Dinner is Served

"Wait, chicken cacciatore has mushrooms in it?” Joe’s astonished voice interrupted my recitation of the recipe from the old card I’d pulled from the red and white checked cookbook in our dad’s pantry.

            I laughed at the look on my brother’s dace. “Yeah, it does. Dad hates mushrooms so he just leaves them out when he makes it.”

            Our dad was the head chef at my parents’ house. Growing up, my two brothers and I may have starved, or been forced to survive on Kraft Spaghetti in a box if my dad had not embraced the role of cook. Our mom was a fantastic artist and seamstress. She was a patient listener and objective counselor. She was often the disciplinarian in our household and was always fair, even though we may not have thought so when we were younger. The one role she never embraced was that of cook. She knew how to cook three things: chicken soup, vegetable soup, and chili. She made them each once per year, usually when she had a few days off of work and got bored. Outside of these three tried and true recipes, the kitchen was just not her forte. Ingredient creativity aside, our dad is a good cook which is why my brother was inquiring about some of his recipes.

            Families are a complex mix of talents and personalities, tastes and ideas. From the outside it can be difficult to perceive the glue that holds together the collection of individuals that make up a family. Sometimes a shared history of food and the gift of bequeathed recipes is the adhesive. My parents both grew up in Chicago as members of large poor families in which good meals were never taken for granted. My dad is one of six children raised by a dedicated mother and an often absent father. My mom was the youngest of four, raised by a single mom during the turbulent sixties. Food was sometimes scarce in both families and many of the recipes passed on from my grandmothers use economical components to feed a crowd. Stews, spaghetti, and hodgepodge soups were the main stars. Both of my grandmothers were creative in their choices of ingredients, and they passed along recipes that are still used by many members of my extended family.

Even though her financial situation no longer dictated the need, my mom’s mother, Lucy, remained a frugal cook until she passed away in 2009. As my family gathered to reminisce after the funeral, the conversation shifted toward food and the memories my mom and my Aunt Pam had of their favorite things my Grandma Lucy would cook for them. They ran through the list of the much-loved favorites: biscuits and gravy, corned beef and cabbage, and on special occasions, crispy oatmeal cookies, velvety fudge, and chewy rice crispy treats. At a lull in the discussion I interjected:

“Am I remembering correctly that her chicken paprikash was made with both white rice and potatoes?”

            “Oh my God! It was!” my mom exclaimed.

            “The most carb-o-rif-ic meal ever!” laughed Pam.

            “It really was delicious, though,” said my mom, “and it filled you up cheaply.”

   We sat for a few more minutes, each remembering the uniquely pleasant taste of the juicy paprika laced chicken, the soft chunks of potato and the chewy rice. The contrasting flavors and textures made a seemingly bland meal something distinctive and memorable, not for its thrift, but the taste.

   Inheritances of objects and money are often fleeting. Trinkets are lost and money is spent. The gift of a recipe, however, is enduring. When those we love pass away, creating the recipes they left behind becomes a way to bring a piece of them back. The scents and tastes of a familiar meal become an avenue upon which we can travel to revisit the pleasant memories of our past. 

My other grandma, Lenore, passed away in 1992. Many of the things my dad cooks come from recipes she passed on. Many are simple and inexpensive meals, conducive to feeding a large family. One that everyone inexplicably looks forward to is a concoction called broken glass cake. Generally made only at Thanksgiving and Christmas, the fluffy cream base combines Dream Whip, lemon Jell-O, pineapple juice and sugar. Chunks of multi-colored and flavored Jell-O float suspended in the cream. Layers of graham cracker crumbs, thick on the bottom and a mere sprinkle on the top, encase the center.

This curious amalgamation of powdered foods from a box tastes amazing. Just one bite takes me back to the Christmases of my childhood where the much anticipated broken glass cake provided the perfect sugary ending to our holiday dinner. The main reason we only make it once or twice each year is because the construction involves a ridiculously tedious process. Each flavor of Jell-O for the “glass” in the middle of the cake needs to be made in a separate container. The timing has to be exactly right as the water needs to be kept boiling and the powder stirred until dissolved completely to avoid the chewy scum that accumulates at the top; if you have ever tried to eat Jell-O that was not completely dissolved before it set, you know what I mean.

