No Country for Sore Throats

Real men wear spurs...to the grocery store.

Marfa, Texas. Population 2,000. Me, with a sore throat at the Marfa Pueblo Market. A country-western version of Joplin’s “Piece of my Heart” on the Muzak has me Texas two-steppin’ down an aisle to find throat lozenges after a four-hour delay at LAX and Typhoid Mary sitting across the aisle on the flight to El Paso. My husband trails behind me, wondering if the vast plains and 90-degree heat have rendered me delirious.

I’m in Marfa for my poet-cousin’s wedding to his English-professor fiancee. Why Marfa, you ask? It’s not because they’re members of the ‘Giant/No Country for Old Men/There Will Be Blood’ fan club. Before the more recent films, Marfa’s claim to fame was that the Liz Taylor-Rock Hudson-James Dean epic ‘Giant’ was made there, on the site of the expansive Evans Ranch. Scan the horizon from the 90 highway and you can still see the ruins of the Reata mansion facade  just to the left of the existing Evans family ranch house.

The reason I’m in this quirky little town (and I mean ‘quirky’ in a good way): My cousin and his fiancee would escape to Marfa when the pressures of graduate school at UT Austin were a bit much.

Meanwhile, back at the Pueblo, I see Jimmy Dean sausage on the refrigerated shelf just beneath the chorizo. A bounty of pearly-white onions, ruby-red tomatoes and emerald cilantro is making me crave a mean bowl of salsa in the tiny produce section. We’ve moved on to another Country-Western tune, and I’m loathe to dance for fear my husband will ditch me in the parking lot.

At last, behind a railed off section at the back of the Pueblo, I find the beauty and health section. After selecting a bottle of ibuprofen and a box of throat lozenges, I find I have to pay for the items there before I can continue shopping. Perhaps it’s a measure to prevent miscreants from making off with mascara and Alka-Seltzer. The genuinely nice lady behind the counter places my remedies in a clear plastic bag and staples the receipt to it.

As we  leave the Pueblo Market, I get my Texas Kodak moment, but my camera is at the bottom of my purse. He’s a modern-day Jett Rink, with worn Levis, a Stetson hat, dusty boots and spurs. Real spurs! His Western-style shirt is a crisp cream color, and in red embroidery between his broad shoulders is a website address for the rodeo that’s in town this weekend.

The 21st Century Cowboy’s leisurely pace is still too fast for my fumbling, and I catch a fleeting photo of him and his grocery cart leaving the Pueblo Market, his lanky frame illuminated in the scorching Marfa sun.

WHAT $10 BUYS:

1 pack of green tea and honey Chloraseptic throat lozenges

1 bottle of 25-count Advil

Gym socks and noodles and pig’s heads…oh my!

Locals shop for fresh vegetables at the Central Market in Hoi An, Vietnam (image by Pamela Corante-Hansen, 2011)

I reach over a stack of pre-school sized red plastic chairs for my steaming bowl of pho. In that instant, a scooter whizzes by in a blur, grazing my back. Had my soup been ready a half-second later, I would have landed on the dirt floor of the Hoi An Central Market, a near casualty of one of seemingly millions of motorcycles in this historic central Vietnamese city.

 

Bordered by Thu Bon River and two main thoroughfares, this indoor/outdoor public market reels you in with a discordant mélange of cooking scents and diesel. Arrive early and you can meander leisurely as vendors are setting up their stalls and warming pots and grills. Get there after 10 a.m. and you’ll be carried with the tide of locals through endless rows of squawking chickens, wildly vibrant flower stands, and smiling women flagging you with knock-off designer sportswear.

 

Faux Nike tube socks notwithstanding, Hoi An was once a vibrant trade center, drawing sixteenth century merchants from China, Japan, Italy, Portugal and other European nations. The Central Market had its beginnings in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, depending on whom you ask. But a few goods have remained in vogue despite the passing of centuries: silk and spices. Any spice can be had for a fraction of what you would pay in the U.S. Golden saffron, brick-red chili powder and curry the color of burnt sienna are sold in various quantities for under a dollar. As for the textiles, a rich array of colors and weaves are available for next to nothing. Choose your fabric and a pattern for just about any garment you can dream up et voila – custom couture for a fraction of what bespoke fashion costs at home.

