Category: Reviews by Patricia Prijatel

Early in her career, Wini Moranville decided her lifetime goal would be “to rearrange a modest but sweet life” around small moments and great meals. She was in the Rhine River valley on a backpacking trip through Europe, where she discovered food and wine that “tasted like the joy of knowing something good had settled into your soul and will be there forever.” These were the moments to live for, she realized.

And so she did. She became a food and wine writer, summer resident of France, and restaurant critic for the Des Moines Register. And now, she shares this sweet life in her memoir, Love is My Favorite Flavor, an engaging book that demonstrates how food is all about love—growing it, preparing it, serving it, and sharing it.

She started waitressing when she was 13 at Baker’s Cafeteria, a family-run, family-focused place with plenty of mashed potatoes, gravy, and cream pie. For the next ten years, through high school and college, she worked at some of Des Moines’ iconic restaurants——Younkers’ Tea Room, the Meadowlark, and Parkade Pantry— building the foundation on which her career was forged.

She still remembers instances in which she failed a customer in need of sustenance, like the woman in the houndstooth suit who wanted a tuna salad sandwich at The Soup Kitchen, one of Des Moines’ earliest vegetarian restaurants. In hindsight, rather than turning the woman away, Moranville wishes she had encouraged her to try one of the restaurant’s satisfying alternatives and helped her enjoy her lunch. Or the little boy whose family mocked him for mispronouncing pecan to the point he couldn’t enjoy the pie he had been savoring. The memory of somebody being deprived of the joy of a meal still rankles.

And she remembers a fussy customer who wanted her tea in a teapot so she could brew it just the way she wanted. First, the woman seemed unsufferable, but then Moranville caught a glimpse of her “staring contemplatively into space and sipping tea brewed just the way she liked it. She simply looked so…happy.”

She realized the woman, like most customers, had her own drudgery, and the treat she allowed herself was her afternoon cup of tea.  “And it took so little to make her happy: hot water in a teapot, tea bag on the side, two packets of honey.”

In the best restaurants, the staff shares a meal together before their shift begins, testing menu items, but also bonding, creating an atmosphere in which serving feels like a calling, not a job. She saw this in full color on a trip to France, when she and her husband Dave came upon a raucous group on a restaurant terrace, finishing a meal and enjoying the food and one another. They learned this was the staff, which was just about ready to go to work, after finishing the espresso being served by the restaurant owner.  They talked to a chef, who encouraged them to return later, which they did, enjoying their own delicious and convivial meal. Moranville observes:

It occurred to me that the staff seemed to operate from a kind of pact: they had their turn sitting down at the table and being nourished and cared for. When it was our turn to sit at the table, the promise was that we would be in equally good hands.

The book charts Des Moines’ growth from a meat-and-potatoes backwater to a place where chefs win James Beard awards. But the strain of being the town food critic eventually took the fun out of that job, so she resigned as the Datebook Diner. And the wine junkets to exotic places never were much fun because she seldom saw the beauty of the landscape but was stuck in a stuffy room with stuffier writers. She turned to writing books, several on French cooking; she blogs about food at Dining Well in Des Moines with Wini Moranville.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the book was the discussion, especially the stories book club members shared about their own relationships with food. We talked about the weirdness of carrot Jell-O salad, and learned how to make Jell-O in England without a refrigerator, about a picnic with salmon and peas, and about our own experiences as young, energetic and occasionally not sober wait staff. This was a relaxing read in a stressful time, reminding us that our tables can be sanctuaries, sacred places for friends and family, and that through food we build community.

— Pat Prijatel

This is an exquisite book—112 lovingly designed pages of thoughtful commentary, elegant language, and engaging drawings. It’s essentially an essay packed with a call to reconsider capitalism by injecting it with what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls the gift economy.

The back cover, with a luscious drawing of hands brimming with purple and red fruit, carries the message we’re to take with us: “All Flourishing is Mutual.”

Kimmerer uses a simple springtime fruit, the serviceberry (also called a juneberry, shadbush, wild plum, saskatoon and a litany of other names), as a metaphor for the difference between indigenous beliefs and capitalism. (Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomie Nation, professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and director of its Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.)

A gift economy, she writes, is built on sharing and recycling. When the serviceberry produces too much fruit for one family, the tradition is to give the remainder to neighbors and friends. In a capitalist approach based on concerns of scarcity, the rest might be hoarded or sold. There is no room in a gift economy for hoarding; great wealth is frowned upon because indigenous societies value reciprocity over accumulation.

