Category Archives: Food

Is That How It’s Supposed to Look?

I’m sure there are people out there who look forward to family get-togethers with nothing but joyful anticipation. I’ve seen them on Facebook, so it must be true. I love my family, but a certain amount of anxiety springs up for me around a few of them.

Like my Grandmama Irene. I never know what’s going to come out of her mouth–whether she’ll tell me I am darling, give me the wisest advice ever, or cut me to the quick. Over the last few years, the ones between 90 and 100, she has gotten sharper with me. When I kiss her cheek, she complains that my children don’t speak to her. When my children speak to her, she asks who they are. It’s fun.

I get it–age takes a toll. Saturday, we gathered for Grandmama Irene’s 100th birthday party. It was lovely to see all the old faces from our town again, and I enjoy spending time with my cousins and their kids. But the morning of the party, I realized that I was bracing myself against what she might say. I rarely assume it will be nice. I wrapped up a purple paisley scarf that I bought in Egypt and had the kids sign a birthday card, all the while with a knot in the pit of my stomach because I never think that any gift or gesture will be good enough.

All that worrying shook loose a memory of a Christmas morning at my house, around my table, when I had invited her to be my guest after decades of us doing things at her table.

My entire childhood, Grandmama Irene was in charge of Christmas. And she left very little room for merry-making. We had to get dressed, brush teeth, and fold up sleeping bags before we could see our presents. We ate lunch at 12 on the dot, even if we were still full from breakfast or if someone was running late. As soon as you set down your fork, she swept away the lunch plate and slapped down a slice of dessert. Lunch was usually over by 12:35. After that, we all marched into the living room to take down the tree, which was then hauled out in the backyard with the ripped up wrapping paper and cardboard boxes and burned.

And that was that, so much for Christmas. After my parents divorced, we still spent Christmas morning at Grandmama and Pop’s then went to see Daddy and Gay. Daddy, having spent many Christmases on Grandmama’s schedule, would meet us at the door and ask, “What time was Christmas over this year?” I think her record was 12:50.

When I had kids, I got to shake things up and start my own traditions. My goal was to spend the day in pajamas and leave the tree up as long as we wanted and eat when we got hungry. One year, we decided that a big meal wasn’t as fun as finger foods, so our Christmas dinner changed to all appetizers and sparkly drinks. FUN! Mom and Grandmama Irene joined us and played right along, for the most part.

Another Christmas tradition that I wanted to introduce for my kids was a Yule Log, or Buche de Noel. It’s a chocolate creme roll that’s decorated to look like a log. I had joyful memories of the first time I had seen a Yule Log. Little Gay brought one down from DC. Her boyfriend was a pilot so he rented a plane to fly them down, the two of them and the Yule Log in a giant bakery box on her lap. I remember him joking, “Yeah, over North Carolina, I told Gay that we didn’t have enough fuel and we needed to get rid of some weight, so she started eating that Yule Log as fast as she could!” Fond memories and chocolate cake–what more could I ask for in a tradition for my family?

 

So one fine Christmas morning, with my family gathered around the table, I told them I had a special surprise for dessert. I returned with our first Yule Log held aloft on a gold platter, the chocolate frosting dusted with powdered sugar snow and tiny holly leaves made of sugar paste. The kids clapped as I set it down on the table. But Grandmama, the woman who had made a living and a name for herself making cakes sneered,

“Is it SUPPOSED to look like that?”

And poof. My joy disappeared. The magic of the Yule Log vanished and I was left holding a dumb chocolate cake from the grocery store.

I know it’s not a big thing, but it was just kind of mean. The dessert was obviously a big deal to me and she couldn’t let me have that moment. One little moment in a big life. I know, I know–she’s one reason I’m alive. She gave me a car once when I was broke. She made me birthday cakes every year. I know all those things. But dang. It’s the mean little questions that hurt.

 


Thinking about the holidays coming up and how feelings will get hurt, that phrase got stuck in my head: “Is it supposed to look like that?” That’s a mean little question that I ask myself inadvertently about EVERYTHING. I’m always comparing how things ARE to how I think they are supposed to look. I get my feelings hurt because I have an idea of how family is supposed to look and act and be. And we don’t always give each other our best.

Brett invited us to Thanksgiving dinner this year and told me to bring dessert. Red velvet cake is her favorite so I pulled out the cookbook of Grandmama Irene’s recipes that Little Gay made for us about 10 years ago and flipped through until I found the recipe. Mixed in with the recipes are photographs of our family. Pop with Joe’s boys on the front walk. Baby Vivi in her Papa’s arms. Aunt Dixie’s blonde granddaughters–Shawn’s smiling Mackenzie, Abby and Shelby riding their Barbie bikes, Isabella and tiny Sophia with their luminous eyes. 

The photo on the back cover was taken at Grandmama Irene’s 90th birthday party:

Looking at it made me sad–Daddy, Dixie, and Clayton are all gone now. Is our family supposed to look like that? There are also faces missing from this photo for a different reason–Carlos and Gabriel, who hadn’t been born yet.