 

Not a fashionista? No problem! Test your sense of adventure – and your tolerance for gore – by browsing the meat and fish section of the market. Not for the faint of the heart (or anyone sensitive to smells), the dock where fish arrive by the boatload is enough to challenge even the strongest of stomachs. Should you wish to see/sniff for yourself, get there before 7 a.m. to avoid the crowds and to take advantage of the cooler temperatures. Fish of all colors, sizes, shapes and gaping-mouth expressions are being tossed and packed, sliced and scaled, loaded and examined. If you pride yourself on having a high threshold for seafood aromas, this Dr. Seuss-Meets-Jack-the-Ripper cavalcade of carnage may be a bit more than you can handle.

 

Sadly, I’m in this category. I make haste from the fish dock to the safety of the indoor section, away from the olfactory assault. Visually, though, the carnage continues. The dockside fish massacre is a distant memory as I face a vast expanse of eerily fresh pig heads, evenly spaced in neat rows on spotless white table tops.  I press on, past tables of symmetrically arrayed kidneys, pig’s legs and stomachs. My meat marathon ends as I cross the finish line into the housewares section, and I exhale into a pile of cast iron skillets. The vendor looks up from his newspaper with a disapproving stare. Undaunted, I saunter past giggling kitchen gadget vendors and hanging displays of fly swatters. I emerge on the north end of the market into the brilliant midday sun, ready for a juicy pork banh mi sandwich.

 

WHAT $10 BUYS:

2 cups of strong Vietnamese coffee

A 1-kilo bag of coffee beans

1 custom-tailored men’s shirt

A half-kilo of chili powder

A kilo of mandarin oranges

2 bowls of pho

Sushi Chic

The Market Maven is deviating from the norm to share an extraordinary dining experience. She’ll be back soon with another market report. Stay tuned!

You leave the fracas of Pacific Coast Highway and enter a world of ambient chill, minimalist teak and a backlit bar bedecked with exquisite jewel-toned sake bottles. It’s pure izakaya, the Japanese answer to a tapas bar. Nothing is lost in translation as you’re escorted to your near-private booth, a sultry array of vintage kimono pillows lining the seats. You peer at the next table, the rolled bamboo shades offering a discreet cover. When your sake flight arrives, you toast mystery, things exotic and Japanese new wave cinema. And the sushi? Let’s just say your first bite takes you back to that tucked-away little bar you happened upon your first night in Tokyo, a tranquil haven from the glorious neon chaos outside. Japonica Dining, 1304 ½ S. Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach. (310) 316-9477.www.japonicadining.com

Decadent Delights in Uruguay’s Dairy Country

Be bad. Be very bad.

A vintage icebox, its smooth, white finish chipped in places, is the first thing that catches the eye at La Lechería, an artisanal dairy and specialty food shop in Carmelo, Uruguay. A ceiling fan whirs languorously over the refrigerated display case. Inside, classic milk bottles are lined in neat rows next to glass jars of farm-fresh goat cheese. If it weren’t for the sales clerk’s uber-modern t-shirt and hipster eyeglass frames, you would swear this was Uruguay, circa 1918.

The whitewashed wooden floors, white counters, white walls and primarily white product packaging make La Lechería feel like a wholesome version of the infamous Milk Bar in “A Clockwork Orange.”  But don’t let the pristine, innocent vibe fool you, because here’s where things get sinfully sordid. The ice cream. Let’s just say a sign should be posted on the front door: “Shed healthy eating habits before entering.”

Go ahead—be bad. Be brazenly bad and dive into two generous scoops of house-made ice cream, crafted with the richest milk you’ll ever taste outside of Switzerland. And the flavors are sublime in their simplicity: chocolate, strawberry, coconut, dulce de leche, peach.

If the ice cream only adds fuel to your wicked streak, sin again with pastries so enticing they take the concept of ‘food porn’ to a whole new level. We’re talking decadent fruit topping on a flaky, buttery crust. And the seemingly harmless little shortbread cookies peeking out of filmy white wrappers? There’s no turning back after that first bite.