“Don’t stop stirring until I say to stop!” my dad would cry from stove, the kitchen steamy from the boiling water.

My mom’s laughter would drift over from the living room where she was busy reaffixing our laminated masterpieces to the wall. The tissue paper Christmas trees, paper plate angels and cotton bearded Santas we had made together stubbornly resisted the layers of heavy-duty double-sided tape engaged to hold them up. This was an annual battle, but my mom always persisted. It wouldn’t feel like Christmas if the walls were bare.

Back in the kitchen Joe and I would sigh and keep stirring, our hands slowing with exhaustion. Jeremy, the youngest, was always more enthusiastic about the stirring and kept his hand speed up. I think he was just happy to get to help.

After the stirring we had to find a place in the refrigerator for all the bowls. While we waited for the Jell-O to set, we would crush the graham crackers for the crust and make the creamy filling. Finally the cake was ready to be constructed, covered and then safely packed into the back of the refrigerator to fully set for the next day. My dad always made two, though. One to serve as the “tester”, usually ready to be tested over a late night showing of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street.

While I love to cook, I know that not everyone shares the pleasure. For many, cooking is a chore. My mom is the latter. It is not as though she wasn’t capable of cooking, she just didn’t enjoy it. She and my dad had an understanding that sustained them through over thirty years of marriage: he cooked, and she cleaned up afterwards. However, when the mood struck and she decided it was time for one of her meals, they felt special because of their rarity.

The aforementioned three things my mom knew how to cook successfully, vegetable soup, chili and chicken noodle soup, were all recipes passed on from her mother. The chili recipe is fairly basic: ground meat, tomatoes, beans, onions and green pepper, and is served always with pasta, either penne or shells. I believe this is another holdover from her childhood where meals had to be filling.

The chicken soup is not your average soup. Instead of just the usual carrot and celery, generous chunks of turnip, rutabaga and parsnip also swim in the thick salty broth. It is spectacular and was always something I looked forward to as a child. I inherited many things from my mom: her demeanor, her stubbornness, her looks, even her bad eyesight, but the gift of her soup was not passed down to me. I tried many times but was never able to capture the right taste. I gave up trying and instead, made sure to stop by my parents’ house for dinner when the soup was on. She would make a special side pot with vegetable broth and no chicken just for me. Now that she is gone, I may have to try again.

Other recipes have been successfully taken over by my brother and me as we have grown older. It is nice to be able to share our cooking skills with our family and give back a little of what they have taught us. Joe has taken over the production of French onion soup. He uses vegetable broth for my sake, instead of the traditional beef, and willingly subjects his eyes to the sting of peeling and chopping the mountain of onions needed to produce the delicious, flavorful soup. He always manages to add the perfect balance of bread and soup to each bowl and pulls them out from under the broiler just as the Gruyere begins to bubble and brown.

Jeremy has yet to develop a culinary specialty. This may be unfortunate for him, but fortunate for the rest of our family. He recently called to ask what kind of bread I use to make banana bread and how I got the bananas squished into the bread.

He was not joking.

When I finished college and moved out on my own, holiday cookie baking became my responsibility. My dad has long loved the small crescent shaped cookies coated with a dusting of powdered sugar. He loved them so much that I found the recipe in a box of white recipe cards coated with a light crust of flour and sugar. Curiously the name, penned in my Grandma Lucy’s tight neat handwriting was almond crescent cookies. The ingredient list contained no almonds, only finely crushed walnuts. This puzzled me for years as I kneaded together the flour, butter, sugar and walnuts each holiday season for my dad’s yearly cookie feast. Curiosity finally got the best of me and I questioned my dad.

“Why are these cookies called almond crescents if they are made with walnuts?”

The simple answer: “Almonds are disgusting.”

