Can You Smell What the Beck is Writing?

I am addicted to cooking. This isn't too bad considering that I enjoy cooking and do it daily. I don't enjoy cleaning up afterwards, but that's another blog.

When my sister and I were little, Mom and Dad would take us to Cynthiana every Saturday (which seemed like forever away from G-town) and leave us with our grandmother while they ran errands and went grocery shopping. As a child, I resently this highly--the idea of my parents having the audacity to do something that didn't directly involve me was highly insulting--but I completely understand it now. I'm waiting for Christopher to develop my old talent of pulling a grocery cart down the aisle by tugging on the edges of the shelves, taking out the occasional display of cereal boxes, pasta boxes, and even ketchup bottles!

At least ketchup comes in plastic bottles these days. When I was little, they came in one size glass bottles, and they could smash spectacularly on the tile floor of Ken's Super-Valu if the cart hit the display at just the right angle. Maybe I was only three, but I understood angles of incidence, reflection, and refraction. Too bad I don't understand those as well today.

Anyway, while Mom and Dad left us behind, enjoying themselves, maybe stopping at Angelo's for yummy strombolis before making the usual rounds to the stores, Jamie and I hung out at Granny's tiny apartment, visiting with her and the odd assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins who would stop by to say hello.

Granny had an old gas stove. I used to think she was silly since she didn't know how to cook on an electric stove. Her kitchen was tiny and cramped, but Granny had worked hard through her life, cooking every day for her family and keeping house while they tended to the old farm, and she had exactly what she needed and nothing more. Her mixing bowls must have dated back to the Depression--her pots and cast-iron skillets were at least that old. She always had something on the stove: brown beans simmering in a pot with hamhocks and onions and a skillet of cornbread, still steaming, waiting on the counter; a pot of boiled potatoes, fresh snapped green beans, and jowl bacon sitting on a back burner waiting especially for me; biscuits, sausage, bacon, eggs, and gravy made from the sausage grease (eggs were scrambled in the bacon grease). In the refrigerator was always an old Tupperware cake dish of Jell-o with marachino cherries, pineapple, and some other canned fruit I could never make out, all suspended in the gelatin despite my best guesses as to how that was possible, or the same dish filled with banana pudding, slices of banana, and nilla wafers, assembled in layers and topped with Cool Whip.

That banana pudding was Heaven for me. I don't know why I don't make it myself, but I know I loved my Granny's banana pudding and dream of it to this day.

Anyway, my point (if I have one) is that Granny always had food at the ready, and within minutes of walking in the door to her apartment, every family member was asked, "You hungry? I got a little sumthin' 'roun' here summare, iffn you're peckish." Of course, this standing question was always answered with, "I had dinner a little earlier, but I could eat."

Remember, on Dad's side of the family, they had breakfast, dinner, and supper. Not lunch. And brunches were unimaginable.

Granny would disappear into her kitchen, pulling out plates and bowls and forks and spoons and dish up whatever old time feast she had waiting, making sure everyone ate and had seconds and even thirds if they wanted it.

I would sop up the brown beans with my cornbread, drinking any leftover simmering liquid like soup. I would beg for those fork tender potatoes and green beans soaked with pork flavor, eating bowl after bowl after bowl until my mom would physically stop me from getting more. I would pick out the fruit from the Jell-o after puzzling over it, giving it to Dad to eat since he couldn't eat the sugary gelatin, slurping the Jell-o between my teeth and making disgusting sounds while Granny shook her head and Dad shushed me. And the pudding--oh! That pudding! I would eat the pudding in tiny little bites, as small as I could get on my spoon, eating each crumble of nilla wafer and slice of banana separately, making it last.

All these meals were eaten at her kitchen table, made of tin, pressboard, and yellow formica, while sitting on a padded vinyl chair under her kitschy 1950s pointy clock (the kind with star points all around that was ugly in 1980 but would be worth some serious money on Antiques Roadshow today). I would watch her as she pulled roasts from the oven, tended to her simmering pots, and sometimes wash her dresses and aprons with her roller washing machine, pulled up to her kitchen sink, with her washtub and washboard nearby for serious scrubbing.

My dad had learned how to cook from his mother; after his time in the Army from 1946-53, he spent a few years as a bachelor before meeting his first wife, getting married, and moving to the pig farm in Ohio in '58. He made brown beans like Granny did, used her old cast-iron skillet for his cornbread, and on Sunday mornings, my family awoke to smell and sound of Dad cooking what later was known as the "Sadieville breakfast"--sausage, bacon cooked crispy AND chewy to accommodate my sister's and my different tastes, soft biscuits, eggs over easy, and that white gravy with lots of sausage grease and lots of black pepper. We'd come into the kitchen, still rubbing our eyes, while Dad would chuckle and pass me the butter for my biscuit before I even asked.

Some Sunday afternoons, Dad treated us to his special salmon patties--canned salmon, carefully deboned, mixed with cornmeal and crushed saltines, then panfryed in the cast-iron skillet in some Crisco. Every time, Dad would warn me not to eat too many since they were very rich, and every time, I ate salmon patties until I began to feel queasy and realized I'd eaten too much--but they tasted so good!

That's not to say my mother didn't cook. She did most of household cooking while my sister and I grew up--once she started working and I hit middle school, we all took turns cooking dinner after getting home from school. For a brief time after Dad had his heart attack when I was 11 and before he returned to work a year later, he had dinner ready every night when we got home. After he started working at Ashford, Jamie and I became proficient at making Mom's simple recipes, picked up from her mother and based heavily on convenience foods from the 1950s. Lots of Hamburger Helper, canned sauce and veggies, and rather salty and bland. I don't mean to slag my mother--obviously she learned from her mother and did her best, but her experience growing up in Pennsylvania in a relatively middle class home was much different than my dad's experience growing up in Falmouth after the Depression.

I kick myself now that I didn't pay more attention to my father's and grandmother's cooking. Obviously I paid attention to the flavors and aromas, but I didn't pay attention to the assembly. Many of the dishes I loved as a child I will never have again--Granny passed away long ago, and Dad isn't in shape for cooking a Sadieville breakfast any Sunday soon. Hell, he doesn't even live in Sadieville anymore! I did attempt brown beans a few months ago, using a combination of what I remembered, what I learned from Alton, and chunks of a ham I had baked the week before, but it wasn't the same. I don't know how to season a cast-iron skillet to add the flavor of 60 years of use beyond buying a skillet and using it for 60 years. I feel bad using too many convenience foods like fish sticks and chicken nuggets on the nights we don't get home until after 6pm, but it's impossible for me for make the simple, fresh foods I had as a child in the time alloted in my life today. My real opportunities to cut loose and play in the kitchen are on weekends--and that's if I feel like cooking after I get all the pots and pans washed from earlier in the week.

Despite this, I am very much like my grandmother in that I must feed anyone who walks through my door. It doesn't matter if I have dinner already made, don't have anything defrosted, or wasn't even expecting company. If you show up at my house, I will try to feed you. I may even be insulted if you refuse. My friend, Candi, used to joke that the only time she had a homecooked meal was when she came to visit (which she used do once a week). Now that she's moved to Ohio, she's told me what she misses most is my cooking. What she doesn't know is I miss feeding her more.

So, it's another rare weekend post. My baby is napping, my husband is working his one Saturday a quarter, and I have a kitchen to clean. After I get everything squared away, I think I might use those overripe bananas to make some banana bread, bake some cookies, and get some beans soaking for simmering tomorrow.