Here’s the photo from Grandmama’s 100th birthday:

 

Is it supposed to look like that? Maybe. Maybe not. But we’re sticking together. And this year, I’m trying to be present in what IS instead of worrying about what life is supposed to look like. Because even if you don’t approve of how it looks, it’s CAKE.

 

This Is Clearly Ridiculous

It’s 11:15 p.m. and I am being ridiculous.

I’m baking a cherry pie. Again. My third annual attempt at some mediocre homage to my dad’s Christmas Eve tradition of making a cherry pie just for Joe’s wife, Beth.

I can’t even say it was Vivi’s idea this year. She did mention it several times, even earlier today, but the day got away from us and she’s already asleep but I’m here waiting for the timer to ding.

2015 attempt

 

I don’t know how to make pie. The filling is two cans of Comstock and the crust is Pillsbury. I didn’t even attempt to weave the lattice top crust this time. The letter “B” that I carved into the top crust started out looking clever and now looks like a hemorrhage.

Completely ridiculous.

It’s not even like Beth has no other sources of cherry pie. I know that Uncle Mark made Aunt Beth a cherry pie this summer when they came up for a visit. I saw the pictures on Facebook. I heard the reviews from Joe. Mark’s crusts are flaky miracles of French lard and Irish butter and salt from Tibet. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the cherries are hand picked by earnest graduate students in the highly competitive stone fruits program at an Ivy League college. The man knows pie.

I am not the best person for this job. In our family, I’m not even in the top FIVE best people for this job.

So ridiculous.

 

Why can’t I let it go, this tradition? Brett told me to bring asparagus but I’m going to show up with a cherry pie.

Maybe it’s not even about the pie, or Beth, or me, or Christmas Eve. Maybe it’s because when I reached into the utensil drawer to find a brush to do the egg wash (Pillsbury is FANCY), I had to dig past Richard’s dumpling press, Daddy’s pastry cutter, and Grandmama Eunice’s biscuit round. Every one of them a better cook than me. Every one of them gone now. Every one of them left me a tool I don’t know how to use yet.

And I’m almost 50. And it’s almost midnight. And tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

 

I even thought that if I started writing this I would find the answer.

Completely ridiculous.

There’s no answer, only the doing. The half-assed, broken-hearted attempts at showing people how much I love them. Learning to show up, even with gifts that aren’t quite what I hoped they would be by now.

Messy, mediocre, and still ridiculously sweet.

Cook Until Done

I’m bringing the carrot casserole to our family Thanksgiving at Cowtail tomorrow. Any potluck, buffet or repast wouldn’t be a family dinner without it. I’m not even sure where it came from, but the dish entered the family cookbook after Daddy and Gay married in the early 1980s. Come to think of it, I’ve never been served carrot casserole at any other family’s table or at a restaurant so it may be unique to our family.

Carrot casserole. You can pretty much figure it out from here.

After 20+ years of making it a couple of times a year, I don’t consult the recipe or measure anymore. It’s about 2 lbs. of peeled carrots, sliced and parboiled. A half of a good-sized onion, minced. A good measure of the sharpest cheddar cheese at hand. Two dollops of mayonnaise. More salt than you think it will need but it needs it. Mix together and spread into a lightly buttered casserole dish, usually the Corning French White that I got for wedding gifts a lifetime ago. Top with some seasoned stuffing mix that’s been tossed with a little butter. Pop it into a 350 degree oven.

And that’s when I stop to smile as I remember the last line of Daddy’s recipe:

“Cook until done.”

I love the shorthand of it, the way that my father knew that I would know when the dish was right. Cook it until it’s done.

One Thanksgiving when I had just moved out on my own and was learning to cook for real, I wrote the carrot casserole recipe down on a sheet of yellow legal paper as Daddy dictated. My handwriting was young and strong and girlishly loopy. Back then, before keyboards and touchscreens and voice to text apps, I still used my handwriting all day, every day. Back then, I could call my Daddy if part of the instructions didn’t make sense. I can see his hand (back when he still had all of his fingers!), the way he punctuated instructions with his fingers splayed apart and used them to show a pinch or a stir or a scatter. Then when the instructions were over, he would do that little upward flip of the palm to show that it was finished and relatively simple and he had absolute faith that I could do it. Just keep going until it’s done.

When I went out to get some grocery things this afternoon, my heart was torn about–of all things–pie. Daddy was big into pie and Thanksgiving is the Pie Holiday. I remember a year at Joe and Beth’s house when we had SEVEN kinds of pie. I don’t know how to make pies. I usually choose cake over pie. But my heart hurts for pie this year. Emily posted a photo of an apple pie with a perfect scatter of autumn leaves cut from dough across its golden top. Daddy did that.  Diane’s pecan pie displayed geometric precision in both nut placement and fluted edges. Daddy did that. Jo had a couple of sweet potato pies going alongside her greens. Daddy did that. Mir baked pumpkin pie with gluten free crust and burned the first one then tried again until it came out perfect. Daddy did that too. Well, not the gluten-free part, but the trying again part.

