grimmutterings

Most evenings when other people would be eating, Maurice wasn’t.   Maurice would be expected to feast his eyes on some new purchase instead of a plate of food.  A pair of new shoes, a tiny crystal jar of hugely expensive face cream, another rug that perfectly matched the 2 chairs bought yesterday or yet another ‘dress to die for’.  One of those dresses could well be the death of Maurice if he didn’t start getting fed properly.  His mother was a stupid woman with a good job, healthy salary, twice daily working lunches and a spending problem.

The kitchen and its table had lost their purpose and were for fripperies and foibles.  The fridge stored cosmetics not food. The dining room was a crush of chairs and dressers, antique clocks and cheap paintings, the table lost somewhere under a vast array of clothing, bags, and jewelry.  Maurice might have died from starvation long before the second grand piano ever arrived if the wonderful Latino family one floor down hadn’t found him passed out on the landing outside their front door, too weak to make it up another flight of stairs.  The family left food out for Maurice after that, and he filled up and filled out with the delicious and aromatic meals that they left for him.

It probably wouldn’t have been much better for Maurice even if his mother had changed her ways.  She was a terrible cook.  She used to joke about the cremations she produced after hours of slicing, dicing, shouting, drinking, pleading, and weeping.  Maurice hadn’t found her very funny.  He had asked his mother how he had stayed alive this long, his mother had been offended and muttered something about his grandmother being alive and cooking.

It was the sensually exotic and aromatic food the wonderful Latino family left out for him that awoke a desire in Maurice.  A desire to leave home as soon as possible and a desire to pursue a career in anything that involved food.  To buy it, test it, taste it, eat it, cook it, Maurice wasn’t sure, he had time to decide after all he was still only 12.  First he had to leave home.  So, he did.

Maurice skipped school and packed a large suitcase with a selection of his mother’s nonsense and took it to a pawn shop.  He was staggered at the price he was offered, knowing full well even at 12 years old that it was the pawn shop’s duty to rip him off.  He hesitated for a second and the owner upped the offer by 30,000.  Maurice was about to accept when the owner panicked and upped the offer again.  Maurice haggled the offer up another 600,000 without ever saying a word and left the pawn shop with a cool 3 million in the suitcase.  Luckily the suitcase was the kind with wheels on the bottom otherwise Maurice wouldn’t have made it to the door under the weight of his negotiations.  He went to have some breakfast before heading to the train station to buy a one-way ticket to anywhere far away from where he was right now.

Maurice watched the towns and railway stations and cows and countryside zip past his window on the train.  He was going places and breakfast had been fabulous.  Who knew a piece of toast with a watery egg on it could be so sublime.  He fell fast asleep with such a full tummy and slept on past many other towns and cows.  The train’s driver woke him up when the train reached its last station.  Maurice had arrived in a city with an old, well-established, well-regarded university.

Maurice fully realized the importance of an education and the next day went to the university and signed himself up for a degree in the birth and growth of pottery in the 12th century.  Should be interesting he thought.  20 minutes later he had also got the job as head cook in the university’s cafeteria.  This was where he could really begin to pursue his desires to succeed in all things’ food.

Maurice excelled in his birth and growth of pottery class, although it wasn’t at all interesting.  The cafeteria though was where Maurice really shone dimly.  With the discovery of such ingredients as margarine, salt, Spam, cauliflower, shredded meat, potatoes in a packet and smashed up fish in a can, his culinary future held no bounds.  The learning curve was rather steep for Maurice and almost fatal to the university, but he was allowed to keep his job as head cook in the cafeteria kitchen if he promised not to do any cooking.  So, while Maurice washed dishes and soaked pans he listened carefully to the ladies in the kitchen and in between the deaths and marriages, divorces, and grandchildren, the names and numbers, measurements and timings, methods and magic of fine dining became clearer and clearer.  Until he knew he had it.

Three weeks later Maurice opened his first restaurant in the heart of London.  ‘Da Bro Mo’ bombed, the name hadn’t helped, and London booed him out.  Peasants.  His second restaurant in Paris, ‘Le Mauritius’ did not do well.  Paris was disgusted.  A few days later, ‘Il Maurizio’ opened in Rome and closed the same night.  The Italians were appalled.  Much of Europe wasn’t pleased with Mauritius, Maurizio, Maurits, Morris, Maurycy or Maurice.  Switzerland had not remained neutral; they had been particularly mean.

Slightly deflated but determined and undaunted, Maurice bought a fighter jet off EBay, he’d always wanted one, and learnt to fly from a monthly subscription.  A week later Maurice knew he had it.  That afternoon he took off and never looked back at the tasteless country of his birth.  He was welcomed into the good old US of A with open arms and armed police as he’d neglected to file a flight plan anywhere or ask for clearance from either country to be in or out of their air space and his jet soaring overhead had caused a military commotion on the ground.

Unable to find any music he liked on the radio in his fighter jet, Maurice had turned it off and been blissfully unaware his unauthorized flight had caused a call to arms.  The Army and London Heathrow had kept an eye on his dot on the radar.  Northern Ireland had helped track him for a while and Bermuda joined in briefly.  Maurice unknowingly lost the RAF in a large thunderstorm near Iceland and the British and US Navy had trod water mid Atlantic, not quite sure where to go.  Air Traffic Control along the Eastern Seaboard had been in a panic until Maurice seemed to get his bearings in the air and headed jauntily towards an airport and landed perfectly.  He had been knocked to the ground shortly after stepping onto US soil by a big dog and men with sunglasses.  Quite the welcome.

With his court date set, Maurice was allowed to leave prison just not the country.  Maurice was fine with that; he knew his future was in the USA and he had picked up some tricks from the cooks in the prison kitchen.  He knew exactly what he was going to do.  With his much publicized and excitedly awaited new restaurant, ‘Ole Man Moe’, due to open in a few days in New York, Maurice took more time than he ever had to make sure things would be perfect.  This time he would have a carefully researched and unique signature dish to put his restaurant on the map.  Thanks to the epic failure of his restaurant, ‘Herr Moritz’, in Germany, he even had a name for his creation.

The dates are somewhat disputed, but somewhere around his 13th birthday and about 138 years after it had first been introduced to the USA, Maurice introduced the USA to the hamburger.