A Culinary Calendar
Lit Up — May’s Prompt: Nostalgia
The change of the seasons is not marked by a date, but by a feel. For most, it’s purely cliamatological: you feel that first nip in the air and think of Christmas, or feel the first hint of heat and humidity, and think of days at the beach.
For me, the change of the seasons was marked by food, and no food takes me back to childhood summers more than zeppoles.
For two weeks each July, St. Rose of Lima Church would hold its annual Family Festival, a carnival of games, rides, raffles and foods. I would walk there with my family each year, oddly proud of the fact that our house, located 3 blocks from the church, was a quicker walk than the distant side streets most fairgoers had to park their cars. I’d ride the giant slide, sitting on my father’s lap, he on those burlap sacks you ride on, until that year I was old enough to ride on my own. We’d try our hand at the water race game, shooting water into the clown’s mouth to see if we could pop our balloons the fastest. I never won, because as my balloon grew larger, I’d drop my gun and clasp both hands over my ears in anticipation of the loud pop.
The fair created a certain sense of community. Our neighbors worked the booths, and local merchants sponsored the games and rides. The giant slide was sponsored by a local contractor, the games were sponsored by the local barber (“win by a hair!”), and each booth was a reminder of someone or some business I’d known all my life.
My clearest memory of the fair is of the irresistible goodies. Our fair was not like the fairs of the South, with fried Oreos, fried Twinkies and Fried Butter. Our fair offered nominally “healthier” choices, like sausage and pepper heroes, nachos, and zeppoles. If you’ve never eaten a zeppole, it is an, airy, crispy puff of dough, crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, perfectly fried and coated in powdered sugar. It is love in a greasy paper bag.
The best part about the zeppoles was not the taste or the reminder of summer, but in the dose of irony that accompanied each bag: the zeppoles at the fair were sponsored by the Massapequa Funeral Home. The funeral home’s phone number and logo adorned the zeppole booth itself, the name tags of each booth worker, and was printed on the stickers pasted on each bag. If you bought a dozen, the bag would have two stickers. The booth workers joked (the same joke every year) that if you bought enough zeppoles, you could save the stickers like cereal box tops, and trade in for a prize from their sponsor: free casket with the purchase of 100!
If the tongue-in-cheek sponsorship was meant as a deterrent to the fairgoers, it failed miserably. Year in and year out, no ride, game, raffle or booth drew a bigger crowed than the zeppole booth. The line would snake past the other the food stands, past the giant slide, and past the rectory where casino nights were held. The same neighbors you’d see power walking down the street that morning, or rushing to their pilates or yoga class, would forget their diet and fitness regimes for a Funeral Home Zeppole. The church volunteers who’d spent weeks prior handing out “Stay Active! Be Fit!” fliers to Sunday School students ignored their own advice and gobbled zeppoles by the bagful. It was all for the good of the church, they’d say, because the zeppoles, more than the rides or the games, were the fair’s big money maker.
I am Jewish, so connecting food with grief seemed natural. We hold large feasts on Passover to remind of us of our freedom from slavery, and eat fried potato latkes and donuts on Chanukah to remind us of King Antiochus’s attempt to murder our ancestors. There’s an old joke that all Jewish holidays share the same theme: “we suffered a tragedy, we survived, let’s eat!”
Perhaps inspired by the food-for-all-occasions idea, my mother, who taught Hebrew School, organized field trips for her students to the Jewish funeral home, featuring pizza parties. The goal, Mom said, was to take the fear out of exposure to mortality.
During my grandmother’s funeral, my uncle sent a funeral home worker out to get him a Big Mac. Literally. During. The. Funeral. My uncle called one of the workers over, slipped him a fifty-dollar bill, and sent him off to McDonalds. At first, I thought this was classless. But, as two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun, dripped down his greasy chin and designer tie, I could not help thinking of the food-for-all-occasions connection, and the cynical, angry part of me could not help but wonder what snacks his children would serve at his funeral. But mostly, I thought of Funeral Home zeppoles. We had a tragedy, we survived, let’s eat.
