zingmagazine #3

Editor's Note

“Ain’t nothing like the real thing baby . . .”
Vocals: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Lyrics: Nikolas Ashford, Valerie Simpson

Jackie Robinson’s wife’s apple pie recipe—can’t get much more real than that. One of life’s heroes shares his wife’s recipe in response to a weirdly tender, curiosity query. And now, nearly 50 years later, instead of sluggers cards, zing trades recipes on its cover. But what is a recipe? An instruction that supposedly gives one the perfect pie, the perfect soup, the perfect magazine, and yet no recipe really works to perfection. Because of its intrinsic nature, the recipe beckons to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, misappropriated. Note the following instructions: “People think that they know how to make it. It seems so easy. Too often they’re not careful. It should cook anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes not two hours.” From Marguerite Duras’ treatise to leek soup, one hones those critical culinary distinctions: the minutes. As critical as minutes are, are the lovely informative instructions Mrs Jackie Robinson advises “drops of butter and lemon juice before place top crust on.” Such tips make the difference. Just try it. Make the apple pie with the recipe enclosed and you sure would get the jist. The individual tips determine the success of the pie or the soup. Recipes are only fitted to the cook, and the proportions of the individual—their eye, their sense of measurement, their sense of taste. So one might have the recipe, but do they really have the secret. What is necessary is the secret. But what is the secret? Nothing more than shared knowledge. As Duras says of her yearned for leek soup: “You can want to do nothing and then decide to do this instead: make leek soup, I mean. Between the will to do something and the will to do nothing is the thin unchanging line: suicide.” Ain’t nothing but the real thing baby.

Devon Dikeou
New York, New York
1997