For those of you with saltier palates, La Lechería offers a few locally produced goat or cow’s milk cheeses. In addition to the cubed goat cheese in a jar, wheels and wedges of Parmesan-style cheese tantalize from behind the glass case, a veritable foodie red-light district.  The cheese selection is on the lean side, but the prices are reasonable compared to artisanal cheeses in the U.S. A generous slab of Parmesan-style cheese runs $6, a jar of goat cheese, $3.

Once you’ve satisfied your cravings and condemned yourself to 100 more years in Diet Purgatory, you collapse, exhausted, on the front bumper of a vintage Model-T parked outside the store. You dreamily brush fluffy pastry crumbs off your chin, the afterglow of another gastronomic transgression still warm in your belly. La Lechería, located in the Carmelo Yacht Club, Carmelo, Uruguay.

What $10 Buys: Two glass jars of artisanal sweetened yogurt, one jar of house-made fig jam, two raspberry tarts.

Magnificent Meets Macabre in Arequipa, Peru

Glorious Peruvian cheeses! The friendly cheese vendor will offer you a taste.

Gustave Eiffel would turn over in his fin de siècle grave to learn that his gem of a public market in Arequipa, Peru today houses purveyors of alpaca fetuses and frog juice. Before you go running for the smelling salts, be advised that the Mercado San Camilo also sells a staggering assortment of local delicacies that taste as intoxicating as they are obscure. I spent six days exploring my mother’s hometown, a land of proud, hard-working and pragmatic people whose fabled city was born at the foot of a volcano nearly 500 years ago.

With my cousin Alejandro and his wife Claudia as my guides, we head out to Mercado San Camilo, Arequipa’s central market. The turn-of-the-last-century edifice sits in the historic core of Peru’s second largest city, a chaotic mishmash of Spanish colonial mansions, modern optic shops, atmospheric cloistered churches, a postcard-perfect central square, taxi-clogged cobbled streets and a dizzying crush of pedestrian activity. From the outside, the market bears the stamp of decades of haphazard renovations and gallons of garish blue paint. Once inside, though, the visitor is captivated by the smells, sights and sounds of one of the country’s finest examples of a public market.

From the Pierola entrance, a five-yard walk leads to the cheese merchants section. Here, friendly vendors offer tastings of several local cheeses, ranging from a fresh, earthy farmer’s style cheese (excellent paired with the ubiquitous large-kernel white corn on the cob) to a more pungent semi-hard salty cheese that melts beautifully in the regional rendition of the classic ham and cheese sandwich.

We savor three different local cheeses before cruising through the brujeria (folk-healing) stands to the right of the dairy merchants. No campy 60s jungle adventure film could prepare me for what I am about to see: Plexiglas boxes of dried llama fat. Mummy-like alpaca fetuses, some wearing jaunty, doll-size chullos, the traditional Andean knit cap. Herbs and flowers whose bewitching floral notes bring the Arequipa countryside into the middle of a bustling city. Soaps and bottles with colorful labels promising riches and revenge, love and divorce. I consider taking home a little luck-in-a-bottle but visualize myself in a U.S. Customs holding cell and decide to take a pass.

After about the third point-of-purchase display of desiccated baby alpacas, I’ve had my fill of the macabre and mysterious. We wind our way through the witchy warrens until we find ourselves in the produce section. I look up at the wrought iron ceiling supports and recognize Eiffel’s oeuvre. I let myself be tempted into sampling various varieties of fruit found only in Peru, such as lucuma, a sweet, starchy fruit whose flesh resembles sweet potato and whose flavor is akin to pumpkin pie minus the nutmeg and cinnamon.

Our fingers still sticky with lucuma fruit, we spot the sign at the end of the aisle. JUGO DE RANAS. Frog juice. We approach with a mixture of disgust and curiosity. We gather around an elegantly dressed local waiting patiently at the counter for her concoction. She tells us that she has been slipping her 12 year-old son a monthly serving of the foamy elixir for the past eight months and his grades have risen exponentially. Thanks to mom’s sheltering instinct, the poor kid has no idea what he’s drinking.

The frog juice barista gives me the stink-eye as I take pictures of a tankful of doomed froggies, while the pregnant and incredibly brave Claudia stands on a plastic crate to get a front-row view of an adorable little Peruvian critter’s ghastly demise.

