ohioan. 

I should clarify that the biggest, most pulsing fists of tomatoey lusciousness hail from the dense red clay of the Mid-Ohio Valley, in the southeast corner of the state. Nothing against heirloom tomatoes, but the ultimate Ohio tomato is just a run-of-the-mill beefsteak, red, shiny, and perhaps a bit knobby and misshapen. They grow in family gardens and the fields of tiny family farms all along the river, baked under the summer sun and bathed in thick humidity.

Any homegrown tomato is a treat, but the (admittedly lovely) tomatoes I grew in my various Oregon backyards just didn’t measure up. I’d like to ask a horticulturalist why, scientifically speaking, Ohio tomatoes dazzle so—is it soil pH? chemicals from the industrial plants downriver?—but I’m afraid the truth will disappoint.  Maybe my fine Oregon tomatoes would have stood up in a blind tasting to their Ohio counterparts, and it was really just a vanished summer idyll I was yearning for.

It’s August, and all over town, the inimitable smell of tomato leaves withering in the heat betrays no hint of the acidic sweetness and almost buttery flesh to come. I’ve been eating enough to give myself an ulcer: thick raw slices on a plate, more substantial than any filet mignon. Neighbors gave them to me; I give mine to friends. Summer will vanish, and Ohio will get boring and shitty again, and so we all dive into the intoxicating cosmos of seeds and pulp our precious tomatoes offer us in this eternal now.

Mid-Ohio Valley Summer No-Cook Tomato Sauce

Serves 4-6

Get one 12-ounce package of eggy Rossi Pasta Capelli d'Angelo. This can be purchased at their gift shop on Front Street in Marietta, or at any one of a handful of grocery stores. When I was 20, I worked at Rossi Pasta making gift baskets, and I got a lot of free pasta, and pasts tastes best when it’s free. In lieu of Rossi Pasta (free or not), use 8 ounces of ordinary dried angel hair pasta.

 Next, procure about one and a half pounds of quite ripe, very red homegrown tomatoes—beefsteak or the likes, and luscious enough to eat a plain slice of as if it were cake. Maybe you grew them yourself, maybe your best friend’s parents left a bag of them on your back porch like the tomato fairy. These tomatoes should be at the stage of ripeness that’s just before squishy. At least half an hour and up to two hours before planning to eat, chop them up (on a cutting board with a groove if you don’t want to make a swampy red mess of tomato juice). Put these chunks in a large bowl, along with a pinch of red pepper flakes, a large clove of garlic that’s been mashed to a paste, and a generous amount of kosher salt. If you have fresh oregano around, mince up about a teaspoon of that and add it. If not, no big deal. Let this all sit at room temperature; the salt will work on the tomatoes and make a soupy, saucy mess.

Boil the pasta according to the directions on the Rossi Pasta package. And drain the pasta, and although I normally would reserve some of the pasta cooking water, we’re not going to do that now, because we want the pasta to absorb the very liquid part of our splendid tomato sauce so that every bite offers an explosion of summery tomato flavor.

Return the pasta to the pot you cooked it in. Add the tomato sauce, along with a few tablespoons of very good olive oil and a big fat handful of thinly sliced fresh basil. You need lots of basil, which will collapse in the heat of the dish and wind up not looking like nearly as much as you began with. Taste this and add salt or whatever to make it taste right.

Divide the pasta between big bowls and top with freshly grated parmesan cheese. Feta or soft goat cheese would also be acceptable, but I like the parm. Then dig in. That’s it.

This recipe absolutely will not work in parts of the country with crummy tomatoes, or after late September, or if you use the wrong shape or type of pasta; the network of angel hair pasta strands lock in the sauce like a sponge so you don't miss a drop of flavor. This also will not be quite as good if you consume it in a location other than my parent’s screened-in back porch, where an unseen chorus of cicadas drone in the background, to a mesmerizingly creepy, jungle-y effect. But if you get all of the variables right, your dinner will be like a big plate of adult candy. No salad, no bread. Just the pasta, maybe a glass of white wine. Amen.     

A Lovely Wreck of a Summer Sandwich

A summer sandwich is all about the moment. The whims of the person building it and the stuff that happens to sit on the counter or grow in the garden at that exact time result in that most personal of constructions, the produce-heavy Dagwoodian mess bookended by bread. It's about the watery tomato liquid mingling with mustard that drips down your arm and all over your magazine or paperback book as you sit outdoors, or wherever your happy place is. It's about the satisfaction of putting together a bunch of ingredients that make sense to no one’s mind but your own. Its about the ephemeral pleasure of wolfing the thing down before it collapses all over your lap, a slithering mess of cucumber slices and lettuce and relish and god knows what else.

My dearest wonderful wreck of a summer sandwich came about because of a story I heard on NPR last year. They held a contest for the ultimate summer recipe, and finalist Marti Olesen’s entry was for a crazy assemblage of tomatoes, sweet onion, cucumbers, and white cheddar cheese between whole grain bread that’s been smeared with peanut butter. As with any great sandwich, the order of the ingredients is as important as the ingredients themselves; it’s got to do with the messy mechanics of what hits your tongue first when you sink your teeth into the thing. Olesen assures listeners that the sandwich functions best when built thus, from top to bottom: cheese, tomato, cucumber, onion, peanut butter.

