Sunday’s Times also carried a long article about the new pope, which included a few paragraphs about his years at Villanova. “He majored in math and attended Masses that were sometimes interrupted by shouts of ‘Hoagie Man!’ when a guy selling subs passed by.”
The Hoagie Man was an institution at Villanova, at least in the ’70s. You’d be studying in your dorm room, dinner a distant and unpleasant memory, and suddenly you’d hear the welcome cry of “Hoagie Man!” followed by the Pavlovian sound of a box full of hoagies – Italian, roast beef, ham & cheese – being dragged down the terrazzo floor in the hall. The day Pope Leo was elected I texted a former classmate, wondering if the papal apartment would now be getting nightly visits from the Hoagie Man. But I never thought of the Hoagie Man as a disrupter of Masses. He announced his presence upon entering a dorm, late in the evening, far from church.
Saturday evening we went to hear Seraphic Fire at St. Nicholas Church in Pompano Beach. Walking in from the back I saw something I had never seen before: a church food truck. The white lettering on the blue side identified it as “The Holy Grill of St. Nicholas” and included the slogan “Our COD is an Awesome COD.”
In his address to the audience before the concert, the priest said that the truck has served over 68,000 meals to the homeless in Broward County. Afterwards, he told me that it also appears at festivals, where it serves Scotch eggs and Guinness-battered fish and chips. Hence the awesome cod.
I can eat everything but, since my surgery, some things (like pistachios, which I love) are easier to swallow than other things (like almonds, which I’m ambivalent about). And I wonder: Do certain foods go down easier because I like them, or do I like them because they go down easier?
I was browsing at Barnes & Noble in Boca yesterday when I remembered that I was out of Cheerios. So I walked over to Whole Foods, where I found myself enveloped by a swarm of shoppers buying sweet potatoes, string beans, stuffing, pies. Lots of pies. Taking my cereal up to the cashier, I said, “We’re having a modest Thanksgiving this year.”
Today is Fat Tuesday, which means that tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the season during which Christians traditionally give up things they love – often foods, frequently chocolate. Tomorrow is also Valentine’s Day, so some “fasts” may be delayed 24 hours.
For as long as we have been going to Doc B’s in Fort Lauderdale, Hania has been lodging a complaint about the absence of gluten-free desserts. Managers change fairly frequently, so each new one hears her lament. Once we sat next to a man visiting from corporate headquarters in Chicago; we watched as he observed and instructed staff; he too got an earful from Hania.
Last night we found another new manager at the restaurant. Hania stopped him as he passed our table and launched into her spiel.
“But we now have a gluten-free dessert,” he told her. Not the flourless chocolate cake that she had long recommended, but a kind of chocolate mousse. It wasn’t on the menu yet because they were testing it out.
It was delicious, more complex than a classic chocolate mousse, with hints of salt and caramel, and a sprinkling of shaved nuts on top. (We passed on the whipped cream.)
Hania felt like a culinary agent of change.