Professionally rendered signs at the Jugo de Rana stand promise relief from anxiety, stress and insomnia, as well as a brain boost. Given the choice, I’d rather sit through an eternity of Pre-Calculus for Nitwits classes than guzzle a tumbler full of herbs, powdered roots and a walnut-sized frog that died a martyr’s death to make a muddy, frothy shake. For now I’ll stick with B-vitamins and red wine. And maybe a bar of “Bring me Riches” soap. Mercado San Camilo, Calle San Camilo and Pierola, Arequipa, Peru.

What $10 buys:
One wheel of farmer’s cheese, one bottle of Suerte (good luck) cologne, one “grande” jugo de rana, ½ kilo of cancha (salted and roasted corn kernels), six lucuma fruits.

Attention Shoppers: The Antidote to the Lifestyle Supermarket

They say a successful cosmetic surgery is one that leaves your acquaintances marveling not at the skill of the surgeon but at how rested you look. Alas, several of my local Major Grocery Store Chains have fallen victim to the infamous “lifestyle” makeover that leaves one wondering what happened to that old familiar face. I’m sure you’ve experienced it: Ambient lighting designed to make the most tired cantaloupe look positively delectable. Enough antibacterial wipes to make a grown germ cry. And the Muzak? Watered-down 80s standards to lull stressed Gen-Xers like me into a senseless shopping coma.

But fear not, gentle shopper; there is an antidote: florescent lighting, Eisenhower-era formica tile floors, the heady aroma of ripe produce and fresh meat, the lively strains of a Middle Eastern dance soundtrack. Around you, the crowd gently jostles. Seasoned hands pluck ripe peaches, a discerning eye inspects two crisp bundles of cilantro, and a glittery yellow sari floats between a stand of shiny oranges and a wall of ochre-toned spices.

The good news—you don’t need to travel to Bombay, Casablanca, Oaxaca or Beirut to escape the Stepford-like clutches of the Lifestyle Grocery Store, which will suck your wallet dry faster than the canned music will shrink-wrap your soul. Venture no farther than the heart of Anaheim, California, population 340,000. To be precise, 10500 Magnolia Avenue, site of the Orange County branch of Super King Markets.

In this United Nations of food and shoppers, you’ll find an entire aisle replete with more than a dozen varieties of rice, a section dedicated to pastries from the Levant and a meat counter that seems to go on for miles, fully outfitted with living, breathing, knowledgeable attendants ready to slice up the perfect cut of lamb shoulder.

Cheeses from places as far-flung as Bulgaria, as familiar as Mexico, as exclusive as France and as pedestrian as the good old US of A line the shelves of the refrigerated cheese section. The prices are a steal compared to the equivalent in specialty food stores or the aforementioned nipped and tucked supermarket chains.

My ethnic grocery store-loving father (whom you met in my very first blog entry) shops almost exclusively here now. After all, where else could he score a 10-lb bag of Basmati rice for the equivalent price of a chai latte?

The priciest item I saw during my inaugural visit to Super King was a gorgeous $12 glass jar of Greek honey, artfully wrapped in clear cellophane and secured with a fabric ribbon in the blue and white of the Greek flag. Absolutely covet-worthy.

As you elbow your way through the polyglot crowd, your biggest dilemma will be how to carry all the bargain-priced goods back to your car. Meanwhile, the Middle Eastern music emanating from the store’s speaker system has me expecting a line of belly dancers to burst forth from the swinging double doors of the stockroom. If they ever do materialize, I have a feeling they won’t be the heavily botoxed, nipped-and-tucked kind.

WHAT $10 BUYS:

7 bunches of picture-perfect radishes
7 pounds (not a typo!) of white onions
A 32-ounce jar of tahini
A pound of whole, cleaned tilapia
A 19-ounce jar of Russian-style eggplant spread
One 30-count package of corn tortillas

Note: Angelenos will be happy to know there are two Super King Markets in LA County. Visit www.superkingmarkets.com for details.

Grand Central Market: Feeding Los Angeles for 92 years

A hearty belly laugh rises above the din of the crowded marketplace as an older gentleman banters in Arabic with a cashier. Minutes later, a waitress places a heaping plate of saffron rice and lamb kebabs on the stainless steel counter where he is seated. Across the way, an Asian spice vendor rattles off in fluent Spanish the particulars of two different varieties of chili to a woman holding a sleeping infant. The woman turns briefly to scold her two giggling young boys for blocking the path of a passing LAPD officer.

