Tag Archives: Oscar Wilde

A Culinary Heist in Broad Daylight

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“Stealing a recipe is like stealing a kiss—do it boldly, do it well, and for heaven’s sake, make sure it leaves them wanting more.”

–—Me, just now, in the grand tradition of misattributed wisdom.

Rare is the occasion that finds me speechless, but this may be one of them. I h ave come up with an idea whose brilliance is beyond brilliant, and the only way that I know how to share it is in the context of a comment that Oscar Wilde may have made on January 3, 1882. When he disembarked from the ship that brought him to New York and went to the Customs House, government agents asked their standard question: 

“Do you have anything to declare?“

Wilde supposedly answered: 

“I have nothing to declare except my genius.”

I realize, of course, that I must tweak Wilde’s quote if it is to serve my purpose, and I will do so. I think there’s nothing wrong with doing that. Actually, I think it’s fine and dandy since I have given him credit, though I don’t see why that’s really necessary since the attribution to Wilde is more than likely erroneous. But I will err on the side of my integrity by retaining the probable misattribution. I have changed the quote by one word, albeit a significant one, thereby making it my own. Henceforth, it will be mine. All mine.

“I have nothing to declare except my culinary genius.”

Many of you–my Dear Readers–know about my culinary genius already, because I have hinted at it from time to time. However, my FB followers know about it far better because with them, I know no shame. I post frequent photos of my culinary masterpieces. Truthfully, I like to think of them as Food Porn. Only a few days ago, I shared my unabashed celebration of culinary desire, where a crackling sourdough Margherita pizza stole the spotlight. It had a blistered crust, air pockets rose like tiny golden mountains, bubbling mozzarella stretched into molten strands, and fresh basil leaves fluttered atop like green confetti. And get this. My photo showed it being served up before a roaring kitchen fireplace. It was more than just a meal. It was a hearthside seduction, a slow dance of flavors and flickering flames, teasing all the senses and leaving anyone looking utterly and deliciously captivated.

Inevitably, when I share those food porn photos, at least one person–usually more than one–comments:

“You need to publish a cookbook.”

I decline, demurely.

After all, I have so many other books in the fire that tackling a cookbook has always struck me as more than I can swallow. But things changed just the other day when I took a hankering for some Nuoc Cham-Inspired Meatballs. I love them, and they’re not that difficult to make. I Googled a recipe, and one by NYT Cooking popped up! Hot damn! I decided that I’d go with it. Then I discovered that in order to see the full recipe, I’d have to subscribe, and these days with the price of eggs going up and up and up, I just can’t afford to subscribe to recipes.

I just kept right on Googling, and before long, I discovered the same recipe splattered everywhere. That set me to thinking about Copyright infringements. Not to worry! Did you know that you can’t get a copyright or a patent on a recipe?

“Say whaat?”

It’s true. I won’t get into the (legal) weed(s), but recipes themselves can’t be copyrighted. However, if the recipe involves a unique step or process or if it takes on a literary twist, then it can be.

Unique literary twist???

OMG! Am I literary and twisted or what? I know how to fool around with words. This is super sweet. I’ll play around with one recipe–the NYT Cooking recipe for Nuoc Cham-Inspired Meatballs that I found verbatim on multiple websites without a crumb of credit given on any.

Give me a minute or five. I swear it won’t take long. I’m good with foolin’ around. BRB.

See. That didn’t take long at all. I just came up with a razzle-dazzle literary narrative to go with the recipe:

“I remember the first time I had them—golden, fragrant, and suspiciously addictive. A close acquaintance, let’s call him ‘Brentford Lee’ (because that’s his real name), swore he had perfected the recipe himself. ‘A dash of this, a pinch of that,’ he said, waving his hand like some sorcerer of Southeast Asian flavors. I nodded, politely chewing, my palate deciphering the unmistakable signature of a recipe I’d seen before. Somewhere.

