Rosemary Is for Remembrance. Only I Forget.

I l-o-o-ve rosemary. We grow it on our small upstairs balcony. I break off a bit of a branch when I go by it, and munch. I admit it's not for the wimpy. It does taste something of the coniferous. It's a bit twiggy in the mouth. Only to my obsessional thinking, this adds to the experience.

Of course in lamb. And I can't think of socca without it. And for a sort of remembrance cake I've made for sad occasions that need subtle marking. And.… And.... And.... I've even taken to tucking some in the phone pocket of my briefcase, to use in lieu of mints.

It's a source of automatic joy to me. I don’t question it. Who wouldn’t like it?

Last weekend, I flew some with me, bursting with immoderate pride to ----'s cottage. She said a quiet thank-you just in passing, but hey... I'm used to being around friends who are less crazed than I am re. food. A few days later, still at the cottage, I notice we haven't used it, and it's at the point of passing beyond reach into herby heaven.

I say aloud that we need do something with it quickly. She tells me, amused that we're here again: that for 16 years I've knitted much of my life to hers, and yet I keep forgetting she hates rosemary.

"Really?????"

"Oooh really."

"Who doesn't like rosemary??"

"Er… I don't."

Then I remembered my brother doesn't like dill. Something else my pink-eyeglasses-wearing brain rejects. Who doesn't like dill?

Comments

[Ed Ward]

Well, I'm a bit off rosemary myself, but at least there's a good reason: I had some friends who moved to California from Michigan back in the '70s. They'd driven the whole way in their car, and somewhere along the way, there was, for some reason, a bottle of rosemary shampoo resting on the dashboard which broke. It then seeped into the heating system. Well, in Northern California, it's cold enough most of the time that your heat is on. And at the time, I either didn't drive or my car was broken and I didn't have the money to fix it, so I'd catch rides with them a lot, the heater would be on, and I'd be trapped inside a damp car utterly saturated with the smell of rosemary. That, and not its culinary purpose, is what I associate it with.

That said, I always have a canister of the powdered herb on hand to add to tomato sauce that's going to get white beans put in it. Some things are just canonical.

[Tori]

Oh Ed--ugh! I often find that things hated by association are harder to befriend again than things that one just hates on their own terms. The common hate for cilantro, comes to mind.

Is rosemary easy to avoid in Berlin?

[Ed Ward]

Oh, anything with flavor is *real* easy to avoid here!