So with my dangerous combination of heartache and enthusiasm, I found myself in the baking aisle this afternoon, talking myself into a 2 or 3 pie commitment on top of the carrot casserole, the cranberry relish, and the rosemary roasted butternut squash I was already down for. I don’t even own pie pans so there I was in front of the disposable aluminum pan display, trying to invoke the spirit of Sam Garrett (who would have been at Williams-Sonoma three months ago to stock up on pie tins).

As I weighed the difference between 9-inch and 10-inch with lids or lidless, a tiny woman at my left elbow cried, “Ten dollars for a turkey pan? Lawd, they got to be kidding me!” I helped her check to see if any of the sizes across the bottom shelf would work but none was cheaper than eight bucks. Three stair-step girls in winter coats and neat braids waited behind the woman. The youngest, about five, wandered over to a display. “Grandma, look! They got snowman marshmallows!” The tiny grandmother waved away the marshmallows with the turn of her hand, fingers pinching the air to sketch a silent “no.”

The girls stayed quiet as their grandmother pulled silver pans from the shelves. She asked me for my opinion on the turkey pan situation. I pulled out one for lasagna that would be big enough. “This one’s six bucks, with a lid…” I offered. The grandmother–who in all honesty was about my age–held up her hand to show me a folded bill. “But I got $5 dollars and that’s ALL. I got everything to cook but I don’t have a pan.” We both turned back to search the shelves again.

An answer came to me as simple as “Cook until done.” I knew what right looked like in this situation. I opened my wallet and pulled out a $10 bill. “Here you go. Get what you need.” She flung her arms around my neck and we patted each other on the back. I whispered, “Grab a bag of those snowman marshmallows, too.” She squeezed my hand and chirped, “Y’all get you some marshmallows!” All three girls reached for a bag each, felt what it felt like to hold them, then the two older girls put theirs back down on the display so the littlest girl could carry them. We picked out a roasting pan and a couple for casseroles then shared one more hug before the family went on their way.

I walked away with a lighter heart and a much diminished need to bake pie. Pie was Daddy’s love language. Mine might be giving what I have to give.

Cook until done.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.

Tight Shot/Wide Shot: Dark and Stormy

Two years and four days ago, I wrote a story that got great reaction: Tight Shot/Wide Shot. In a few photos taken around my palatial showcase of a home, I illustrated the disconnect between what we share with the world (the carefully posed tight shot) with what we actually live in (the messier wide shot).

I had another moment like that this evening, when the stress of the day drove me to spend the last of my weekly Weight Watchers points on a mixed drink. This beautiful cocktail is called a Dark and Stormy:

14100378_10208868495582704_8490821825284651910_n

Dark and Stormy: Gosling’s Black Seal rum from Bermuda mixed with the strongest ginger beer you can find. Serve over crushed ice at sundown.

Richard and I discovered this drink in Bermuda, at The Reefs. We two damn near perfect vacations there. We planned to get married on the pink beach beneath the cliffs. Every evening at about sundown, we would mix up a couple of soda bottles filled with Dark and Stormys then drink them in the hot tub on the side of the cliffs.

Yeah, that was a while back. Waaaaaaay back. Today, I mixed my Dark and Stormy then took it outside to the deck to take a deep breath while the Ore Ida french fries cooked in the oven and some turkey burgers sizzled on the indoor grill. I took it outside in hopes of getting a little sip of Special and Exotic and Vacation because today has been a whole heaping dish of Another Damn Monday.

Tight shot: I could have shared the photo and left you thinking that this is what my life looks like.

But writing and sharing isn’t about the tight shot. It’s about the wide shot:

Real life pool

Those towels are from Saturday, which was the last day that the pool wasn’t too green for swimming.

Sooo glamorous.

By 9:30 this morning, I had already been up for 3 hours but still late for work, because I had school drop off, a conference with Carlos’ special ed teacher, and a booster shot appointment at the veterinarian for the kitten. Which cost me $80 and five minutes of crying in my car because when Biscuits got scared before the second injection, the vet said, “Settle, settle” to her and it hit me right in the heart because Daddy always said “Easy, easy,” when an animal started to panic.

I got to work in time to get caught in a pissing contest between two smart and capable people who have very different expectations. Work these days feels like so much of life, where the things I know how to fix I’m not allowed to fix and the things I’m supposed to fix I don’t know how to fix. But there was lunch with my friend and a free cookie and for a little while, we talked about writing and ideas and how it all comes together. We walked in the sunshine.

I got some stuff done, because I’m a bitch and bitches get stuff done. Because I was so good at getting stuff done, I left late to get my kid so the whole way down the staircase I switched from victory to guilt.