Worlds collide in the tastiest way imaginable at Downtown Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market, the city’s oldest existing open-air market. Situated in the vast ground-floor space of a turn-of-the-last-century building, the market is an international foodie’s paradise. A Salvadoran pupusa, a thick tortilla stuffed with a choice of seasoned meat, cheese or vegetables, can be sampled at Sarita’s Pupuseria. If you’re craving chop suey, Ongpin Express offers lunch platters one aisle over. Always a winner is the carnitas taco at Las Morelianas, à la carte or accompanied by savory rice and beans. Wash it down with a sweet cup of horchata, a cinnamon-spiced Mexican rice beverage. After lunch, you can grab fresh ingredients for an evening meal from one of more than 40 produce, spice and meat vendors.

Located at the foot of Bunker Hill on Broadway and Hill Streets between Third and Fourth, Grand Central Market has fed Angelenos and tourists alike since 1917. The beaux-arts structure was originally the headquarters for Ohio businessman Homer Laughlin’s ceramics enterprise. Built in 1897 by architect John Parkinson, it holds the distinction of being Los Angeles’ first fireproof and earthquake proof building.

Enter the garage-like archways on Broadway and wander through a warren of food, produce and spice stalls. Some original neon signs are still in place, giving visitors the sense that they’ve been transported back to a time when the servants of wealthy Bunker Hill households would ride the Angel’s Flight railway down to the market to purchase a day’s provisions.

Today Angel’s Flight remains shuttered following an accident in 2001, and Bunker Hill’s grand manors were razed in the 1960s to make way for modern office buildings. The market continues to face some challenges. “We’ve cut back on staff since the economic crisis hit, and now I work seven days a week,” says Jeronimo Reyes, manager of La Huerta Produce. “Business has slowed somewhat in the 10 years I’ve worked here, but there’s a lot of people still doing their shopping here.”

Economy aside, Grand Central Market remains a bargain hunter’s paradise and a place where those with a taste for the exotic can run amok without breaking the bank. La Casa Verde sells three pounds of roma tomatoes for $2, four pounds of black plums for $1 and the candy-sweet cherimoya fruit for $3.99 a pound. One caveat–much of the produce sold at Grand Central Market does not have a long shelf life, so unless you’re entertaining, have a large household or are just plain ravenous, plan on consuming fruits and veggies within a few days after purchasing.

Certain dry goods for sale at the market will last a while in the pantry. Del Rey Productos Latinos carries some hard-to-find Goya brand foods that are popular in Latin American recipes. Sazón Goya con azafrán, or Goya seasoning with saffron, is sold here alongside Greek olive oil. An affable staff member at Del Rey offers a taste of three different types of feta cheese on display in the refrigerator case. The winner—a briny Bulgarian feta.

If the market’s various products represent the culinary microcosm that is Los Angeles, its clientele are equally cosmopolitan. In one hour I overhear five different languages spoken. Visitors from all corners of the world should encounter little if any language barriers among the market’s diverse merchants.

No visit to Grand Central Market is complete without a stop at La Huerta, a candy stall under the same management as La Huerta Produce. Sweets sublime and strange crowd the clear, sectioned display case. The sugared tamarind looks very much like a donut would if it were made of crushed dates and rolled in brown sugar. Not as appetizing is the chili tamarind, its fine coat of red chili powder seemingly ready to burst into flames.

I cut a path through a throng of sugar-buzzed kids as I spot my Holy Grail—Mexican mazapán, sweetened ground peanuts molded into a fat poker-chip shape and wrapped in the same wax paper with the red rose design that I’d see on childhood visits to Baja California. It’s impossible to say whether the market carried mazapán in the early days. Regardless, at five for $1, it’s a deal I can’t resist.