Along with the powdered half-moons for my dad, my mom’s much loved peanut butter cookies became a yearly staple. My grandma Lucy was the master of thin crispy cookies, oatmeal, chocolate chip, and peanut butter. Each year, my mom would receive her own personal box of cookies. Thin, crispy, and slightly burnt around the edges. She didn’t have to worry about hiding them away because no one else wanted to eat burnt cookies. It took several tries, but I was finally able to achieve the right level of crispness and espresso brown edges, along with the smell of slightly burnt peanut butter which lingered near my oven for several days.

Because family recipes are often so venerated, it can be next to impossible to convince someone to change the formula. Why mess with perfection? When I was in seventh grade, I came home one day and declared that I would no longer be consuming red meat or pork. I don’t remember what led me to come to that conclusion; like most thirteen year olds, I needed to find a way to be difficult and challenging. My mom was supportive. I think her inner rebellious child, the one who had painted her entire bedroom (ceiling included) black, secretly cheered my spark of independence. I did compromise with the rest of my meat loving family and, at the time, agreed that chicken and turkey would still be acceptable, provided they were boneless and skinless.

My dad’s specialty, and an all-time family favorite, is spaghetti. The original version contained ground beef and large chunks of Italian sausage along with copious amounts of green olives, my favorite. My new stance on eating cows presented a challenge as my insistent thirteen year old self demanded a reworked version. My dad acquiesced and made a batch with lean ground turkey. He cooked the sausage in a separate pan so as not to contaminate the sauce. The olive ratio remained high.

“Well, what do you think?” My dad watched eagerly as I took the first bite.

“It tastes great to me! I can’t even tell the difference.” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, I think it’s good,” Joe agreed.

“Much healthier too,” my mom stated, a subtle wink in my direction.

And just like that, beefy spaghetti was forever transformed.

We often change many things for those we love. We eliminate bad habits, adjust our appearance, try new things. It is difficult to deviate from a tried and true way of doing things, especially when it comes to making food. Sometimes family recipe secrets are even kept closely guarded, their bequeathing a rite of passage done only once children are grown up and have moved on to their own homes and lives. It can take some prompting to wrangle the secret ingredient to that special sauce from a parent or grandparent. Although a recipe is also a gift, giving up the answer to the riddle can be another form of letting go. A shared meal is often the one thing that brings far flung families back together. If everyone knows the secret, there is one less reason to come home.

Other times, food is what we bring home, the only gift we have to offer when someone we love is suffering. The love we pour into a favorite recipe is the antithesis of the poison used to destroy cancer cells, but also the health and vitality of those affected. In June of 2008, my mom was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation and, miraculously, was given a clean bill of health a year later. We knew the tumor could, and most likely would, come back someday but celebrated the moment.

In June of 2012, a routine MRI showed that the tumor had returned, this time larger and more aggressive. Over a year and three different attempted types of treatment later, it became clear that there would be no more miracles. Heavy doses of regular chemotherapy stalled the growth, but over the last two years of her life, the tumor robbed her of her ability to walk, use her left hand and, eventually, speak.

There isn’t a script for solace, a recipe to make everything right. Yet, as a family, we had to do something. So we cooked. Food was one of the only tangible comforts we felt we could provide for her and each other. Every time I went to visit I brought something my mom loved. Burnt peanut butter cookies, poblano peppers stuffed with zucchini, corn and cheese, cinnamon raisin bread, gooey chocolate brownies, spicy tomato soup. Joe cried a thousand tears slicing onions for his soup. Countless avocados were sacrificed for guacamole. Unseasonable apple pies were constructed from the limited apples available in the cold, pale days of February. A full Thanksgiving dinner, complete with extra stuffing, was made in late spring.

It is easy to take things we do every day, such as eating, for granted. Often we are too busy to stop and think about where our food comes from, the history, memories and stories behind each recipe. We forget the connections to our past. We forget the accommodations made to please picky eaters and the uniqueness of our shared culinary creations. We forget the power a special meal has to draw us home. Yet, when faced with heartbreak, food is one of the only gifts we can offer, a way to resurrect some semblance of normalcy and rescue our happier memories.