It’s a system in which everybody gets a bit of the bounty, nobody goes hungry, but all involved—insects, birds, humans—reciprocate. “Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them,” she writes.  “If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind.”

Kimmerer uses multiple examples of current gift economies, including Little Free Libraries, and the larger public version on which they are based; sites such as Buy Nothing, which digitally connect neighbors who give away household items they no longer need; and recycling stores like The Freestore in Des Moines.

She acknowledges problems in the system, and points to the Tragedy of the Commons, in which those wishing to make a profit take control of community resources. In one case, a neighbor puts up a “free farm stand” full of fresh produce to share, and somebody steals the entire stand. (Kimmerer acknowledges that it was, in all fairness, advertised as free.) In response, an Eagle Scout replaces the stand and organizes other members to build similar structures in their communities.

The book is an easy, pleasant read that allowed us to dip our toes in economic theory, making it accessible and almost fun. It’s an antidote to the greed that is currently the operating philosophy in our government.

— Patricia Prijatel

It would take a hard heart not to fall in love with nine-year-old Javier Zamora, with his head full of superheroes, love, and deep concerns about bodily functions. How, for example, can he trust modern plumbing, instead of the outhouse behind his grandparents’ home in El Salvador? What will keep him from being flushed down the toilet and into the ocean?

At the beginning of this memoir, he has a seemingly comfortable life in the tiny village of La Herradura, with his grandparents, aunt, and cousin. But he misses his parents, who immigrated to the United States to escape the political violence and gangs of their home country. In his dreams, Javier flies like Superman and greets his parents in California at their front door. A superhero could then fly back home.

When Javier turns nine, Don Dago, the coyote who helped his mother successfully cross the Mexican border thinks he is old enough to make the harrowing journey to reunite with his parents. But he is not a superhero. He’s just a little boy.

Zamora, who was in his late 20s when he began writing the book, tells the story from the perspective of his nine-year-old self, with the naivete and confusion of a child who had to put his life in the hands of people he didn’t even know and embark on a trek that many others did not survive.

In April 1999, he sets out for what he and his family expect to be a two-week trip. Instead, it stretches to nine weeks, as things begin to go wrong immediately, with unexplained delays, new coyotes coming and going, and confusing route changes. His grandfather goes with him for the first two weeks of the trip, along with a group of others fleeing the country.

After his grandfather leaves, Javier has no way to contact his family in El Salvador or in California. For seven weeks, his parents and grandparents have no idea where he is, or if he is even alive.

He forms a family bond with a young mother, Patricia (also his mother’s name), her young daughter Carla, and Chino, a tattooed teenager escaping gang life. In the book’s dedication, he says he owes his life to them. In searing details, he shows this to be true.

Zamora is at heart a poet, and he brings us along on his journey with writing so clear and poignant we hear, smell, see, taste, and feel with him. The hot and smelly hotel rooms full of people who cannot leave or even open the windows, the delight of his first taco, the feel of water when he can finally wash the sand and sweat away in a shower, the glint of a gun aimed his way. 

He’s a shy bookish boy, self-conscious about his weight and nervous about everything from the size of his penis to the cleanliness of his underwear and his crush on Carla. That he has to go through this experience for his own safety is appalling. That he is judged for it is heartless. 

When Zamora was 18, he began to write poetry about his journey, at the suggestion of his therapist. He wrote from the perspective of a coyote in “Looking at a Coyote.” He shared his love for, but distrust of, his home country in “El Salvador,” the home that can never be home again. In “Citizenship,” he watches others who look like him but who can cross the border easily and wonders how they are different from him. In “Second Attempt Crossing” he writes about Chino, who was like a life-saving older brother on the journey, but whose fate is uncertain in the United States. The poems stand beautifully on their own but offer heartbreaking depth if read after finishing this memoir.

Zamora earned citizenship through an Employment-Based Extraordinary Ability visa (EB-1), sometimes called a genius visa, and then a green card because of his writing. And, though grateful, he says refugees should not have to be geniuses to come to the United States. They should be accepted just because they are humans.

The book’s cover is a work of art in itself—an outline of a downcast boy filled with an image of the Mexican desert. The title—Solito, which means solitary—is placed above the image in a sea of white. The austerity shows how alone this dear little boy felt. The book ends on a poetic note—showing us a hint of his reunion with his parents but leaving the details for our imaginations. Our group we had one recommendation—that Zamora write a second book about his life in this country, his fraught reunion with his parents, and the reality of living in a country that will never be home.

— Patricia Prijatel