Wish You Were Here

Yesterday I was at my daughter Dino's house with JB, all 11 active months of him, and suddenly a song I hadn't heard or sung in years -- decades? -- welled up from nowhere and I started singing it, kind of belting it out actually:

Certain individuals

Are walking on a rosy cloud

And certain individuals

Are talking to themselves out loud. . .

I couldn't remember all the words but I made it to the end humming the parts I had forgotten. I furrowed my brow -- where is that song from? I kept coming back to a Broadway oldie, Wish You Were Here. My dad completely raised us on Broadway shows, and I could picture the album cover, which like all Broadway albums in our house, was played frequently. 

Our album must have been a 60s reissue; here is the real original with its truly 50s vibe:

When I got home I commenced a trusty Google search and yes indeed, the song is from Wish You Were Here, which ran for about 600 performances in 1952-53. The setting for the play is a two-week summer camp for adults in the Catskills, most memorably with a real swimming pool built into the stage! I imagine my father going to see the show in his second or third year of med school, before he met my mother.

Now for the lyrics. The title song lyrics were easy to find (in fact, Wish you Were Here was a hit for Eddie Fisher), at least once I narrowed my search to eliminate the Pink Floyd song of the same name, but Certain Individuals? Not so much. But thank you Jaime Weinman for blogging about this very song back in 2005: "My favorite song in the show is a throwaway, 'Certain Individuals,' sung by the second female lead and a chorus of women, teasing the heroine for being so obviously in love." And yes, thank you again, Jaime, for including the lyrics! Last but not least, I was able to track down the song as sung in the original cast recording on You Tube. Those deep memory furrows being what they are, I remembered every inflection and expression. And the lyrics? (courtesy of composer Harold Rome, who also wrote the score to Fanny - we had that album too). Here they are:

Certain individuals
Are walking on a rosy cloud,
And certain individuals
Are talking to themselves out loud.
Grinning like a birthday kid
With a brand-new toy,
Looking like Columbus did
When he said "Land ahoy!
(America!)"
Oh, oh, what we know
That we're not telling of,
About certain individuals
Fresh in -- pardon the expression -- love.

Certain individuals
Are feeling like a highness royal,
And certain individuals
Are reeling like they just struck oil.
Shining like a diamond pin
On a diamond chain,
Bubbling like the bubbles in
A glass of two cents plain.
(Or raspberry.)
Oh, oh, what we know
That we're not telling of,
About certain individuals
Fresh in -- pardon the expression -- love.

Jaime Weinman again:

"That's good lyric writing: simple yet cleverly rhymed, suggestive of everyday speech without being a carbon copy of it, full of specific images and fresh takes on familiar expressions."

A fun diversion at a time when fun diversions are sorely needed. And now to teach it to my grandsons. . . .

Cooking and Dreaming Italian-Style

I own too many cookbooks, way too many cookbooks. I admit it. I plead guilty. Uncle, uncle! I knew I was in deep trouble a number of years ago when I decided to put just my favorite everyday cookbooks together in a bookcase convenient to the kitchen. There were about 80. And I read them every single day, especially now, when I'm trying to limit my exposure to scary news, and dream about cooking, dream about food.

The past few days I've been browsing in my Italian cookbooks (How many total in that category? No idea. Let's just say a lot and leave it at that.) I can't remember when, exactly, my parents, my mother really, gave me Lydia Cooks from the Heart of Italy: A Feast of 175 Regional Recipes, published in 2009.

Just like the title says, the recipes are arranged by region, although not every region is represented. Calabria (where my father's parents were from) is there, although Campania (where my mom's parents were from and where Naples is located) is not. Not to worry though, my good friend Sandy Rappaport filled that gap some time ago with food maven Arthur Schwartz's tome Naples at Table ("Neapolitan cooking is 'what the whole world knows as Italian cooking'. . .two of the most popular foods in the world -- spaghetti with tomato sauce and pizza -- are Neapolitan. It speaks of the poverty that drove thousands of people from Naples and its countryside to seek opportunity elsewhere. . .") I also own several other cookbooks by the fabulous Mr. Schwartz (New York City Food, Soup Suppers, and What To Cook), but I digress. . .

Here is the full-color glossy that precedes the section of Calabrese recipes in Lydia's book, although Angelo and Maria came from Calabria's interior, not the seacoast. And if you really want to take a deep dive into Calabrian cuisine, there's always My Calabria, also from my collection:

Anyway, as I was paging through the Heart of Italy, a recipe from the Valle D'Aosta (a tiny region in northwest Italy bordered by France and Switzerland, those are some pretty swell neighbors) caught my eye: Roasted Pepper & Olive Salad with Fontina. It features roasted yellow bell peppers, large green olives, and Fontina cheese, preferably from the Valle itself, all slivered, over which is poured a dressing made with -- wait for it -- some heavy cream along with mustard and cider vinegar.  Lydia says you can replace the cream with olive oil (not terrible) but concedes that the cream gives the dressing "a velvety texture." 

Fontina. As one website lyrically rhapsodizes, At the feet of the Alps, in the Italian Aosta valley, lie the lush meadows upon which red-pied Valdostana cows provide the milk needed to produce Fontina. Incredibly rich and creamy, the flavors of this cheese are sweet and pungent, unveiling tones of butter and roasted nuts as it lingers on your palate.  I mean, my God!

So just for today I dream about Fontina cheese, about that salad, on a warm spring evening much like tonight, with a crisp Pinot Grigio, some Italian bread, and the company of foodie friends, carefree, shall we once again be carefree, shall Italy once again be La Bell'Italia, safe and beautiful, my ancestral land?