What $10 Buys:
3 lbs. of Roma tomatoes
5 oz. Bulgarian Feta cheese
10 pieces of mazapan candy

Migros: The young Market Maven in the land of chocolate and watches

Geneva, Switzerland, the preternaturally perfect city, was hopping to the strains of Europop during the summer of 1988. This was the year the young Market Maven, outfitted in a blue smock and cheerful smile, rang up sales for the elegant patrons of Migros (one of Switzerland’s largest grocery store chains), Servette-Ecole branch. The store was on the edge of the city’s international diplomatic quarter, explaining the constant stream of chic, cosmopolitan expats (with the occasional Ugly American) who filtered through every day.

Migros, at least at the time, was like a melange of pre-Greatland Target and Vons, but with a decidedly Swiss flair. I worked in the clothing section on the second floor and occasionally got to work in accessories on the ground floor selling the M Watch, or Migros’ version of the 80s phenomenon that was the Swatch Watch.

Some quirky Migros standard operating procedures:

1. Prior to purchase, clothing was folded, placed in a plastic bag and sealed, the prices written on the bag with a red sharpie. This process was called “faire l’emballage,” or “doing the packaging.” Customers would pay for their booty at a downstairs cashier.

2. Beach towels were sold according to weight (Greatest Possible Error, anyone?) and a classic stainless steel produce scale was placed adjacent to the large bin of colorful beach towels. Towels also were subject to “l’emballage.”

3. The cheese section of the store was not refrigerated–cheese is considered a “living organism,” according to a French friend–and thus emitted a gorgeous, ripe aroma. This was my favorite section, given my early passion for stinky cheese.

4. The vast majority of food products sold were Migros label. A bit Orwellian but I have to admit the quality was on par with Nestle and other name-brands. Hello, Migros chocolate!

Some of my favorite co-workers included the dashing Swiss-Italian branch manager, Mr. Cennamo, who was the only employee exempt from the signature Migros smock. Clad in Italian tailored suits, he was as gracious as he was hot. Then there was Pascale, an uptight cashier with an awsome Flock-of-Seagulls haircut and the most gorgeous shoes I’d ever seen. Marcel was an exchange employee from the Swiss-German town of St. Gallen, in Geneva to perfect his French.

As for the customers, Claire was the overweight, developmentally disabled woman who haunted the store several times a day, had a penchant for slapping cashiers, and harbored a crush for Mr. Sacchetti, a mustachioed clerk in the electronics department who was visibly upset by Claire’s flirtatious overtures. There was the delightful Russian woman who spoke no French or English, and with whom I developed a wonderful rapport communicating in hand gestures and broken German. She cried on the last day that we would see each other.

But my absolute favorite was the elegant, white-haired French lady who took a liking to me and called me her “petite Americaine.” She was in the store every day to buy groceries, and each Friday she would bring me a roll of Mentos. Over the course of that summer, I learned why she had such a soft spot for Americans.

During the Second World War, her village was bombed by the Germans and liberated by American troops, who had earlier dropped emergency relief parcels from airplanes. She said the parcels, attached to silk parachutes, would float down, bringing food, medicine or other emergency supplies. Depending on the color of the parachute, villagers could tell what each package held. Making the most of these gifts from the sky, she had used white silk from a food parcel as a petticoat underneath her wedding dress the day she got married.

As my time in Geneva drew to a close, I reluctantly let my new friend know that I would soon be leaving for the U.S. She took the news in a staunch manner, nodding silently.

On my last day of work, she came to the store and handed me a soft package wrapped in tissue paper. Inside was a yellowed piece of white silk, the stitch marks from its former life as a parchute still visible. I’ll never forget the look in her wise old eyes. An inner strength, a quiet dignity and the silent reassurance that she would forever be indebted to my countrymen.

What $10 Buys:
One Toscana Anna’s Pizza Margherita

Assisi: Of Saints and Truffles

Self-denial is not for the faint of heart. I can't imagine life without Italian cheese and olives.

It was decades after I’d finished Catholic school that I learned the same region of Italy that gave the world Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi also gave us the crown jewel of all fungi.

Nothing I’d read in “The Lives of the Saints” as a St. Callistus fourth grader prepared me for last summer’s excruciating “Martyrdom of the Saints” installation (do a Google search for “jock’s mare” and you’ll know what I mean) in Assisi’s Palazzo Vallemani. After an hour of cringe-worthy exhibits, we were desperate for anything remotely uplifting.

