Working/Feasting/Paris Cuisine

"We want the liver and the lights of Paris, we want to gormandize until we're green, because we're eating out our hearts for Paris, by which we mean the Paris Cuisine. We'd really settle for some bread and butter, we'd really settle, for a bit of crust, or for some gristle gathered from the gutter, but eat, eat, eat we must!"
From Cyrano, the Musical starring Christopher Plummer


Muff was always a hard worker, and though she learned young how important money can be, especially when you don't have any, she was very generous with her money and her time when she had a surfeit of either.
I remember once when we were unusually poor during our sophomore year at Clarke that we decided to scrounge up leftovers from the 'caf' and the Onion, and also cook some things my grandmother had given me in case the 'evil Catholics' as she called them, decided they weren't going to feed the protestants that day and cut me off from the cafeteria. She and my grandfather had driven from their home in Monticello to Dubuque just to bring me this mammoth roast, some potatoes and douches...don't ask.
Mary Karl got out her rice a roni boxes, and decided that would be a side dish, though it came perilously close to the dreaded pasta that Muff loathed with all her being.
We then seasoned and browned the roast, and put it in the oven in one of the dorms, along with some potatoes and Muff was in charge of cooking some canned corn. I don't know what happened in the ensuing hours, because we had all repaired to the Onion for a brief aperatif before the big meal. Next thing we know, smoke is pouring from the dorm kitchen and there's corn all over the place...seems Muff had figured out a way to make corn explode and the meat had caught on fire. The poatoes actually roasted up rather nicely in the fire, however, and were still edible, but the only parts of the roast we could scavenge were the middle bits where it was thick and still slightly red.
But when we were flush, we'd head to Marios for Ponzarotti, which were the size of a regulation football, and made with bread dough stuffed with motzarella, meat and spices, cooked and slathered with marinara sauce. They were impossible to eat in one sitting, but they were very tasty, and cheap. And the leftovers, like pizza, could be consumed for breakfast.
As I've noted before, while on campus Muff often worked in the cafeteria, with Larondo, or sometimes did room cleaning, so her boss was a 300 pound chef who wasn't too picky. My work study consisted of cleaning blackboards and attempting to be a model for the art students (clothed, of course, usually in whatever theater costume I was wearing for the latest production). I was under the auspices of Sister Xavier, or Zav, as we called her behind her broad back. Sister Zav was one of the few BVMs at Clarke who refused to abide by Vatican 2 and wear normal clothing instead of the big stuffy penguin-like habit. She towered over most of us, and she despaired of people like me, who are serial dawdlers. Yet she gave me the keys to all the classrooms without a qualm, even when I regularly forgot to lock them behind me after I'd cleaned the blackboards. She threatened me with something like eternal damnation (but, realizing I was a protestant and not suseptible to the requisite level of guilt, she lectured me on the aeons of Clarke students graduated in the century before who were responsible, moral adults, and not sniveling, brainless drama dweebs like myself) and told me that if one more book got stolen from the psych professors classroom (Hank Goldstein, who was a nebbish kind of guy, but whose nasal whine could send anyone reaching for a bottle of aspirin), I was going to be fired and roasted in Hades.
Of course, I had some huge tests the next day, and inevitably forgot to lock three key classrooms, so whom did I call to save my bacon? Muff, of course, the only person able to slip into the building and back out without being seen by Sister Zav. I eventually got fired anyway, but I kept the job for a couple more months.
After graduation, Muff tried to follow me to Boston to get her graduate degree in library science from Simmons College. Much to her disgust, Simmons, at the time, wasn't interested in books or periodicals at all, but wanted librarians to be computer experts and focus on gathering information for patrons, not in helping them find it themselves. Because she only had one class that dealt with books, and a childrens book class at that, she lost her enthusiasm for grad school rather rapidly. I was working as a household help to Mrs Pierce, a blind lady who lived in Cambridge and had a disgusting, pig-like dog named Suki. Suki was an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier, according to Mrs Pierce, but she snorted instead of barked, and would eat anything, even rotted garbage, happily. Suki was voracious and had no qualms about biting or chewing through things to get to food. Muff would come over and stay with me at Mrs Pierces place, up in the attic/garret I was allowed, and we'd slip down to the huge old kitchen and make M&M dogs. Muff invented these luscious things, which consisted of a hot dog in an open bun covered in motzarella cheese. Then we'd pop them into the toaster oven until the cheese melted, add a bit of mustard and voila, mustard and motzarella dogs. Our only problem was keeping the pig-dog quiet. Suki would grunt and push forward inside of her locked dog carrier so hard, she'd have the thing scooting across the floor because she knew there was food being made and she wanted it---all of it. So inevitably, we'd have to bribe Suki with three hot dogs and some buns with peanut butter on them to keep her quiet while we made our repast. Before Muff left Boston, I felt it only proper to take her out to a real seafood dinner, since Iowa affords little opportunity to eat fresh fish. As we were served freshly boiled lobsters and crabs, Muff dropped her napkin and paled visibly when the food arrived. "I can't eat this," she said "It's LOOKING at me!"
