George Cassidy Payne

Scarborough Fair Chicken

Tulsi said, "This is a dish my dad always made for high holidays. He used to tell me that the most important part was pouring white wine over the meat after it had been baking for 30 minutes. The way he talked about the herbs made me feel like our planet was made solely for the pleasure of our taste buds."

For the Greeks, parsley symbolized death and rebirth, often used to decorate tombs. Rosemary was the herb of remembrance. Sage symbolized immortality. Thyme represented courage—Roman generals embroidered it on their togas. Legend has it that the infant Jesus's manger was filled with it. Sweetness. The "virgin's humility." Peace tied to the sheath. Arrows in the quiver. An unrequited love. "I have an aiker of good ley-land/ which lyeth low by your sea strand." Sober and grave grow merry in time.

Almost 50, Tulsi is the spice vendor at the west end of the Winter Shed. Today, she’s wearing a royal blue and cream blouse with white lace and seashell patterns, her grandmother's pearl earrings, and a razor blade necklace from her ex-husband. Her black shag is effortlessly left alone, a few dyed strands falling over her hazelwood brown eyes.

"The chicken breast must be boneless and pounded thin. Wrapped in mozzarella and prosciutto. When it’s finished, lay it on a saucer full of melted tarragon butter," she said. "You know, my dad was the biggest Simon and Garfunkel fan that ever lived. When I make this, I’m making it for all three of them," she added wistfully.

She’s a painter. The dish is a pastel of egg yolk gold, emerald globs of oil, and a long, slender wishbone hanging by the side like a chewed filet of river perch. Severed lemons barely kiss in a bed of kale, like two mollusks making love in algae. Tulsi is the person in the market who makes everything she touches more interesting. She not only knows how to cook, but she also knows how to make food mean something. She knows the stories behind the dishes and tells them like an elder describing creation myths.

"Does it make music?" I asked.

"Yeah, it does. It’s kind of funny, actually—when I hear it, it’s in the key of E Dorian. Funeral doom metal. Have you listened to that before? My ex was in a band before things got ugly with us. This dish makes me feel closer to my dad, but it also sounds like the morning I found him all alone in his bathroom... Did you know 'Scarborough Fair' comes from an old English canticle? It’s about an elfin knight who came to a beautiful woman’s window. He promised to abduct her unless she performed an impossible task."

"What was the task?" I asked.

"No one knows," she said. "Maybe that is what keeps the ballad alive."

**

Fish Mom

Clara is the "fish mom." For 25 years, she has worked every weekend at the market, running Atlantic Fresh Fish. Her family has been in the business for three generations. Boston is in her blood, the way oil is in olives or wine in grapes.

Red Snapper, Tilapia filets, New Bedford Cod, Shrimp—shell on and peeled—Salmon, Marlin, Kingfish, and Mako fill her stand. Half-filled plexiglass tubs, freeze-wrapped cutlets, and cardboard boxes shoved in ice with names carefully printed in Sharpie black all line the counter. Her father’s first scale, looking like the first computer sold out of a Silicon Valley garage, still sits in its place. And then there are the clams.

"Have you ever really looked at a clam?" Kim asks me, just as she begins to share what I’m missing. "Clams have a foot, you know. They use it to burrow into sand or mud, anchoring themselves." She notices my expression. "This little guy, where he's from, could live for over 100 years. The quahog can live for over 500 years. Just think about that. It was alive when Martin Luther got booted from the Church. Some of this guy's friends were still around when the conquistadores took down the Aztec Empire."

My disgust starts to morph into admiration. "Clams can change their gender," she continues. "They're hermaphrodites. They may start as males and transition to females as they get older. Pretty cool, huh?" My disgust coming back.

"Yeah, that is pretty cool," I have to admit. Then, half-jokingly, I ask, "Do they taste better over time?" Instantly, I regret how sexist that sounds.
​
Kim laughs it off. "I'm not sure about that. But guess what else?" She holds one up. "They may not have a brain, but they’re smarter than you’d think. They have sensory organs that let them respond to their environment. They can detect light, vibrations, even chemicals in the water." She pauses. "And they have a muscle that lets them close their shell tightly if a predator comes by. These guys know how to survive in the most dangerous places on earth."

I get the sense she could tell me just as much about tuna if I asked. I thank her for sharing all that about clams. It occurs to me that knowing what you eat is more than just knowing where it came from or how it was prepared. Knowing what you eat means truly understanding what makes it special. That takes time, curiosity, and someone like Clara.

There is no such thing as food—only organisms that we choose to eat or not eat. All organisms have value beyond our desire to consume them, even the smallest and most unassuming creatures.

**

Shepherd's Pie

Pióg an aoire, Escondidinho, Shepherd's pie—it all means using what's left over to make something edible. For the past week, that's pretty much how Samantha has approached life. She’s not the type to sulk. He left. So what? He always does. He told her she’s pathetic. So what? She doesn’t need him anyway. Unshowered, uncombed, her red, frizzled hair held by two stainless steel, dog bone-shaped barrettes, her long, pale legs shiver from the breeze coming through the kitchen window. It's 10 AM, and her glass is full of Sheldrake’s chardonnay. Rubbing—almost massaging—her bruised and tattooed left arm (bouquet garni entwined in rose bushes) and dragging on a Marlboro Light, she knows that in three hours, she will be dead. This pie will be the last thing she leaves this world.

Many believe that peasant housewives invented Shepherd’s pie as an easy way to use what was left from the Sunday roast. In Ireland, they were too poor to use beef, so they used lamb. In the northern parts of England, they couldn’t dare call it what the Irish did, so it became Cottage Pie. In North America, most workers ate their meat, potatoes, and corn separately, but some (mostly of Asian origins) combined their rations to create a more communal dish. The French-Canadian railway workers liked it and called it “pâté chinois,” which loosely translates to Chinese pie.