“Of course, it didn’t take much sleuthing to confirm my hunch. The same ratios, the same sequence—right down to the crushed Ritz crackers binding it all together. A carbon copy of a certain prestigious publication’s recipe, passed off as Brentford Lee’s divine inspiration. But could I call him out? No, no. We live in the Age of No Credit, where recipes are pilfered like unattended bicycles and reposted without so much as a footnote.

“So I let him bask in his culinary genius, even as I swirled my meatball in a bit of nuoc cham and smiled. ‘Brilliant, Brentford Lee. Just brilliant.’ Meanwhile, I tucked the recipe into my mental vault—because in this lawless land of recipe anarchy, the only rule is to steal it back.”

I had no sooner drafted that dazzling literary narrative than I realized I was on to something. I could do an entire cookbook, stealing recipes from the world’s most renowned chefs, dress them all up in my literary garb–the recipes, not the chefs though that’s (food) porn for thought, too–compile them into a newfangled cookbook arranged by food categories like Appetizers, Salads, Soups, Mains, and Desserts, publish the book, and file my Copyright.

And just to bring this heist full circle, I’ve decided to submit my proposal to NYT Cooking. I figure, if they’re going to make me pay for recipes, they might as well pay me for the privilege of publishing my stolen ones first. A fair trade, don’t you think?

“I have nothing to declare except my culinary genius.”

Let’s see, I think you, my Dear Readers, deserve a modest tasting menu of what my extraordinarily extraordinary cookbook will be like so that I can pleasure your palate.

APPETIZERS: A PRELUDE TO LARCENY

“Stealing a recipe is like stealing a kiss—do it boldly, do it well, and for heaven’s sake, make sure it leaves them wanting more.”

–—Me, just now, in the grand tradition of misattributed wisdom

Every great heist starts small. A lifted truffle from a posh soirée. A swiped canapé from a silver tray when the host isn’t looking. A recipe, pilfered in broad daylight, then draped in literary velvet until it’s unrecognizable from its humble origins.

This section is the opening act, the whispered promise of what’s to come. Here, I present to you the stolen first bites—the small, seductive preludes to full-blown culinary mischief. Grab a plate. No one’s watching.

SALADS: LEAFY DECEPTION

“A salad is merely a plate of stolen ingredients pretending to be virtuous.”

—Me, again, because who’s stopping me?

Salads are the original confidence tricksters of the culinary world. They lure you in with the promise of health and innocence, then smother you in cheese, nuts, crispy bits, and a dressing so rich it might as well be dessert. They are gilded greenery, whispered excess, a balancing act between penance and indulgence.

And so, in keeping with the Age of No Credit, I present a selection of salads—each one an outright theft, draped in just enough literary flourish to make it legally mine. Grab your fork. Justice is dressed and ready to serve.

SOUPS: LIQUID LARCENY

“A good soup is like a well-told lie—it simmers, deepens, and by the time you taste it, you don’t even care where it came from.”

—A philosopher (probably). Or me (definitely).

Soup is the ultimate culinary illusion—a cauldron of borrowed flavors, a slow-simmered scam where even the simplest broth has a backstory so tangled in history, no one really knows who made it first. And that’s exactly why it belongs in this book.

Ladle deep, my Dear Readers, into the warm, uncharted waters of plagiarism, where the spoons are heavy, the bowls are bottomless, and the only thing hotter than the bisque is the lack of attribution.

MAINS: GRAND THEFT ENTREE

“Behind every great main course is a chef who swiped the idea from someone else first.”

–Not Escoffier, but could have been.

This is where the stakes get serious. The main event. The crown jewel of culinary heists. A place where time-honored traditions meet a well-timed Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.

Here, I serve up lavishly pilfered plates—steaks seared with someone else’s technique, roasts glazed in repurposed brilliance, pastas dressed in the creativity of long-forgotten hands. And yet, because I have woven them into my own dazzling narrative, they are now mine. All mine.

Bon appétit, legally speaking.

DESSERTS: SWEET, SWEET PLUNDER

“The best things in life are stolen. Ask anyone who’s ever ‘borrowed’ a cookie recipe and never returned it.”

—A confectionery thief with no regrets.