"But Muff," I said, "It's dead, its been boiled, its no longer on this earth, trust me, and its delicious, please don't let it die in vain, just give it a try!" But she refused, from that day on, to eat anything that was cooked with its eyes still in, so it could look at her. And I was stuck eating a lot of lobster and crab...not that this was such a bad thing, mind.
Muff went on to become a nanny for a family in Chatanooga, Tennessee. She was required to take care of the three kids, help with the laundry and light housekeeping, and, unfortunately, occaisional cooking. Muff didn't like to cook because she felt she wasn't too adept at it. She especially disliked cooking the food she hated the most, the dreaded macaroni and cheese. Muff would rather be dipped in boiling oil than eat a spoonful of mac and cheese. Once, when Muff, myself and Monica, the three leads in the Great Cross Country Race play, were invited to the director Tom Scores house, Muff had to sit down and politely make her way through a stuffed manicotti shell with a tiny bit of marinara sauce over it. I was going to say something, but she looked at me and hissed through gritted teeth "NOT ONE WORD" and proceeded to eat with great deliberation and in tiny bites, everything on her plate. OF course, the favorite food of the kids she was taking care of was none other than mac and cheese. Poor Muff, consigned to pasta hell for a year.
Once she returned to Marshalltown, Muff started working for Hardees Restaurants, after working briefly at a town Made-Rite Diner, and I recall telling her once how much I loved Hardees breakfast cinamon-raisin biscuits. "Those things are made almost entirely of LARD...you do know that, right?"she said. I was appalled, and never touched another of those fat-bombs again.
Muff worked for Hastings Bookstore for many years, and rose in the ranks just as she had at every job she'd tried that had even a whisper of advancement potential. She told me that while working there she'd gained a lot of weight, and I didn't really believe her until I saw her deplane in New York, where we met to get on our flight to Ireland. Muff assumed I would be horrified, but I wasn't bothered at all...I could tell my friend Muff was still there, full of life and adventure and mischief as ever.
And fortunately, Ireland isn't at all enamored of pasta, because potatoes, which Muff adored, were plentiful as were pork chops and chicken and beef dishes. The first "Irish Fry" breakfast we were served at the Blooms Hotel was a bit off-putting, however, because it consisted of eggs, Irish oat bread, a rasher of bacon, broiled tomatoes and, gasp, black discs of blood sausage. Neither of us could bear to even try the darn things, let alone eat all that we were served. But the lovely requisite pot of hot Irish tea made everything taste good. We had some fantastic meals while in Ireland, especially at the Waterford Crystal plant. Their cafeteria made the most delicious dishes, and you could go through cafeteria style and pick what you wanted, and eat for a pittance. I remember having a delicious stew and I think Muff had pork chops, but I remember the portions being large and satisfying and the Irish people being wonderful and warm to both of us.
Muff worked for a video store after Hastings closed, but then surprised me, as she often did, by going back to Marshalltown Community College and getting administrative training (she really wanted to do paralegal training but they didn't offer that) that allowed her to get her dream job of working in a library.
I remember her phone call the day she got the job--she was so thrilled, and I was so thrilled for her. She didn't mind that she'd be working in the basement, she was just happy to be working amongst books and bookish people. She told me that she'd had BJ cook healthy meals for her, since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and that she'd lost some weight, enough so that she didn't have to take as much Metforin as she had before. Muff had stopped smoking and had the use of a CPAP machine for her sleep apnea, and was in better health than she'd been for years, she told me.
Thats why it was such a blow to hear of her untimely death.
I raise a glass to you, my friend, and know that I will always remember you.