The best lemon I ever had

I thought that all of my heroes were dead.  That’s because I mostly live in the past.  But it turns out that one of them is still alive.  The lady that pretty much changed my cooking style forever.  I’m not talking about Julia Child.  Love Julia but one, she’s dead, and two, it’s not her.  Marcella Hazan is a cool 88 and furthermore, she’s on facebook.  Yeah, she’s my friend on facebook.  She’s this virtual grandmother who lectures me on which canned tomatoes to buy.  And I’m in need of a grandmother, even a virtual one.  She told me that food doesn’t have to be pretty to be delicious and she’s right.  I also found out that she didn’t start cooking until she was 31.  That encouraged me.  Of course, she had the upper hand, being raised in a foodie (before that was a word) family in Italy.  Italy is a fine place to be a foodie.

We were essentially food tourists in Italy.  Unless there’s another word for people who have gelato twice a day because they’re on their honeymoon and may never get gelato this good again.  We did lots of walking in order to have that twice-daily treat.

In Florence we had one of those meals that was ordered with gestures and pointing and not a lot of real choice.  Menu del giorno?  My foreign language skills are bad.  Anyway, what ended up coming to the table was a pasta with a bolognese sauce (yum) and then a steak with a side salad of romaine (which was tossed in olive oil) and a very stately half lemon.  So I put the lemon all over my salad and ate it.  Delicious.  So then I decided to squeeze the rest of the lemon over my steak.  Even better.  Words cannot describe.  It was the best lemon I ever had.  And I’m not just saying that because I was on vacation in an exotic place.  It was that good.  I’ve never had a lemon like that in California.

When we left, I asked David to turn around and take a picture of the restaurant.  Here it is:

When I die and if God lets me into His heaven, I imagine that lemon to be my spirit guide.  Not as a lemon, like a big fruit with legs and arms, but a stout little man in a buttery yellow suit.  Walking side by side with me.  I’ll be tall (because I have always been and I think I always will be) and he’ll be this little guy.  But he’ll really be that lemon from Florence.  He’ll even admit to it.  “I was that lemon, the best lemon you ever had.”