We made haste down via San Francesco and 50 yards later on via A. Fortini, we stumbled upon the antidote to all thoughts of “breaking wheels” and “breast rippers”–Umbrian black truffles.

If you blink, you might walk past the demure window display of dangling salume and stacked cheese wheels and gravitate towards the colorful, hand-painted ceramic platters and and matching espresso cups in neighboring storefronts. But the unmistakeable earthy aroma of truffles spills from the doorway of the tiny market onto the cobblestone street, causing the most distracted food snob to come to a sudden stop, nose twitching, pulse quickening.

We stepped through the beaded screen (flying insects not allowed), overwhelmed by a sensory rush: oregano-seasoned black olives, pungent goat cheese, truffle salami, pistachio mortadella, crook-necked balls of cheese, tangy farm-fresh yogurt…and that’s just the refrigerated case. Behind us, the shelves bore bottles of olive oil in jewel tones of gold and green, jars of amber honey, ruby-red wines, and the piece de resistance–truffle oil.

Within a matter of minutes, we emerged from this tiny oasis of flavor into the sea of ceramics shops, armed with a 2 ounce bottle of “Gocce di Tartufo” white truffle oil and a generous helping of black truffle salami.

I left Assisi with a greater appreciation for the virtues of sainthood and self-denial, knowing full well that the heady allure of Umbria’s own black gold was too much a temptation for this nice Catholic girl to resist.

What $10 Buys:
Roughly two-thirds of a 2-ounce bottle of Gocce di Tartufo truffle oil (slightly more if the dollar drops against the Euro any time soon).

Petco: All Good Cats go to Kitty Heaven

My first foray into a Petco store was one year and 11 months ago. My mission: to find a collar for ChocoCat, the green-eyed, black domestic short haired feline who’d decided to adopt my husband and me a few days earlier when she presented her skinny, lethargic self atop a wall in our garden as Jim was watering the plants. One look and I knew she hadn’t eaten for weeks. She resembled the black, green-eyed cat who lived in our next-door neighbor’s back yard, the same neighbor who had moved to Thailand a month earlier. I strongly suspected that he had abandoned his cat, since I continued to see a black, green-eyed cat in his yard for weeks after he moved out. If the gaunt little cat in our garden was indeed the neighbor’s abandoned pet, I was determined to give her the best life she could possibly have, despite the fact that she would have to live outdoors because of my husband’s allergies.

But back to Petco…

A vast display of doggie attire was the first thing I saw when I entered the Petco on Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach. There were jackets, cocktail “dresses,” mini-tuxedos (for the oil barons of the dog world?), sportswear, outerwear, and of course, the ubiquitous college letter sweatshirt. The dyed-in-the-wool cat person in me laughed, thinking no cat worth its weight in MeowMix would lower itself to being dolled up and trotted around for human entertainment.

I finally found the cat section, modest in size compared to the square footage dedicated to man’s best friend. The range of kitty paraphernalia on display was mind-boggling–everything from plush mouse squeak-toys to elaborate entertainment towers guaranteed to amuse even the most cynical of felines. In the “health and beauty” aisle, conditioners, shampoos and powders in traditional and organic formulas lined the shelves. My favorite find–”Kitty Wipes,” or moistened towlettes designed to keep a cat fresh and clean. The label bore a smiling cartoon cat wiping down his armpits with a Kitty Wipe. I was sold– Kitty Wipes for ChocoCat! After I found the collar, I wandered back to the beauty products and spied a dry shampoo made exclusively for cats. Just spray on the foam, massage and brush, et voila, a clean kitty emerges. I held back, only because I was short on time and because I figured I’d wait to see if the cat would stick around. Maybe she wouldn’t get that we were committed to taking care of her, especially since she had to remain outside.

ChocoCat got it. She got it so well that she stuck around for two years. In the course of those two years, I did wander back into Petco, once to have a heart-shaped brass ID tag made in the automatic engraver, another time to get advice on what to feed a cat with really bad breath (didn’t keep me from loving her!). A wonderful Petco employee whose name I’ve forgotten but whom I always referred to as “The Cat Whisperer” spent 30 minutes with me that evening, explaining how a concoction of parsley and olive oil, “sprinkled on her food like salad dressing,” not only would help resolve the kitty halitosis but would keep her coat shiny. I tried it at home, but ChocoCat was too much of a cynic to buy into any diet fads.

