Enough Already Read online

  Dedication

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  A Note from Me

  Learning to Love the Way I Am

  Before You Begin, a Suggestion

  Hot Spinach and Crab Dip

  The Clock Is Ticking

  Bami Goreng

  Enough Already

  The World’s Best Eggs

  Soft Scrambled Eggs

  My Wallabees

  Nonnie’s Rolling Pin

  Love Cake

  Sicilian Chocolate Love Cake

  The Way Leon Looks at Me

  Upside-Down Citrus Cake

  Secret Ingredients

  No Time Like Today

  A Room with a View

  The Twenty-One Gram Diet

  Bubba and Beau

  Blessings

  My Mother’s Recipe Box

  My Mom’s Lasagna

  Learning How to Listen

  Tuna Egg Salad Melts

  I Don’t Know How Much Longer We Have

  Scrolling Happy

  A New Season

  The Little Girl Needs a Hug

  The House I Want to Die In

  Learning to Love the Way I Am Today

  Pizza, Please

  Acknowledgments

  Recipe Index

  Photo Section

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  A Note from Me

  MAY 2021

  ABOUT A YEAR AGO, after an online cooking demonstration, a friend of a friend reached out to me about a difficult situation. At sixty years old, she had finally met a man who, she said, was the love of her life and then he was diagnosed with neck and throat cancer. It had just happened, and they were gearing up to fight it. She asked if I could connect them to my former husband, Edward Van Halen, so they could get the latest and best information on where to go and whom to see for treatment. Ed knew quite a bit about this particular type of cancer from his own long battle with the disease.

  I was happy to help.

  But something about my tone of voice must have hinted at my own troubled state of mind, because at the end of our conversation, in a tone of voice that was slightly softer and more intimate than before, she said, “Hey, if you ever need to talk,” and she gave me her number. I thanked her, but I later wondered which of the issues bothering me she had heard in my voice, and I thought, No way, I’m too private, I don’t know her that well, and this stuff I am thinking about is all too personal, anyway.

  Then I caught myself. I went on the Today show and sobbed my eyes out. I shared my heart on Instagram. Why was I putting up walls?

  Consider the walls down. Let’s talk. I have been on a journey with many of you since I was a teenager. I have dated, married, become a mother, divorced, remarried, battled with my weight, and struggled with my self-esteem and mental health. I have also become an empty nester, helped my mother and father through their golden years, and said tearful goodbyes to the people closest to me. I suspect all of you reading this book have gone through many, if not all, of these same issues. I feel like we have done it together as we have grown up.

  For you, this book may seem like a new message from me. I see it as a deeper understanding of what I was and still am trying to achieve.

  In the past, I have shared my efforts to lose weight and encouraged many of you to do the same. I set certain goals, believing that I would be happier once I lost those ten, twenty, or thirty pounds—or whatever the number was at the time. Then I hit a wall. I was about to begin 2020 resolved to lose ten pounds—the same ten or so pounds I had been trying to lose for more than forty years—and one day, as I embarked on the same morning path from bed to bathroom to scale, I stopped, looked at myself in the mirror, and in a “before coffee” moment of sanity, I said, “No. Stop. I can’t be doing this again.” And I didn’t.

  I have come to realize there is no magic number. The scale doesn’t light up and set off bells and whistles the way a slot machine does when you hit the jackpot in Las Vegas. The thing I have been looking for can’t be quantified. I want to feel true joy inside, and that is very different from wanting to feel thin or see a certain number on the scale.

  These days, instead of controlling what I put into myself, I am trying to embrace the many choices I have. My previous books have reflected the mindset of someone who always felt broken. I looked in the mirror and saw flaws and imperfections. I was always trying to fix something about myself. I was always telling myself “No” or “Don’t” or “You were bad today” or “You cheated.” Why couldn’t I see the best of me instead? Why couldn’t I see all the good things about myself? Why couldn’t I bring myself to say, “Yes!”

