Salvage Heart

Note: this was a piece that was scratched from my weekly Talk of the Book Town installment in The (Portland) Oregonian. Written for a family audience. Please note that there are no Mario Soto references.

Molly O’Neill: Foodie with a side of fries

Food writer Molly O’Neill stood before a baker’s dozen of listeners at Powell’s on Hawthorne to read from her new book Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball. It was a warm May evening when baseball and eating sounded more like things to do than than read about.

Coming from a family with deep baseball roots, including her younger brother Paul O’Neill who went on to fulfill their father’s dreams of major league glory as an outfielder with five All-Star appearances and as many World Series rings, Molly grew up to become a food columnist for the New York Times Magazine, and the host of the PBS program Great Food.

O’Neill’s May 4 visit came amidst an outbreak of foodie ethicists on Portland’s reading schedule: Peter Singer, Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Christopher Cook. To a degree, Molly fit right in, confirming that her personal palette had long since abandoned the cuisine of the military-industrial complex and that after college she had opened a restaurant serving “women’s non-violent cuisine.”

But she also stated unequivocally, “I wouldn’t want to live in an America without McDonald’s French fries,” and that although she’s in sugar recovery, she remains tempted not by French pastries but by the doughnuts of Krispy Kreme.

Raised by a mother who believed that only “trashy people” ate mass produced food wrapped in plastic, O’Neill nonetheless thrived in 1960s Columbus, Ohio, a community known by test marketers as “the epitome of average."

O’Neill’s flair for comedy emerged in her reminiscence of the six O’Neill siblings’ pilgrimage to the Saturday samples day at an Albers grocery, a sampler lady punching out “pepperoni” from sliced bologna with a Diet Rite bottle cap, Molly’s father attempting to get a deal on overripe bananas, and future big leaguer Paul whining, “I want crab,” in a voice that sounded like “a disappointed diner in line at the nursing home.”

The anecdote seals the deal for this Book Town correspondent, who lines up for a signed copy and for the bonus spiral bound assortment of recipes from O’Neill’s memoir (“Mostly Toothsome: One Girl’s Life, Bite by Bite,”) from the infamous “I want crab” crab melts (ingredients include “one cup poorest quality American cheese, grated”) to more palatable relics from family gatherings and forays into fine dining. Mother’s Day? Done.

Through writing memoir, O’Neill glimpsed the world of fiction, in which she’s been dallying of late. Also on her plate: completion of edits for a Library of America collection of food writing, and a sequel to her New York Cookbook, for which she collected 20,000 recipes and stories, then boiled them down to 500. The new book will tell the story of the entire United States through recipes.