A Thousand Words: Family History

Read my latest post on The Nervous Breakdown:

The stories start right after Sunday lunch.

We are all crammed around our tiny kitchen table – me, my brother, my parents, my fraternal grandmother, and my maternal grandfather. The table only fits four, so my Dad is sitting on the office chair brought out from the living room and I am sitting on a small, red leather stool that’s usually in the hallway. I am wedged between my brother, my grandfather, and the dishwasher.

Our Sunday lunches – golden chicken soup, Wiener schnitzel with potatoes and cucumber salad, brownies – start late and end quickly. Toward the end of the meal the others know what is coming and they start to scramble towards the living room right after the last bite of dessert.
It is probably my position at first – too far from the door with no obvious escape route – that makes me the perfect audience for my grandfather’s stories. Later I feel too polite and too invested to get up and leave with the others.

So I load the dishwasher and sit back on my little red stool and prepare myself for a long afternoon.

Read more...

A Roll of Cottage Cheese, Covered in Chocolate

PORTLAND, ME – It is the most unique candy bar imaginable. I am not even sure I can call it a candy bar. It is a roll of sweet, lemony cottage cheese – smooth and fluffy, none of that weird, gritty, rubbery stuff – covered in a layer of crunchy milk chocolate. It’s about the size of my middle finger and it’s wrapped in a red polka-dot foil. It’s “Turo Rudi.” Literally translated: Cottage Cheese Roll. Or “rollie,” if we want to be accurate.

It is only for the Hungarian palate. I have never met an American who enjoyed it. I think you have to grow up with it to appreciate its weirdness. You have to have eaten enough to know how to open the package so that the chocolate doesn’t brake off and how to fish the last bits of chocolate crumbs out of the foil. You have to have crushed enough rollies in your backpack on hot school days to appreciate the way it tastes when it’s melted and to not be too surprised when it comes to represent your entire personal history and identity.

Because of course, it is more than just a roll of cottage cheese, covered in chocolate.

More on The Nervous Breakdown...