  This book is about letting go of certain behavior that no longer serves me, recognizing that perhaps it never did, and trying to find new ways of channeling my thoughts and emotions. It’s about my efforts to, at sixty-one years old, set aside the landmines of denial, negativity, and self-hate and instead identify values like joy, gratitude, compassion, and forgiveness and try to align with them every day. As I will tell you more than once, these feelings don’t find you. You have to go in search of them, knowing some days will be better than others, none will be perfect, but that is life.

  And this book is about grief—a topic I didn’t intend to write about and hoped not to, and yet it was unavoidable. Any search for joy has to include the reverse side of the picture, and that is grief. The two are partners in this dance of ours.

  To write this book, I looked inside myself the way I do the fridge when I have an idea for a new take on a favorite recipe and I began to pull out ingredients. They weren’t necessarily all the ingredients that I intended or thought I was going to use, so when everything was on the counter, my original idea took on a momentum of its own. It became a collection of thoughts, essays, and stories—roughly chronological but connected by the frazzled threads of my life—that eventually, after much pulling and tugging at my heart, made sense to me.

  My hope is that they make sense to you, too. I wrote about the things that I have gone through and continue to deal with as I got to where I am today at age sixty-one, topics that I think will be familiar to many of you—being a mom, making midlife career changes, caring for aging parents, asking why the hell have I been so hard on myself for so long, saying goodbye to those I love, recognizing mistakes, and searching for meaning. Anything sound familiar?

  I endeavored to share my experiences and thoughts about growing older with the emphasis on the effort to grow. I believe we are here to learn lessons. It’s not all sunny days and roses. But there is enough warmth and perfume to remind us that life is a gift—and too short to waste.

  You are going to find me frequently using the words “me” and “I” in this book. They appear far too often for my taste, but, hey, my name is on the book. What I would like you to do, though, is substitute yourself in various places. Where it says “me” or “I,” think of how these stories are like your own. Our lives may be different, but I sense that the situations we face and the questions we ask ourselves are very similar.

  I draw strength from knowing so many of you are out there supporting me. You should know that I am there for you, too. I really hope this book provides you with the comfort I have found while writing it. Hug the people you love. And hug yourself. (Don’t put it off. Do it today. Right now. I’ll wait.)

  This is a love story. I’ve tried to share experiences that have taught me about hope, joy, happiness, forgiveness, kindness, and love. Most of all love. As I move forward in life, I continue to learn it’s only and all about love in the end.

  Valerie

  Studio City, California

&
nbsp; Learning to Love the Way I Am

  My (Try) To-Do List

  SEPTEMBER 2019

  Drink a lot of water

  Eat a big breakfast, an average lunch, and a tiny dinner

  Eat more vegetables and fruits

  Avoid processed food

  Go for a walk, swim, or bike ride

  Don’t forget to stretch

  Read a book

  Go to bed earlier

  STOP thinking negative thoughts about yourself and other people

  Don’t judge or compare yourself to others

  Enjoy the little things in life

  Begin yoga or meditation

  STOP procrastinating—do not put things off

  Live in the moment

  Don’t dwell on the past

  Listen to peaceful music

  Live in a tidy place

  Wear clothes that make you happy

  Donate or throw away things you don’t need

  Breathe

  Exhale

  GO OUTSIDE

  GO OUTSIDE THE NEXT DAY AND THE NEXT . . .

  Remember that the effort you make will be rewarded

  Before You Begin, a Suggestion

  Before you read any further, may I suggest making this snack and finding a comfortable place to sit down and enjoy the first chapter. You will understand why soon enough.