Well into the 20th century, the absence of refrigeration made it necessary for many domestic kitchens to store cooked meat rather than raw. In the 1940s, chef Louis Diat recalled that “When housewives bought their Sunday meat, they selected pieces large enough to make into leftover dishes for several days.”

Hot on Sunday,
Cold on Monday,
Hashed on Tuesday,
Minced on Wednesday,
Curried Thursday,
Broth on Friday,
Cottage pie Saturday.

Fidgeting into her burgundy-coloured, rubber-clog-like boots, Samantha steps outside and sits on her front steps. The world feels a little less important today. The blue jays squawk louder than usual. There’s a gentle breeze. Fall is coming. No one worries about her, just as no one worries about gravel stones on the ground; they belong there and don’t mind being stepped on. She wears black trousers and a black V-neck shirt—she never misses a shift. Inside, the pie is baking; the cheddar is beginning to drape over the little snowbanks of whipped potatoes. The carrots, peas, and lamb, all falling apart together, permeate the house. Samantha lights another cigarette and thinks about who she could give the pie to. For the first time in days, she feels herself smiling. Her mind is made up. No one at work needs to know she’s not coming in.

**

Alma-Ata

I called him Dad, though he was actually my father-in-law. For over 60 years, he worked as a gardener. He was set to go to Vietnam but chose the orchards of Mexico instead. When he finally came back, all he knew how to do for a living was grow apples. Dad could tell you everything there is to know about a Pink Lady, but he could never keep a girlfriend. He could give a lecture on Galas, but he never went to his own prom. He knew Fujis and Honeycrisps, Pacific Roses and Braeburns, Northern Spys, SnapDragons, and Jonagolds, but he never bothered to own a car or open a bank account.

He told me that apples are the oldest source of food in our history as a species. Somewhere, he read that apples originated in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, east of the Caspian Sea. The wild apples there, Malus sieversii, have been growing for millions of years.

Dad even knew that the Jesuits were the ones who brought them to North America. The only apple here before them was the crab apple—cider for foraging bears and livestock feed for hardy pilgrims.

What most people do not know is that he saw apples as a promise from the Maker. The way we read Genesis is all wrong, he would tell me. It is not a forbidden fruit (it is not mentioned in the Bible). The fruit is forbidden to be eaten unless the person eating it is worthy. Apples were eucharistic to him. He saw in their center the aboriginal fingerprints of charcoal-black star men. For him, the skin of a well-nurtured apple was like a brick torched in a cosmic fire. To bite into one was to consume the tender, custard ochre muscle of Christ. Through his eyes, in his trees, they hung like rubies in the Garden of Babylon. Split into halves with a pocket knife, they spread their thighs like moth wings—Lepidoptera.

The Cameo was his favorite, a majestic globe of flame red and scarlet. In his hand, it felt like a ball of energy, like chi. The force of life itself pulsated through his palm to the tips of his nails. He never went to college and never studied with monks. But in Mexico, one summer, browsing a bookstore in Oaxaca, he bought a used copy of the Tao Te Ching. So simple. So urgent. So available. So kind. So happy.

**

Nervous Breakdown

"Banano! Banano! Banano!" I heard the market vendor shouting from behind a weather-worn plywood picnic table. The man wore aviator sunglasses, had bushy salt-and-pepper hair, and a shapely mustache the colour of snow fox fur. He was more excited than he should have been to be hawking bananas at 6:30 in the morning on a brisk, drizzly October Sunday in Rochester.

I kept telling myself they were just bananas. But I had already begun to lose my grip before I even got out of the car. Stalks and blades. Pesticides and sterility. Chrome yellow-fleshed corpses stacked on top of each other, seared and soldered together at the stubs like amputated fingers. Bodies bathed in pesticides, clumped together in giant pools like eels in a hatchery. Roundworm-killing injections in the ground. Dermatitis. Kidney failure. Neurotoxins. Sliced and diced beige disks, like stacked poker chips.

"Banano! Banano! Banano!" The market vendor shouted louder. One dollar! One dollar!"

My forehead was throbbing, and sweat was beginning to drip down my eyelids. The Desert Storm fatigue-tan cardboard boxes in front of him looked like ammo cartridges. Dole... Dole... Dole... The "O" in the name blasted apart like a thermonuclear reaction. Ethylene gas blasting in all directions. Hormones blasting in all directions. Rapist dragon's semen spraying everywhere. Lost children. Poisoned fields. Birth defects. Finely sharpened machetes glistening in the plantation's sunlight, sparkling light beams jumping off the edges of the knives like citrine crystals. Loads and loads of them, carried secretly through the jungle on shoulders in bright navy-blue garbage bags. God, my head hurts.

As I looked up, a twenty-something RIT environmental studies major with a Columbia windbreaker, hemp sandals, and a frohawk of saffron-orange hair leaned over and told me that bananas are shaped to retrieve sunlight. "They go through a process called negative geotropism—they grow against gravity," he said while tossing several bushels into a small Wegmans tote bag. I had already begun to forget why I had come here in the first place. The sun was finally rising, a school-bus-yellow ball of information punishing my retinas to death.

**

​George Cassidy Payne is a writer, philosopher, and crisis counselor whose work focuses on mental health, social justice, and ethical reflection. With a background in philosophy and humanities, George has taught a wide range of courses and contributed to various community initiatives. His writing explores themes of resilience, the human experience, and the intersection of technology and well-being. George is also a 988 Crisis Text/Chat counselor and specializes in suicide prevention. His passion for fostering meaningful dialogue and promoting mental wellness shapes both his writing and his work in public service.