I gave hugs and kisses and answered questions about imaginary worlds and puberty and what’s for dinner. I corrected math homework. I started the laundry and added chemicals to the pool and I forgot to call the water office about our $400 bill from last month. I looked through the mail and worried about college savings accounts, small bank failures, neighborhood meetings about schools, and the half-life of our 18 year old mattress. I worried that we weren’t doing anything special for Labor Day. 

I served french fries because the locally sourced organic okra rotted AGAIN while I dithered over finding a way to cook it other than frying us all to death. I cooked with low sodium, reduced fat, slim bread and fucking french fries in hopes that my son will eat something that isn’t a cracker or a chip. He didn’t eat any of it. He doesn’t eat anything but his pants are too small. Which reminds me that he needs clean uniforms. And who ever thought that white shirts were a viable option for kindergarten uniforms? OxiClean, that’s who.

Screen time and vitamins and grams of protein and signed behavior sheets and kitten fights and french fry guilt and work emails and steel wool scrubbers and fabric softener and bills and …and underneath it all I feel that pull to write, to make something, to create. To make something other than dinner. To create something other than a finely crafted email.

So I made a drink and I stepped outside. When the wide shot hit me and my brain started chasing all the things I needed to do to make that wide shot perfect, I narrowed my focus. I brought it back to my breath. To my senses. To the cold wet glass in my hand. To the bite of the ginger and the warmth of the rum. To the smell of the neighbor’s cut grass. To the sparkle of sundown through those pine trees that I was looking at when Richard told me that he needed to know I would be happy again one day, after he was gone.

I drank it all in.

Biscuit Guilt: Modern Southern Motherhood

My kids love biscuits for breakfast. They take a while, so we only have hot biscuits on weekends. Saturday morning, I realized that every time I fix biscuits for them, I get a side of guilt. It’s all part of being a mom in the modern South.

Before we get too deep into the story, I should share my recipe. Feel free to pin it:

Modern southern biscuits

Family biscuit recipe since 2004.

The buttermilk is the secret. Pro tip: use the kitchen scissors to open the bag. Keep your sewing scissors hidden from the children and Gennaro.

I got this recipe from my father, who knew how to make fresh biscuits. He also had the good sense to know that these frozen biscuits were 92% as good as homemade and they saved dirtying up dishes. They’re always ready to pop in the oven and you can make four if four is all you need.

But why the guilt when frozen biscuits make so much sense? My modern southern motherhood guilt stems from the fact that my Grandmama Irene kept a plate of cold biscuits on her kitchen table always. ALWAYS. Whatever she and Pop and Aunt Eula didn’t eat hot at breakfast went onto a plate to cool then they were covered with the lid of an old aluminum pot. Nobody had an excuse to be hungry at Grandmama’s house because you could always fix you a biscuit. She even kept the preserves and jelly right there next to them on the plastic tablecloth that covered up the good tablecloth.

I can see Grandmama Irene making biscuits. She took out the wooden biscuit bowl, which was never washed with soap, just scraped out good after each batch. A five pound bag of White Lily self-rising flour. A blue can of Crisco with the snap on lid. A half-gallon of buttermilk from the fridge door. Cut in the Crisco, make a well for the buttermilk, mix it together with fingers that have never thumbed through a cookbook for a biscuit recipe. Knowing how to make biscuits came down like family stories–watching the rhythm of her hands, hearing the scratch of the biscuit cutter against the side of the wooden bowl, smelling the sharp tang of buttermilk, that same gentle bite that you’d taste in the biscuit hot out of the oven. A little sharp to balance the sweet preserves.

She rolled her biscuits on a Tupperware pastry sheet, the white one with the red circles for measuring pie crusts. A wooden rolling pin dusted with flour. Then the tiny biscuit cutter–Grandmama’s biscuits are about an inch across, instead of the typical, sausage patty sized biscuits. She lined them up on a shiny greased baking pan while the oven ticked to the right temperature.

The next generation carried on the biscuit ritual, but with a little bit of a nod to busier times. My mom worked full-time but she made scratch biscuits too. Instead of rolled and cut biscuits, she made drop biscuits. Faster and less mess. The flavor is the same, but instead of uniform circles, her biscuits went more oblong, echoing the shape of the spoon that had dropped the dough onto the baking sheet. The tops of those biscuits peaked and rippled, not smooth and flat like her mama’s biscuits. In our house, biscuits were already becoming a dinner time or weekend thing because mornings were for getting to work and school.

I’m stuck in a strange middle land of the past and the present–on the one hand, I don’t make scratch biscuits like DeeAnn or Beth or Saralynn do, daughters of my generation who learned from their mothers. On the other hand, I also DO NOT use whop biscuits (that’s those godawful biscuits in a can that you have to whop on the side of the counter to open. As Jerry Clower used to say, that WHOP is the sound of a Southern husband’s heart breaking.) So I’m stuck in between whop biscuits and scratch biscuits and that is right where you find frozen buttermilk biscuits.