  Hot Spinach and Crab Dip

  2tablespoons unsalted butter

  1small onion, finely chopped

  1clove garlic, finely chopped

  Kosher salt

  Freshly ground black pepper

  8ounces cream cheese

  1teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

  ½teaspoon dry mustard

  ½teaspoon paprika

  ⅛teaspoon cayenne pepper

  1pound frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed very dry

  8ounces lump crabmeat, picked through for bits of shell

  ½cup shredded Monterey Jack

  3tablespoons grated Parmesan

  2tablespoons panko bread crumbs

  Crackers, for serving

  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

  Melt the butter in a medium pot over medium heat.

  Add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper to taste, and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 6 minutes.

  Add the cream cheese, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, paprika, and cayenne pepper, and stir until melted.

  Add the spinach and crabmeat, and stir until warm and bubbling. Stir in the Monterey Jack and Parmesan, and season with salt and pepper.

  Transfer the dip to a small baking dish and top with the panko bread crumbs. Place the baking dish on a baking sheet and bake until bubbling and golden, about 15 minutes.

  Serve hot with crackers.

  The Clock Is Ticking

  OCTOBER 2019

  PURE FUN. THAT IS what I am experiencing when I make a cheesy spinach and crab dip on The Kelly Clarkson Show. I am glammed up for TV and leading Kelly and actress-singer Hailee Steinfeld through the easy-to-follow and oh-so-yummy steps of this dish. We also get a little dishy, and I tell the story of how I was once mistaken for Kelly’s mom when I was in the audience of American Idol, and Kelly asks me about the correct pronunciation of Worcestershire sauce, explaining that she likes it in her Bloody Marys.

  Suddenly, the two of us pretend to slur our words. We get very silly; though as we do, a little voice in my head reminds me to keep one eye on the dip and never stop stirring. That might be the secret to success in everything, right? Keep one eye on the dip and never stop stirring. Interpret as you wish.

  With onions and garlic simmering in a pot, I add a block of cream cheese, cayenne pepper, paprika, mustard, pepper, some fresh crabmeat, spinach, Monterey Jack, Parmesan, and a sprinkle of panko bread crumbs. Once the ingredients are mixed together and warm, I transfer them to another dish that gets popped into the oven for about fifteen minutes. The finished dish gets raves from Kelly, Hailee, and the crew.

  I leave the studio with leftovers, and the next day I take them to my son’s house. I also bring some crackers and crudités. What twenty-eight-year-old guy keeps cut-up raw vegetables on hand? I also have an ulterior motive. It is October 2019, and Wolfie has been working on his first album, which does not yet have a release date, but he does have more than a dozen songs and I want him to put all of them on my phone so I can listen to them whenever I want, which will be practically all the time.

  Yes, I am a proud mom—and for good reason. He has written all the songs and played all the instruments. I think the songs are amazing. I want the dip to buy me enough time to listen, get him to help me with the download, and ask all sorts of mom questions. When we inevitably get to the point where he has had enough of my prying, I will say, “How about that dip?”

  The plan works. At Wolfie’s, I head straight to the kitchen as I usually do when I visit him. I often bring groceries or a meal to heat up. This time it is the cheesy spinach and crab dip. He has a sleek, modern kitchen that opens up to a living room and dining room. It feels like a bright, airy loft. I turn on the oven and heat up the dip. I wipe my hands on a dish towel that I half remember buying him a while ago and ask Wolfie what is new. He catches me up on this and that, then he casually says, “By the way, Dad is on his way over.”

  “Dad” is my ex-husband and friend, Edward Van Halen—Ed to me.

  “That’s great,” I say. “I haven’t seen him in a while. How’s he feeling?”

  “He’s okay,” Wolfie says.

  Wolfie explains that Ed had called while I was on my way over to his house. He was out doing errands with his assistant and asked if he could drop by for a visit. A few minutes later, as I am setting the warm dip on the kitchen counter, Ed knocks and opens the door. He stops a couple of steps inside after hearing Wolfie’s music playing on the sound system. His face turns into one big smile. “How about this kid?” he says to me as we hug. “I know,” I say. “My heart is melting.”