Dessert is the final seduction, the last laugh of the larcenous chef. Here, sugar and butter conspire in broad daylight, drizzled in caramelized deceit, dusted with the powdered sugar of plausible deniability.

From towering cakes to pies with scandalous backstories, I offer you this sticky-fingered collection of confections—every one taken, tweaked, and rebranded with just enough literary flourish to make it legally binding.

Because in the Age of No Credit, the only sin greater than theft is not licking the spoon.

_____________________

Voila! I have just uncloched the sections of my forthcoming cookbook. Maybe I’ll title it Cooking with Oscar. Or how about Culinary Heists of a Wilde Chef? I’ll keep thinking, but here’s the great part. What I’ve disrobed right here in front of you is protected by Copyright already because my blog is Copyrighted. All that remains for me to do is continue scouring the Internet. Whenever I find a recipe worthy of stealing in broad daylight, I shall do so. Then I shall dress it up–or down–in literary flamboyance and insert it into the proper section of my culinary opus in progress.

Food has never tasted this good, and, to think, it all began with my honest effort to find a Nuoc Cham-Inspired Meatball recipe. I guess it just goes to prove that a good recipe is not hard to find.

The Ghost of Palmyra Church Road

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“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900; Irish playwright, poet, and author known for his wit, flamboyant style, and sharp social criticism as well as for his role in the aesthetic movement, which emphasized beauty and art for art’s sake.)

Sometimes, I wonder when a routine in our lives becomes a ritual. They are different, of course. Routines are often performed out of necessity or habit. Rituals carry a sense of purpose, mindfulness, or emotional significance. I suppose a routine can turn into a ritual when its meaning grows beyond its original purpose—when the participants become more conscious of the act itself, savoring it, reflecting on its importance, or incorporating personal values into it.

I’m thinking, for example, of an afternoon drive that my late partner and I used to take daily down a nearby country road meandering along the banks of the Shenandoah River. It started as little more than a way to while away the time between Allen’s arrival home from his 7a.m. to 3p.m. shift at our local hospital until the start of our 5 o’clock cocktail hour and dinner prep.

We always took my Jeep. Allen didn’t like its bumpy ride, but since I was willing to drive, he put up with it. It didn’t take long before we both realized the routine had shifted from its original intent. It became a time when Allen could share the highlights of his day as a surgical technologist, and I could share highlights of mine as an English professor. Then, we savored being with one another, moving along, cocooned in quiet.

Now, heading out for that same drive feels different. I’m alone, but the road is still filled with echoes of those drives with Allen. The gravel crunches beneath the tires, a reminder that I’m traveling at a slower pace—though I still catch myself thinking in we. As I drive down our rutted road, the bumps and jolts are as familiar as ever, almost comforting, as if the past rides along with me into the present. I’m never in too much of a hurry. After all, I know that venturing down means that I’ll have to come back up eventually.

Fall has arrived. The goldenrod along the roadside catches my eye because it often made its way back home into floral arrangements. The landscape changes as I transition from the gravel onto the hard surface of the county road. It meanders along steep banks, the guardrails dented woefully from cars that couldn’t quite manage the turns. The sound of the tires shifts too, now whirring on the pavement as the engine hums along at a modest speed—never more than thirty-five, even though the road stretches out ahead.

Leaving behind the George Washington National Forest, I see the Shenandoah Valley open up into a vast, sweeping view of mountains—beyond them, West Virginia. Mailboxes line the road, clinging to its edge like sentinels. The curves of the road feel like a roller coaster, and I slow down as I near the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. It’s instinct now, my pause to check the depth of the water below, watching as it glides under the bridge.

I pass through Edinburg, a town where unoccupied buildings look as cared for as the rest. I find myself wondering what brought people here in the first place and what keeps them here now. Stony Creek runs by Edinburg Mill, built a decade or so before the Civil War. Just beyond is the cemetery, always a reminder, as if I ever needed one, that a little ways further is where we always used to turn left onto Palmyra Church Road.