The guilt, though. Will my kids lose all connection to their floury shortening buttermilk heritage? Will my kids take one more step and–gasp!–feed their kids whop biscuits? THOSE ARE MY (theoretical) GRANDCHILDREN.

The children of every culture walk this line away from the past. We all cling to some recipe from our ancestors. Donaley spends Sundays making Dominican food for her family. Thien-Kim flies home from her mama’s house with a suitcase full of spring rolls. Luvvie pines for her mama’s jollof rice when she’s traveling. Beth makes biscuits in the south of France when she’s missing her granny. Martina makes sauerkraut like her mama taught. Ginger cooks red beans and rice on Monday because that’s laundry day, or it used to be before we all had a washing machine and a dryer in the house.

Yes. I am different from the women who came before me. I don’t make biscuits from scratch. I could if I chose to, but I don’t choose to. At least I don’t today. There will be a day soon from now when I wake up wanting to make biscuits. The recipe and the rhythm will be there in my DNA. It can’t not be there.

But for today, I’m going to put down the guilt. While the frozen biscuits were in the oven, my daughter sat down next to me to show me what she was doing on her laptop. She was coding in Scratch. She dragged an orange cat to the center of the screen then added another version with his legs in a different position. She made him say “Hello there!” She flipped him sideways and it looked like he was swimming, so she drew air bubbles. She changed the line width and color to add a tiny white arc on each gray bubble–voila. We talked about animation and if/then statements and loops and timing. All while the smell of hot biscuits whispered from the kitchen. For her, Saturday mornings aren’t about watching cartoons. They’re for creating.

14095867_10208856228636038_1028251376770498712_n

And that feeds her spirit and her soul and her future.

Our kids are growing up differently and that’s not so bad. In our house, Sunday morning are for pancakes. Daddy’s in charge of pancakes. Daddy lets you sit on the counter in your underwear and mix in food coloring because blue is your favorite. And Daddy gets you to count how many pancakes will fit on the griddle. He makes little ones and big ones. Daddy teaches you to watch for the bubbles and when there are enough bubbles, how to flip the pancake. Maybe that’s what seeps into your DNA. Maybe that’s the recipe that keeps us connected to each other. The time together, not the taste.

14102626_10208856227116000_7251470102207220882_n

Somebody Loves You That Much

I had been OK with Vivi being away at camp…until about 11 p.m. on her birthday. All afternoon, I had been hitting Refresh on the camp photo page. I know they celebrated her day by singing at meals, and her unit had cake, and she got that big pink care package that G and I left for her at the trading post, but I needed to SEE some of it.

The photos went up and within minutes I started crying. Out of 225 pictures, I only found four with her visible. In two, she was daydreaming in the back of a canoe, her paddle vertical in the water. In one, she was walking with her unit but she seemed alone, sucking on her finger. In the best photo, she stood with her counselor:

camp9

Simply seeing her face wasn’t enough for me. Is she happy enough? Does she look like a girl on her birthday? Is she OK? My mind whirled down the path of worry but there was just no knowing.

I hadn’t realized how much I was hoping to see a photo of her giggling with her tentmates or at the center of some shenanigans. I couldn’t stop the tears that sprang from my eyes. G gave me hug and reminded me that she is probably having a blast.

Still, my mom heart kept asking, “Is she happy enough?”

As I went to bed, I could hear anxiety and insomnia creeping up behind me on shuffling feet. It was 11:49 p.m. so I told myself that once the clock turned to 12:00 a.m., it wouldn’t be her birthday anymore and I could put down the whip. While I waited for the minutes to tick by, I remembered a conversation that Daddy and I had about birthdays and birthday cake.

It was sometime last year, probably at Cowtail because my Aunt Dixie was there. We started talking about birthday cake and I told Aunt Dixie, “I still remember the cake you made for Shannon for her second or third birthday–it had pink frosting and daisies with petals made from marshmallows and you had dyed the center of each petal with pink sugar.”

pink flowers

Aunt Dixie laughed and said, “Gosh, I remember that cake! It was a recipe from Good Housekeeping and those durn flowers took me forever.”

“Well, it was worth it because I still think of that cake and how pretty it was. Now that I’ve got kids I understand how much effort it takes….”

And Daddy finished my sentence–“when somebody loves you that much.”

Exactly. That’s what that pink cake covered in sugar sparkling flowers was–a visible way of seeing how much Aunt Dixie loved her daughter. Somebody loves you that much, enough to stay up all night snipping sticky marshmallows and dipping them in pink sugar just to see the delight in your eyes on your birthday.

Daddy used to make me cakes for my birthday. Coconut cakes because they were our favorite. He went to the trouble because he loved me that much.

That memory helped me understand why I was struggling with being apart from Vivi on her birthday–making a fuss over her has always been my way of showing her “somebody loves you that much.”

I looked at the photo of Vivi and her counselor again and my heart was soothed. See that book in her hand? That’s the sixth book in a series that she’s been reading. It was in her birthday care package that was delivered at camp. Look how much she’s read in one afternoon! I couldn’t make her a cake that day, but I gave her something she finds just as sweet.

