St. Michael Library Book Review: A Novel Stuffed With Homemade Goodness

Hungry? If not, you will be by the end of Chapter One of Patricia Volk’s “Stuffed:  The Story of a Restaurant Family”.

Ms. Volk explains, “Restaurant families are very hyperbolic. You always over feed people. You are never hungry – you are starving to death. You’re never just full -- you’re stuffed. It has to be – as Yates would say – “overmuch” or it’s not enough”.

For the Volk family, food was not mere nourishment – but rather a way of life. Food, they believed, was the prism by which one sees the world.

Stuffed opens with, “Our hallway was the color of ballpark mustard. The living room was my cocoa, my mother’s wall-to-wall, iceberg green. The floor of the lobby was maroon-and-white terrazzo, like Genoa salami. When our elevator went self-service, the wood was replaced by enamel walls that looked like Russian dressing, the lumpy pink kind our housekeeper, Mattie, made by lightly folding Hellmann’s mayonnaise into Heinz’s ketchup with a fork. Daisies were the fried eggs of flowers, gladiola the asparagus. We were a restaurant family, four generations in a six-block radius. When you opened our fridge, food fell on your feet.”

Ms. Volk’s story interweaves the richness of her family’s Italian heritage and culinary tastes, with her family’s even richer repertoire of personalities. Each character is as interesting and appealing in their own right – as the delicious dishes created by her relatives.

Grandfather Herman Morgan came to this country in the mid 19^th century and according to Volk – he began the practice of carving meat in windows. His career starts as he worked his way up from sweeping floors, to working “on the floor” – where he got the idea of carving meat in windows. He stood in the big picture window with the largest and most impressive piece of meat available - a Steamship Round (whole leg of a steer) and started carving off hot steamy pieces. Folks on the sidewalk stopped dead in their tracks – it was like seeing a man on the moon -- and it brought the customers in. People poured in for the delectable roast beef with mustard on rye - and Herman got promoted.

Before grandfather Herman, was great grandfather Sussman Volk who came from Lithuania in 1887. His claim to fame? According to the Volk family – it was he who brought pastrami to the new world. He started his career as a pot repair man yet after being kicked by a horse, he decides his life lacks dignity and he must keep chasing the American dream of a truly better life. With his experience butchering meat in the kosher fashion – he enters into the arena of meat seller. For the Volk family - pastrami is actually a verb – you can “pastrami’ any meat but in this case it is beef plate -- corn beef rubbed with spices and hot smoked with mustard on rye bread.

Yet the list of Volk family firsts continues. According to family legend, Uncle Albert was the first man to stir scallions into cream cheese. Ms. Volk's deeply cherished and adored restaurateur father invented the six-color retractable pen and the double-sided cigarette lighter (so you can light up in the dark with no need to see which side is up). For as far back as the family can remember, the Volks were a family of characters that were more colorful, alive and unconventional than your typical American family.  

The story of Patricia Volk's life is told in vignettes, chock full of memories of food and those in her family who created their food with the love they felt for their family. Volk weaves a rich tapestry of images such as her grandmother, who pushed her children in their strollers at six in the morning before “the air got used”. This is a book that leaves you yearning to sit and share a meal with these characters as delicious as the food they prepare.

As always – you can reserve this book online at your local St. Michael library!

Reviews

The New York Times Book Review...

: "Taut, sharp... Vibrantly textured. . . . Volk has a gift for seeing the world in a grain of salt."

Philip Lopate...

"This funny, heartbreaking book is good enough to eat. A whole lost world is conjured up here, with a vitality and love of daily life that has no time for sentimentality."

Michael M. Thomas, The New York Observer...

"My nominee for Book of the Year. . . It's funny, it's affecting, it's wise, it's New York, it's close to the bone, it's wonderfully well-written. Above all, it's about how a real family functions."

Los Angeles Times...

"The message of Volk's loopy, generous memoir, Stuffed, is that there is no such thing as too much food or too much feeling. . . . Stuffed is just what a good restaurant meal should be--soaked in atmosphere, full of strong flavors, handsome on the plate."

The Miami Herald...

"Unnervingly delightful. . . . In these gorgeous, generous pages . . . the sweetness never ends. "