Soaring Through Blue

the faith of tripe stew







I used to know a girl named Faith. Not really. But I could have. It's not that unusual a name.

She sat across from me in Mrs. Jones's fifth grade class. She had wispy blond hair that fell across her small, ecru face in a wispy scrim, obscuring her indistinct features as she floated around the perimeter of the room in her own private orbit, noiseless, and colorless except for the once-bright plaid and animal print patches that were clumsily sewn to her clothing by her single mom. The hems of her clothing dipped and dodged like the rabid dog at the end of the movie version of To Kill A Mockingbird, just before Atticus shot it. (Spoiler alert!) She also smelled like pee, faintly. As if she'd peed her pants and run out the door, late for school, messy, unclean.

Poor.

Fatherless.

Across a yard that needed watering, dessicatedly.

I was also on the fringe, just not as far out on the fringe as Faith. My bowler hat was brushed clean every night before I laid it out for the next day. My button down shirt was free of patches and mends, and my rainbow suspenders were bright as a Hello Kitty backpack, new, from the store. I smelled of soap and toothpaste and caramel corn as I sat with my two friends on the yellow beanbag in the sun, reading Death in Venice. It was number 152 on my list. Only 26 to go!

One day, my parents drove me through a dimly lit, festering part of town, past a hovel that was sort of lopsidedly shameful, worn around the edges, possibly with a rat or two lingering in the shadows and a pot of mystery meat bubbling on the crusty stove, within. The grass was brownish on the tips. Even the weeds looked as if they were depressed and ashamed. There was a garish billboard out front saying "PALMS READ $2" and a picture of a lady with a faint mustache and a unibrow.

"That's where your friend Faith lives. You know, that girl you complain about all the time," my mother intoned.

I looked sideways out the rolled up car window, past the locked car door. I couldn't imagine living there. Being poor is so shameful and awful. My goodness, she didn't even have a father. I ducked my head, tears stinging my eyes from the thought of a more intense smell inside the house. And that sign. So embarrassing. I felt embarrassed for her.

Until a few days ago, I felt the same way about tripe.

Tripe.

We used to joke about it in a Darth Vader voice that they do on South Park, braying loudly at the jokes and bawdy humor. Then we actually wondered out loud what tripe is! Turns out it is the lining of a cow stomach. We raced to the store to buy some and were pleasantly surprised to find large sheets of it hanging, fresh and pale, chewy, ready to provide the grist of a tantalizing supper dish.

You see, I grew up eating tripe. It was one of the ingredients in one of the Campbell soups that my mom used to cook up. We didn't eat it daily, just in a regular fashion. I would wait hungrily while the soup boiled and toiled in the large pot on the stove, my complete works of Shakespeare tucked under my arm, occasionally dipping a drinking straw in to suck up a taste, even if it burned the mucous membranes of my mouth to shreds.

Then, finally, when it was heated thoroughly to keep us all from growing ill, we'd get seated at our TV trays and ladle it into our waiting mouths, all while watching Gilligan's Island. I loved the clothes on that show. PapaChef and I can sing the entire theme song word for word and we often act out entire episodes, in costume. I am always Gilligan. He usually asks to be Ginger but most often he has to be Mrs. Lovey Howell because my dresses are more that type, and because I say so. Midget Peanut plays Lovey's little dog. She can bark in three languages already and she's only 7 months old. I can't keep up!

My only memory of tripe is in those little rubbery bits in the Campbell soup, often stuck to the bottom of the can so that you have to swish the water around to get them out. It wasn't my favorite. Split Pea with Ham was my favorite, also Bean with Bacon. I knew the soup with the tripe smacked of cheapness, of poverty, of the very smell of poverty.

So we cooked up some tripe stew. My goodness me. It was nothing like Campbell's. For one, the pieces of tripe were much bigger. You could really see the cilia and other textures. Campbell's was never this authentic! In fact, now I'm not even sure that what they said was tripe was tripe! It may have been skin, or something.

As I ladled our mouth-watering stew into my mouth, after honoring it by clicking my camera at it, I thought of the picturesque meat aisle of the grocery store, a fractured glimpse of hanging tripe visible through the slightly foggy windows of the swinging doors that led into the butcher area. I could taste the memory of my excitement, giggling and bouncing, as our dear friend in the meat department, Meat Guy, brought out our tripe, packaged neatly in a blue foam tray and tightly wrapped with sparkly fresh plastic wrap. It was a world of fresh, new possibilities. I couldn't wait to get it home.

All of that was in the rich depths of flavor of that stew. We nearly grew teary eyed at remembering. And Faith. Faith was in that tripe stew. Outsider, kind of weird, not very appealing, sort of smelly, not something you want to get close to.

Faith.

Tripe.

I wish I had known her better.


Tripe Stew

Cut your tripe into manageable pieces. Too big and people will gag. Too small and no one will notice that it's there.

Get a saute pan screaming hot, as PapaChef is fond of saying. Add two sticks of butter and let it melt, burbling like a happy brook in early spring, just glad that its little fish and frogs will soon be out partaking of its wonders.

When the butter has reached a peak of gurgling, nestle the chunks of tripe into it, being careful to give them enough personal space. Once they have grown to a nice brown, flip them and help them to settle into the pan, to let the other sides grow brown also.

Cut up an onion and tumble it into the pan.

Cut up some bell peppers and snuggle these in amongst the onions and tripe.

Pour the GF gravy leftover from filming the gravy show over all, letting it drape into every nook and cranny, forming a scrim of gravy goodness over all.

Cook until the tripe shudders against the tongs when you go to taste some. Anywhere from 2-6 hours. Lay on the couch and take a nap if you can so that you don't eat it all before it's actually done.

Serves 2 regular people or 20 very poor people.