She’s been gobbling up a story. A book that was ordered for her, kept a surprise, packed in a special pink box with glow bracelets and puppy stickers and a disposable camera and gel pens and a camp bandana…all because somebody loves her that much.

I hope she stayed up until she was finished with the book. She has her green camp lantern, and she has extra batteries. She even has books seven and eight waiting for her at home. All because somebody loves her that much.

Somebody Has to Bake the Pie

In my last appointment before the holidays, my therapist and I talked about how this year would be different without my dad there. Big Gay does so much of Christmas for us, but there were a few things that belonged to Daddy alone.

Like we usually had one present that was just from him to each of us. For many years, it was Far Side desk calendars. Or it would be smell-good stuff from the drug store. Or fancy coffee. Or step ladders–that was a fun year.

Over the years, he bought a set of cranberry red Waterford champagne flutes, one or two at a time and we used them to drink a toast on Christmas Eve. The first year, when there were only two for Big Gay and him, he said, “I saw these and had to buy them because they were the only thing I ever saw that was almost as pretty as you.” Then we drank her health.

And he made the sweets, candies and cookies and especially pie. I think the pie phase started about fifteen years ago. He liked mincemeat–maybe the only person left in Georgia who ever liked mincemeat–so he had to learn to make it for himself. There were five or six kinds of pie at every holiday dinner.

When the pie phase held on long enough to become A Thing instead of a phase, Big Gay surprised Daddy one Christmas with a new Kitchenaid mixer. He was so excited that he kept it on the floor by his reading chair all day, so that he could “reach down and pet it.” Joe offered to make him a little wagon so he could drag it up and down the street and show it off to his friends.

Sometimes Christmas and pie led to strife. One year, I walked into the library and Daddy was sitting in his reading chair staring off into space. When I asked what was going on, he pulled a little face and said, “Mark said my pie crust might be better if I used half lard and half butter instead of all butter.” I rolled my eyes and said, “Can’t we have ONE HOLIDAY when you boys don’t argue about pastry?” (Mark is Little Gay’s husband, and in addition to being a neurosurgeon, mountain climber, and lawyer, he also took a year off to work as a pastry chef. I shit you not. And he’s pretty good-looking too. But he can’t dance, so there’s that.)

Whatever the ratio of butter to lard, Daddy always made a lattice-crust cherry pie for my sister-in-law, Beth. She got to take the whole pie (or whatever was left) home on Christmas Eve (and return the pie pan sometime in the summer or just buy him a new pie pan for Father’s Day). It was their special thing, a simple way that he showed her he loved her.

When I was telling my therapist about all these holiday traditions, it was the cherry pie that made me break down in tears. She told me that the plain truth is that if a tradition is important enough to the family, those who are left behind after a death have to decide to be responsible for carrying the tradition forward. Somebody’s got to quit being sad and bake the pie.

Mark would be the logical choice, right? I wasn’t exactly operating on logic when I set my heart on making a cherry pie for Beth.

I asked my friend Jo, who is a brilliant cake baker, for her pie crust recipe. She chuckled and said, “Pillsbury–the kind you roll out. It’s in the freezer section in a red box.” I filed that away… right next to my overblown intention to look up some Ina Garten or Gale Gand recipe for Pâte Brisée and learn how to make it from scratch. I was doing this task to uphold a cherished memory of my father–no shortcuts.

Except time got cut short. I meant to practice one weekend and forgot and then it was the day before Christmas Eve and I hadn’t even bought the Pillsbury pie crust in the red box. Dammit. All I had made was a shopping list when time ran out–I had to get myself to Griffin for the service to scatter Daddy’s ashes. For the second time in a few weeks, I started crying about that cherry pie. I had held it up as a moment of happiness, a moment of forward motion in this season of loss.

G took the list from me and promised that he would go to the store for the supplies.

Then when I told Big Gay about my plan, she opened up the kitchen drawer and gave me Daddy’s….wiggly pastry cutter thingy that you use to make the lattices for the crust.

I should have asked Mark what it was called, but he had lost the power of speech after I confessed I was using Pillsbury crusts. Even though his lips were pressed in a thin line at the thought of Poppin’ Fresh, he didn’t say a word to discourage me. He even handed me the wood-handled metal scraper thingy that you use to push flour around and said, “Every pastry chef needs a (insert technical term for scraper thingy).”

Mark has already told me how to weave the lattice together, so next year will look less wonky.

Mark has already told me how to weave the lattice together, so next year will look less wonky.

The next morning, I got up early to give it one good try. Vivi stirred the cherries and sugar and almond flavoring while they bubbled on the stove. Victoria washed up the pans. I cut lattices and patted butter and crossed my fingers. I remembered to put aluminum foil around the crust edges, just like Daddy did.