In all the trips I made to Petco over the course of two years, I never did buy the “Dry Clean” Waterless Cat Bath. It was always, “I’ll get it next time.”

Three days ago, ChocoCat suddenly stopped eating. On Tuesday afternoon, Jim managed to get me out of my study to take a look at ChocoCat, who was breathing erratically and through her mouth. I panicked. Jim climbed onto our neighbor’s roof and retrieved her so that I could take her to the vet. A note about the roof–it was ChocoCat’s little kindgom. She would sleep up there in the sunshine all day long, undisturbed by other creatures or the gardening crew–and we had a bird’s-eye view of her from all levels of the house. Even though she was outside, we could see her constantly as we went about our day-to-day inside the house. We probably saw more of her on a daily basis than most people see of their indoor cats.

At the animal hospital, the vet took an x-ray, and everything looked normal. There was some inflammation in her lungs, but he didn’t seem to think it was anything serious. He gave her a shot of cortisone and asked that I keep her indoors and note any changes in her breathing.

She slept in the master bath that night, where I had placed her food and water bowl, a pillow and blanket and a temporary sandbox. The next morning, her breathing was more labored, and although she had made an attempt to eat her food sometime during the night, she hadn’t had any water.

Within a matter of hours I was back at the vet’s. This time they put her in an oxygen tank, but still no prognosis. They told me to take her home and observe her, and to call if the breathing appeared to get worse. My heart sunk.

As much as I wanted to ignore it, my instinct told me that things weren’t good. Frustrated by the lack of a diagnosis from two different veterinarians at the clinic, and my heart breaking every time ChocoCat took another rattling, labored breath, I felt completely helpless, profoundly sad.

It occurred to me to go to Petco. At my wit’s end about how to ease her suffering, I decided it was time to give her that dry bath. In “Magical Thinking” mode, a part of me wanted to believe that the dry bath would be the panacea that would regulate her breathing and thus provide a healing dose of oxygen to her system.

$10 later, I sat on the carpet with ChocoCat on our second floor landing, which she had decided was a cool place to hang out.

Not at all flustered by the whooshing sound of the foam mousse as it oozed through the nozzle and onto her black coat, ChocoCat purred loudly as my hands worked the white, clove-scented foam into her fur. The whole process seemed to relax her, although she continued wheezing with every breath. I sat with her as her coat dried, and then I began brushing her. The gentle action of the brush seemed to relax her even more, and soon the wheezing stopped and all I could hear was her purr. She curled up into a little ball and fell asleep.

I took advantage of the lull to go upstairs and grab a quick bite, but soon her gasps drove me downstairs again. I lay down next to her and cried.

There would be one more visit to the vet that night with the same ambivalence about possible “underlying metabolic” conditions and “cardiac events.” 90 minutes later I was home, crying as her rasping became louder, as her energy level sank so low she no longer could hold herself up.

Jim came home 30 minutes later and this time, the three of us piled into the car and headed to an after-hours emergency veterinary clinic.

This would be ChocoCat’s last car trip. We left her in the care of the amazing Dr. Boudreaux, who gave us a preliminary assessment and promised to call with any important findings. Shortly after midnight, Dr. Boudreaux called us at home with a sad prognosis. ChocoCat had a mass on her epiglottis, which had spread into her trachea. The options, none of which carried a strong chance of recovery, were chemotherapy or a complicated surgery. The most humane option, Jim and I decided, would be euthanasia.

Epilogue

ChocoCat left this world around 1 a.m. today, surrounded by Jim and me. We could not stop reassuring her that we would always love her and never forget her. We told her what a gift she was in our lives, and we thanked her for honoring us by choosing to spend the last couple of years of her life as our little buddy.

What a hearty little kitty. Fourteen years of what we presumed was a rough life, yet she learned a few tricks and was always ready to play, always ready to shower us with her brand of kitty love.

What $10 Buys:
A 4 oz. bottle of “Natural Care” Dry Clean Waterless Bath.

No amount of money in the world can buy the unconditional, unquestioning love and affection of the little black stray who stole our hearts.

ChocoCat, we miss you, we love you, and you are in our hearts forever.