Cold Chinese Noodles
Mom’s perfect hair engagement portrait. I used to marvel over how that ribbon stayed in place!
VERY artsy photo that Dad took of Mom in high school!
Mom was always super put together. Here she is with a rockin’ haircut with her friend Michael McVaugh. New Years Eve, Chapel Hill, NC, sometime in the early 90s. (We got that jacket from a small boutique in NYC when I was touring colleges in 1989. I still have it!)
Me with my “not boring” hair in the late 80s.
Left: Mom and Elisabeth at Carolina Meadows after her first hair wash in ages. (She had been life flighted off the QM2 to a hospital in Newfoundland and then air ambulanced a week later back home to NC. I’ll tell that story in more detail later.) Right: My daughter put flowers in Mom’s hair in the nursing home.
[From the musical “Hair”]
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair
I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty
Oily, greasy, fleecy
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen
Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, and confettied
Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied! (or Chinese Noodled?)
I’ve mentioned before that Mom used to iron her hair in her coffeehouse guitarist days. I’ve also recalled her “fairy hair” phase where she would have iridescent strands woven into her glorious silver mane. Well, this week I heard from Mom’s former hairdresser, Barbara, saying how much she loved my mom. Throughout my childhood, Mom’s hair was usually short and chic, sometimes hennaed if she was feeling sassy. Mom had a bob for decades and since my parents traveled so much at one point she trained my Dad to cut her hair. I mean a bob is really just a straight line, right? We called Dad’s haircutting alter ego “Mr. John”.
When I was a kid, I was pretty hair-concerned. I remember absolutely coveting Lady Di’s mop. Mom indulged me and took me to a pro hairdresser to get it. I would have been 8 or so. What a mom! Unfortunately, I have rather thin, fine hair and the outcome was disappointing. It turns out we can’t all be Lady Di. When preppy feathered hair hit, I was smitten! Mom took me back to the salon where I desperately cried, “I want wings!”. The hairdresser misheard me and did whatever he did and then rotated my chair, handed me a mirror for the rearview look, and proudly proclaimed “you SAID you wanted something that SWINGS!”. Um, bummer. Not wings. I was too embarrassed to correct the situation. My teenage hair was the most entertaining. It was usually permed or colored or teased or all three, and often asymmetrical. I used to ask Mom before walking out the door to go to school, “does my hair look boring?!”. Bless her heart, she would honestly answer, “it does not look boring” and I swear I didn’t once see her eyes roll. I’m not sure what I had against boring hair, but it was good to have a cause, and I was fighting hard for it!
When we finally got Mom back to NC to live out her final days, I was impressed that she still had the dignity to care about her hair. I would style it in her hospital bed after it got washed. She asked me to bring her tweezers up to the nursing home to neaten up her eyebrows. She was classy that way. Riffing on stray hairs I thought I’d share a noodle recipe (it’s a reach I know - ha ha). Asian noodles are now pretty prevalent in our cuisine, but as a kid these were rare and delicious. (And whenever I hear “Chinese Noodles” I think of the B-52s “Song for a Future Generation”. I’ve been Kate for Halloween twice!)
COLD CHINESE NOODLES
1 lb spaghetti or soba noodles
4 Tbsp sesame oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
6 scallions, minced
1-inch section fresh ginger, minced
2 Tbsp hot pepper oil
4 Tbsp white or red wine vinegar
½ cup tahini, well stirred
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
¼ c peanut oil
Cook noodles. Drain and toss with sesame oil
Mix the other ingredients except peanut oil. Heat oil until smoking and quickly pour it over the combined ingredients, stirring well. Toss the noodles with the sauce.
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