My favorite moment of baking that pie wasn’t later that night when Vivi showed it to Aunt Beth. My favorite moment was a few hours before that, when I tucked the pastry tools that had belonged to my father into my own kitchen drawer. When I decided that I will make a cherry pie every year in memory of my dad and his kind heart. He had a knack for knowing how to delight each of us in a simple and profound way.

It might take our whole family to get this pie right. That’s OK. My pies will only get better with Mark’s advice, Big Gay sharing the tools, G running to the store, and Vivi stirring the pot. It’s the same lesson that my therapist told me: if it’s important enough, the family will take up the responsibility for making sure it gets done.

It takes a family to make a family.

Even if that first cherry pie was a hot mess (I used the wrong kind of cherries so it wasn’t tart, way too sweet and the crust was merely serviceable) Beth texted today to say that she had eaten another piece for breakfast.

Sweet.

10496262_10206950517154442_3565513196035020409_o

Aunt Beth and Vivi, Year One of the Cherry Pie

 

Making Pie From Pumpkin Guts

I made my first homemade pumpkin pie today. It seemed like the most effcient way to put away Halloween decorations, since I didn’t feel like climbing the ladder into the attic. I took a couple of the small pumpkins off the front steps and roasted them.

Scooping out the seeds and stringy guts of the pumpkins reminded me of a story my friend Edna told 20 years ago. The first time she decided to make a pumpkin pie from scratch, she cut open the pumpkin and all she found inside was that stringy mess…so she picked all the seeds out and used that stuff my kids call the “pumpkin guts” to make her pie. I wish y’all could hear Edna tell this story in her Glenville, Georgia accent. She said, “Welllll, I just kept adding more seasoning and blending it and blending it. It turned out OK, I guess, not too bad.” I think it was one of her sisters who explained to her how you have to cook the pumpkin to get to the part that actually makes the pie. She was trying to make pie out of the part you’re supposed to throw away.

Edna’s story made me smile today, but it also taught me a little lesson. Sometimes we get in a rut and just assume that life is supposed to be THIS hard. That we’re supposed to be making the most out of the stringy guts. That this really is as good as it gets. At the beginning of this year, when I was having so much trouble getting Carlos into an after school program, it turned out that the root of the problem was one person had said one thing to me that was incorrect. When I asked the nice lady behind the desk if after school could make accommodations for my son’s IEP (special ed plan), she said, “Oh, we don’t take kids with special needs. We just don’t have the staff.” Instead of saying, “That can’t be right,” and taking things up a level to her manager, I just assumed that life is supposed to be this difficult when it comes to my boy. And that’s wrong-headed. That’s trying to make pie out of pumpkin guts.

We put so much effort into turning that piddly stuff into a sweet and savory dessert, when the real stuff is so close, right there waiting to be used. Then a friend comes along and says, “Oh, honey! Let me show you a trick.” And you finally learn how pumpkin pie out of pumpkin instead of pumpkin guts. In my case, that whole problem got sorted out because I happened to bump into the principal at the school where Carlos was supposed to be and when she asked me in passing, “How are you today?” I told her the truth–not too good and a little pissed off. She stopped in her tracks and asked if there was any way she could help. I explained that one of her employees had told me that the after school program didn’t take kids with IEPs. She immediately apologized and figured out the employee’s mistake–that student worker had misunderstood. The after school program can’t make accommodations for kids with IEPs, like no student aides or special equipment, but they certainly TAKE kids with IEPs. We got it sorted out in a few minutes and Carlos loves his after school time.

I learned how to make pumpkin pie with PUMPKIN instead of pumpkin guts. I needed a little help with figuring it out, just like Edna. And just like Edna, I was doing my best to make something out of the stringy parts, something that looked like my goal.

Anywho. Vivi decided we should make pumpkin tarts instead of one big pie. I told her to put pecans on top of a few of them. She made faces. I hooted when we pulled them from the oven because they really look like how I feel sometimes:

pies

The Moosewood Cookbook: How I Broke My Oven and Learned to Cook Again

Remember a while back when I tried to write a cookbook review and ended up breaking the oven? (and coining the new cuss word FOCACCIT!)  Well, I’m proud to report that just 6 months and $1200 later, we have a new oven! And I STILL haven’t made that focaccia.  But I am ready to write a review of the The Moosewood Cookbook: 40th Anniversary Edition.

Short Review: Buy yourself one today! Or get one for the mama in your life for Mothers Day! If you use that Amazon link, it will be here in time for Sunday. Probably. Wedding gift, graduation gift, Treat Yoself gift…this book belongs in every kitchen.

Being without an oven meant I had to do some re-engineering in the kitchen. Loooots of Crock Pot cooking. Also more salads and stir frys. I feel like this beautiful book helped me fall back in love with the basics of cooking–the sensual, spiritual creation of concoctions that nourish us.

(Does that sound sufficiently Hippie enough for ya? Good, let’s continue.)