I turn there today. This stretch is all too familiar. It’s paved but without markings to show the center of the road, the travel lanes, or the road’s edges. Massanutten Mountain looms straight ahead. I slow down even slower, savoring the ride, stretching out the trip as long as I can. I realize that I have no compelling destination. This trip is about the road itself, the memories, the connection to this place, and the quiet reflection it brings.

The speed limit drops to 25, and the road stretches out ahead. For now, it’s just me and the country road. There’s nothing behind me that I can see and nothing ahead of me but that same winding road.

Soon, I approach a grassy field stretching along the banks of the Shenandoah River. The grass, tall and dry, ready to bow down for a twin-engine plane’s landing. Small cones dot the nearly invisible runway, glowing at night like distant stars, guiding the landing, and then leading to a small, weathered hangar. In times past, we would sometimes glimpse a small plane resting at the far end of the field, its presence quiet and still. We never saw the pilot, if one ever existed. These days, the plane is gone, as if it never was. The field lies empty, waiting.

A little further along, I do a double take to my left as I see Palmyra Church of the Brethren. I’m not sure that Allen and I ever saw it on any of our drives. If we did, neither of us commented. I’m not surprised. It’s a modest church with white wooden siding, a metal roof, and a small steeple that adds a traditional touch. A brick chimney on one side adds to the rural charm. The front entrance is simple, with a door accessed by steps and a metal railing, alongside a wooden ramp. No one is there. The absence of people turns quiet into stark, making the church feel even more secluded if not abandoned.

I pause and cannot help but wonder why a road meandering along the mighty Shenandoah River would bear the name of a church so plain and inconspicuous that it’s easily unseen. Yet, even as I wonder, I know. For the dwindled few, it’s still a house of worship. And then I pause again. Seeing no cemetery. I wonder: where do they bury their dead?

I leave those wonderings behind me as I start looking ahead, hoping to see the small, thin woman that Allen and I used to see as she walked the road, her steps so soft they seemed to barely touch the ground. She was always beneath a large, open black umbrella, shielding her, sometimes from sun or rain or snow, but more often than not, from nothing more than open sky and passersby. Her pace seemed slower than the passage of time itself, as if she were floating rather than walking. Her face leaned down toward a cell phone held delicately in one hand, her eyes locked on its screen. She appeared ethereal, her presence more like a drifting shadow, but there was an undeniable humanity about her—fragile and real.

Allen and I worried about her. We broke our quiet to talk about her. Where was she going? Where had she been? Where was her home? How far away from home was she? Who was waiting there for her return? She seemed so other-worldly that I started calling her The Ghost of Palmyra Church Road. We always wondered whether we would see her on our next drive. We always did, every time, though in a different spot every time, always somewhere further back or somewhere further ahead. Over time, we warmed to her, and we waved softly. It took her longer, but the time came when she warmed back, shyly and slowly, as if to freeze time itself with the lift of her mittened hand.

Something about her presence always felt timeless. Today, she’s not here.

The rumble of tires against the pavement breaks the quiet as I approach a small bridge to my right, spanning this narrow section of the Shenandoah River, connecting to Old Valley Pike. Sometimes, if we were pressed for time, Allen and I would turn here and head back home.

Usually, though, we weren’t in a hurry, and we’d continue down the road where, from this point, it became Red Bank Road. Expansive farmlands open to my right, framed by wooden fences holding on to the Civil War. These fields, too, are dry and dusty.

To my right, I catch glimpses of the Shenandoah River through the sycamore. Rounding the last turn, I’m aware that the speed limit rises to 45 as I approach Mount Jackson. I could easily turn around and retrace the drive as Allen and I used to do as part of our ritual. But I don’t. I know that The Ghost of Palmyra Church Road is no more likely to appear than the plane that’s disappeared from the field. They coexist with the church that has no people and no cemetery–echoes in my memory.

As the landscape shifts and as the signs of the times creep back in, the quiet truth shatters my silence.

This time, I’m driving alone, my right hand resting on the Jeep’s console, no longer holding Allen’s hand in mine.

This time, I realize. Allen is gone.

This time, I realize. The ritual is gone.

This time, I realize. I’m driving home.

This is just another country road.