  So is the spinach and crab dip. But Ed spots the bowl on the kitchen counter and suddenly this impromptu meeting of the two copresidents of the Wolfgang Van Halen Fan Club is paused. He walks over to the dish and smells it.

  “What’d you make?” he asks.

  As I answer, he pops a cracker with a giant scoop of dip into his mouth.

  “Wow.”

  He dives in for seconds and thirds, standing over the dip, elbows on each side of the bowl, as if he has taken it hostage. He doesn’t realize that he is hogging it for himself.

  “Dad, it’s for everybody,” Wolfie says, smiling.

  Ed laughs and steps back with another cracker full of dip in his hand. “Oh, sorry. But, Val, this is amazing.”

  Ed and I stopped living together in 2002 and divorced in 2007. Both of us remarried, but in our own way, we stayed together. We have shared four decades of love, anger, frustration, friendship, and love. That is what has endured—the love. And that is the lesson I have learned and continue to learn, especially these days.

  The same is true for Ed, who was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000 and has been battling different forms of the damn disease ever since. He has been having a particularly rough go of it lately. That is what makes seeing him eat with such relish a particularly joyous occasion. At sixty-four years old, he is still devilishly cute. But at this moment, what matters even more is that he still seems to like my cooking.

  * * *

  I first met Ed backstage at a Van Halen concert in Shreveport, Louisiana. My brother knew someone who got us VIP passes. Ed was shy. We said hello before the show and talked for a long time afterward until it was time for the band to get on their bus. The attraction was instantaneous and mutual. Some people observed that we looked remarkably alike, like brother and sister. Our connection was deep right from the start.

  A short time later, I met him on the road when the band was still on tour, and I was even more smitten. He was adorable, introverted, and possessed by a vulnerability a
s prodigious as his talent.

  For me, it was almost incidental that this twenty-five-year-old was already considered the greatest rock guitarist of his generation. It seemed overwhelming to him, though. At the time, Ed and his brother, Alex, still lived with their parents in Pasadena. They were too busy chasing rock stardom to get a place of their own. They weren’t home that much anyway, probably because when they were, they had to deal with their taskmaster mother.

  Mrs. Van Halen was a tough, demanding woman who wasn’t easy on her boys, rock stars or not—and, in fact, she didn’t approve of the lifestyle of a touring musician. But whatever issues they had were set aside when she put food on the table. Ed and Alex loved her cooking. She made all of their favorite Indonesian dishes—sambal chicken, gado-gado, spekkoek, and pisang goreng—and the beasts were temporarily tamed.

  Food was something Ed and I responded to differently. Although he could enjoy a home-cooked meal, more often than not, he ate only because he got hungry and knew he had to eat to keep going. I ate because I loved food, and later on, I used food as a substitute for love. It was one of the reasons I took notice of the way Ed sat over the spinach and crab dip. He loved the way it tasted. I wanted to believe he was savoring much more.

  When Ed’s father learned we were dating, he told his son that I was only a teenager and way too young for him. Ed explained to his father that he was watching reruns of my TV series, One Day at a Time. In reality, I was two weeks shy of twenty-one years old when we got married and totally legal and perfectly in love. Ed felt the same way. We were portrayed as a mismatch: a bad-boy rock star and America’s sweetheart. It made for juicy reading. But privately, Ed wasn’t the person people thought he was and neither was I. He was shy, and I was loud. We got along very well when he wasn’t drinking or using drugs, and I’m convinced we would have stayed together if not for some crazy, cliché eighties-style behavior.

  Our split was hard and complicated by the fact that we had a child who both of us agreed was our best creation. While we often lived very different lives in the ten years after Wolfie was born, we never lived them separately. Wolfie kept us together and, more important, ensured that we remained a tightly bonded threesome. After we split, an ironic thing happened. Ed and I grew even closer together. We couldn’t live with each other, but we found it impossible to live completely apart. I won’t say we wrote our own happy ending. It was more like To Be Continued . . .