Cooked Under Pressure My mother loved her pressure cooker and gave testimony as if in a commercial: Preserves vitamins, fast cooking! Energy efficient! Sterilizes your food! Even quick-cooking vegetables like spinach, escarole, and broccoli went under the power of pressure, set the valve jiggling as if it might explode at any second. My father arrived as Mother served the meal. He washed his hands and ate in silence, while pressure built in that small dinette. We knew he could blow …
Tag: Joan Mazza
Five Scent Poems by Joan Mazza
The Scent of Memory 12 You might think of mint as gum flavoring or what makes Polident tolerable. Sometimes it’s a scent made for savoring— candy canes on Christmas trees, delectable in cookies. Boxes full of peppermints take you back to the deep South’s mint juleps in tall glasses on your honeymoon trip. You imagined yourself with servants, not slaves, a belle in hooped skirts, eloquent and beautiful, your loving so fervent you’d never worry about breath mint. How odd …