New Years Day Means Babies and Good Luck Peas
New Years Day is the perfect time for visiting, and I haven’t seen Coqui’s babies for six months now. In baby-time, six months is an eternity, so we drive once again, down PCH to pay a visit to the little French-American team. Coqui is a drop-dead gorgeous Texas red-head with an equally fiery spirit who married an Alsatian chef named Alexander virtually right off the boat, fresh from cooking for the defense minister of France. They met when both worked at a now-defunct Santa Monica restaurant called Rockenwagner (I was writing a cookbook for the eponymous chef at the time); Alex didn’t speak much, if any, English, so at first they communicated mostly with their eyes. Over the years his English improved, and he secured a nice, long-time job cooking for the first family of California. Now after four babies in 3 1/2 years their communication is once again non-verbal---they work in tandem like a well-oiled machine, keeping the chaos mostly at bay. The three smaller babies (all 2 ½) troop around the room right behind Stella like a diminutive band of pied pipers. Chloe---who at almost 4 can not truly still be referred to as a baby---watches the dynamics from uncle C’s lap, having had her own love affair with Stella when the babies were not yet so mobile. Chloe is the queen of the babies; they know it just as well as she does. But for an hour or two, they decide to make Stella their new queen.
Coqui has a big pot of black-eyed peas simmering on the stove, liberally studded with the leftovers of their Christmas ham, and she gives us both a small bowl of this grease and gladness. In Texas, black-eyed peas are eaten on New Years day, with greens, usually collard, to guarantee peace and prosperity. I want more of these butter-soft, hauntingly hammy peas almost more than I want peace and prosperity. Maybe I can have both. I resolve to put on a pot as soon as we settle down in San Luis Obispo. I am blissfully happy to spend some time with my girlfriend, who I miss not just for her secret-recipe rum cake every Thanksgiving, but on many other days in the year as well. Friends like this don’t require a great deal of cultivation: once the roots are deep, a little scattering of laughs and love once or twice a year will keep the friendship strong for decades. When you have as many shared memories of the fall-on-the-floor-funny variety as we do, a well-placed smirk or shoulder-shrug is as good as a thousand words.
As Coqui would say, Ham-a-licious!