The other two finalists in the NPR contest offered recipes for strawberry trifle and Baja slaw. Trifle is trifling; slaw is slaw. A sandwich is a meal. I rooted for Olesen, and she won, to the great satisfaction of sandwich aficionados across the nation.

But I didn't make her sandwich. She inspired me to adapt it, and maybe that's the point. As an alternative jammy-sticky-sugary PB&J, my mom started making peanut butter and cheese sandwiches for my daughter. They’re not bad if you’re four years old, but an adult needs something more. Likewise, a sandwich of homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers sounds magnificent on paper, but in practice it’s wan and bland. 

So I combined the two. Lightly toast two slices of whole-grain bread (I prefer those circular flatbread/bun hybrids sometimes marketed as "sandwich skinnys", since the slight crumb of the bread makes the filling the star player). Generously spread crunchy natural peanut butter (it has to be salted) on one slice, and tomato-squash chutney on the other slice. (You probably don't have tomato-squash chutney; classic storebought Major Grey's can work in a pinch, or you can make your own squash chutney). Then shingle thinly sliced cucumber on the peanut butter. This is your base. Top the cucumber with thickly sliced ripe red tomato (beefsteak, please), then with one slice of Swiss or pepperjack cheese. Place the chutney-smeared bread over it all, then grab a lot of napkins. You will need them. Note: this sandwich does not travel. At all. That’s what makes it even more special. You need to be at home to enjoy it. Preferably on a porch, taking in all the ephemeral joys of summer.

Bigger Fish to Fry

“Fish fry” was not on the list when we moved to Ohio. This list, often amended, had two columns: PORTLAND and MARIETTA.

PORTLAND:

• Mt. Tabor
• Quince trees
• Excellent drinking water
• Winco
• Family
• Friends
• Big, dirty river

MARIETTA:

• Aldi
• Cheaper rent
• Even cheaper water bills
• best homegrown tomatoes ever
• Ramps
• Family
• Friends
• Big, dirty river

I grew up here, in Marietta, but I never went to a fish fry until moving back over a year ago. Catholic churches have them as fundraisers on Friday nights during Lent. My parents had been raving about the St. Mary’s fish fry for ages.

The key to an optimal fish fry experience is acid. Bring half a mangled Meyer lemon and a nearly empty jar of herbed mustard from home. Squeeze the lemon all over the fish, stir a generous dab of mustard into the plastic cup of tartar sauce. Eschew the roll and the baked potato. Focus on the fish, the exterior of which is crispy and salty and greasy but not oily. The flaky flesh encased in the light batter steams when you bite into it. The church volunteers tell you it’s pollock. The baked fish option is not pollock, but one does not attend an all-you-can-eat fish fry for the baked fish.

There’s a table with desserts, crumbly and dry sugar cookies from the grocery store topped with brightly colored globs of icing. Do not go to this table. For dessert, eat more fried fish. Your husband may suggest to sneak in a beer, but that’s making it too complicated. Drink the beer at home, later, for your Hobbit-like second dessert. At $8.50 per adult, the fish fry is not only a steal. It is the best dinner in town that does not generate from my kitchen.

The PORTLAND/MARIETTA list plagues me. Portland—that Portland, the one in Oregon with its own quirky sketch comedy show—thrums with vitality and creativity. It’s a slam-dunk food town, with its zillion food carts and photogenic farmer’s markets and hidden pockets of ethnic restaurants. We lived there in a succession of little rental houses, where I tended gimpy garden plots and cranked out frugal dinners on electric stoves. I had an engaging job with an acclaimed public library system and a free transit pass.

But. There was the rain, so much of it, over and over again. There was mud, and unpaved streets with no sidewalks, and warped windows in our various bedrooms that the heat seeped through. Nine months of the year I was chilled to the bones, no matter how many sweaters I wore or how much hot tea I drank.

I wanted to love Portland, and I did. I wanted to love being there, and I couldn’t. Years passed; my mood darkened. Portlanders adore their city, and for a fellow Portlander not to feel the same way doesn’t compute to them. I felt isolated on our sodden, potholed street far off from the trendier neighborhoods where our friends lived.

We moved to Ohio just when things were looking up: I was in line for a promotion, my husband was finally getting calls from his oft-circulated resume. But I insisted.

It’s a small town, Marietta, in one of the whitest regions in America. Instead of the meth teeth I spotted on many Portland library patrons, I see Mountain Dew teeth. Our rental has, once again, an electric stove, but the house’s insulation is excellent, and we keep it toasty warm without sky-high utility bills.

The St. Mary’s fish fry is just blocks from this house. In Portland, we never would have pulled our little daughter in a wagon to the Catholic church fish fry on a Friday night. We never would have been excited to see a bulb of fennel at the grocery store (clumsily labeled “anise”). Our heartbeats would not have quickened at hearing a language other than English.

It’s unreasonable to compare the two cities, the two places, the two lives. And yet. I do, compulsively, measuring out our gains against our losses. The happiest glimpses of our time in Portland were when I was incredibly in the moment, soaking up goodness without overanalyzing it. Picking raspberries with Frances, walking to the playground across the street from our shitty house, drinking beer on a patio in the sun. Same goes for here. Same goes for anywhere, really. You find the joy you find, even if it’s not the joy you’d pick out for yourself. Even if “fish fry” is not on your list.

The St. Mary’s All-You-Can-Eat Fish Fry runs through April 11. BYO Meyer lemons and herbed mustard.

This article originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.