I was unfamiliar with the story of the Moosewood Cookbook. It’s one of the best-selling cookbooks of all time, a classic of vegetarian cooking. Mollie Katzen, one of the founders of the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York, compiled and illustrated this collection of recipes 40 years ago. The cookbook started as a binder of recipes used by the cooks at Moosewood–none of them professional chefs. The collection includes recipes from grandmothers, restaurant diners, international adventures. A little of this, a little of that.

Yes, it’s packed with exotic flavors from around the world, but what I loved most about this book was that it helped me get back to the basics. Over the past couple of years, I’ve fallen into the trap of the working mother–convenience foods and a boring routine of proven, easy recipes. Seriously, we are one taco salad from oblivion up in here.

When I prepared the Moosewood recipe for French Onion Soup, I remembered the simple pleasure of caramelizing onions on a Sunday afternoon (and G even ate it too!). Just below the recipe for onion soup are instructions for making croutons. I didn’t need a recipe for croutons–I just needed a reminder that I COULD make my own croutons. And I did.

This book reminded me that I can make my own vinaigrette instead of relying on Paul Newman’s. As I mixed the ingredients, I remembered how my sister taught me to smash the salt and garlic together with a fork to release the flavors. I shook my dressing in a cruet that reminded me of Big Gay and the homemade salad dressing she keeps on hand. I got back in touch with the act of cooking.

Instead of cracking a bottle of LaChoy, I cracked open the Moosewood Cookbook and taught myself how to make stir-fry sauces from scratch. Again–not complicated things to do, but a return to the basic joy of making foods with my whole brain instead of a jar.

moosewoodIt’s not only an interesting and varied cookbook–it’s beautiful and playful. Katzen hand-lettered and illustrated each page. It’s a completely different feeling from the Pinteresty, food stylist, soft focus filter world of today. The simplicity of the pages reminds me of the Flint River Favorites cookbook that my school put together in the 1970s (except there are a lot fewer recipes that call for cream of mushroom soup). I remember my mother helping to collect and type all those recipes. The cookbook fell open to the page with the brownie recipe, which was smearing and smudged with so many drips that it smelled like brownies.

I’m looking forward to working my way around to the jicama salads and spanakopita and Ukranian poppy seed cake, but for right now, I’m so glad I have this rich book to explore, one taste at a time.

It’s a marvel!

moosewood2

 

 

I received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Check out Blogging for Books if you’d like to know more about the program!

Ten Signs I’ve Found the Right Biscuit Joint

  1. Got the last spot in the parking lot at 9:15 on a torrentially rainy Wednesday morning.
  2. The car next to me was a genuine farm vehicle. How could I tell? Because the back seat and floor boards of the Toyota Corolla were covered in loose hay and it was sporting an after-market trailer hitch.
  3. The biscuit joint is located in a gas station. The line snakes back to the energy drink cooler over gray tile that wore down to the subfloor when Nixon was president. There is no ambience, and if you start to think there’s some, it’s the fumes. While I wait, I am free to peruse a revolving rack of “Discount Books,” most of which are about The Lord. (Locals call this place “Jesus Biscuit.”) I reach for the one entitled “It’s Your KID, Not a Gerbil!” before noticing the thin layer of fried bologna grease and motor oil on the cover and changing my mind.
  4. Listing out the biscuit toppings requires a board of the size that you might see in a high school football stadium. Bacon, ham, chicken, steak, five kinds of sausage AND fatback. My Pop would have thought he had died and gone to heaven. Alas, he has died and gone to heaven. Before anyone starts clucking about the dangers of cholesterol, that man ate fatback every time he could catch it and he died at 103. If you don’t know what fatback is, this is probably not the list you were hoping for. I’ll write about kale next week.
  5. Folks in line are not mulling over the menu or reading nutrition information. When they make it to the counter, they bark out “Bologna and fried egg biscuit” or “double red links on white toasted, side a grits and gravy.” The man in front of me ordered “two boloney on white, no toast, lettuce and tomato” and all the woman said was, “Is that it?”
  6. biscuitNot only is fried bologna an option, each piece has that little notch cut out of the edge so it doesn’t pooch up while frying. Makes me miss my grandma. She used to cut a little x in the middle of bologna so it didn’t curl up like a sombrero.
  7. The women working the counter are friendly and efficient. Two of the five people in front of me only had to nod and smile at her to get their orders because they were regulars.
  8. The woman at the counter repeats each order and simultaneously calculates the price in her head while scribbling it onto a brown paper sack. She ain’t got a calculator, but she’s got a neck tattoo. So does the woman working the griddle. Making a living off of gas station biscuits is not a gentlewoman’s game. These ladies have done some living and they got game.
  9. I feel like a dumbass when I say “to go” after my order. “Really, princess? You ain’t gon eat it standing here by the cash register so we can all clap when you’re done?”
  10. Giant flaky buttermilk biscuit with fried bologna and a fried egg=$2.39. The yella mustard was free.

If you’re in Athens, Georgia, stop by the Bread Basket inside the Chevron station on the corner of Boulevard and Chase Street. It’s all kinds of good!

Where’s your favorite biscuit joint?