Our food

Have you ever heard of grilled bologna smothered in barbecue sauce? Do you split open your hot dogs and fry them black in a pan? Squirt ketchup on your pizza or mustard on your eggs? Do you dip your toast in cocoa, eat pineapple with green olives off a toothpick, or brine your freshly caught trout in pickle juice?

Is ham or beef on your Thanksgiving table instead of turkey? (Sacrilege!)

Ah, food traditions and habits! One man's barely edible garbage is another's culinary treasure.

My relatives on Dad's side grilled bologna with barbecue sauce for a family reunion many years ago. My husband was shocked. He has yet to recover from the idea of such a thing being put on a grill on purpose. He also is haunted by the fact that my dad ate charred hot dogs regularly as I was growing up. But dare I point out that his family eats their spaghetti with cornbread and green chili in their stew?

As for me, I used to dip my pizza in ketchup, and my kids and I still dip whole grain toast in cocoa (something my sister Vinca says our Grandmama did decades ago). But the only time I had pickle-juice fish was around a summer campfire at my great grandfather's mining claim in the Idaho mountains, prepared especially by my Grandpa on Dad's side.

The strangest dining choices sometimes create the best memories. They're unique, our very own, and I believe we get a perverse enjoyment out of others' looks of disgust as we tell our digestive tales.

But we must also acknowledge the more sophisticated treasures of our familial or even regional palette, the ones for which we pine for most of the year, knowing they arrive only on special feasts. For instance, homemade Parker House rolls, the kind my mother made and that my youngest boy has been asking for ever since he got the first whiff of approaching Thanksgiving, are something that I begin to make a lot more often November through New Year's. There's also my mama's sweet potato souffle, a dish that makes my heart swell like marshmallow topping as I watch my kids devour it. And we could never forget the hard labor of love with acute suffering involved in making homemade pie pastry and filling, a magic act that we cooking mortals will only commit to two or three times a year. There are so many varieties with which to torture ourselves when the terrible yet fulfilling time comes: apple, pumpkin, pecan, cherry, and cranberry/pear! God bless the person who invented scrumptious pies for the good of humanity! But may they still be crimping pastry wherever they are.

I'll be making my pies tonight. I'm only writing this right now in order to get my courage up, a pep talk, a rallying cry to acknowledge that sometimes we can, out of love, produce the impossible confectionery dream on blessed occasions. If the stars line up, and the dew point is right, and the inspiration of all our grandmothers and mothers settles in our hearts and hands, our pies might just turn out this year.

But I can't worry about that now. I'm getting hungry; it's lunchtime; and I have a sudden, inexplicable craving for barbecued bologna.

With pickle juice.

Letter to Mama

Letters are intimate things. They are also often more informal. It takes the pressure off to allow myself to write letters here to those I love, and then I can more easily embrace the ideas and memories that are sitting on my brain at the moment. No need to make them perfect. Just let them go.

Dear Mama,

A couple weeks ago I was dreading the approach of Christmas - the shopping, the shipping, the "is this fair, is it all even?", and the constant decision-making. I love the idea of Santa Claus, but I laughed a few days ago wondering if I like the jolly old guy so much, because if he would truly just come around, it would take a load off, you know?

But then I perked up. Matthew came home with flowers one day at lunch. I spoke to my good friend Camille on the phone and now have the hope of seeing her family. And, with the magic that happens every year, I began to think about our lives in Tennessee, our Christmases there. Then I began to sing Christmas carols with Ana and to look at holiday decor catalogs, and my world was righted.

Do you know what I was remembering the other day? I was remembering that one cold night when I was eight, nine or ten. We were returning home as a family from shopping, and the car broke down or the bridge was out...or both...and we had to leave the car and walk home in the dark on the country roads, crunching leaves. It felt like an adventure to trek home in the dark. I was skipping in the cold breeze, because I had on a new pair of black booties you and Papa had bought me for school. I loved them. They had the little tabs on the sides, old-fashioned and charming. I still love those kinds of boots.

Later that night I got very sick, remember? And the space heater in my bedroom didn't work. So you pulled me into your room to sleep between you and Papa. All night you were up and down checking my temperature, very high, and making me drink glass after glass of water, bathing me with cool washcloths, then putting me in warm sweaters. It was like torture! But my fever broke. You took good care of me then and so many other times.

And today I suddenly remembered the time we went over to the Andersen's for a simple holiday gathering. (Perhaps it was the usual cup of cocoa I was preparing to drink this morning that brought back the memory.) We didn't have to go over the river and through the woods to get to them - though in those Tennessee boonies neighbors sometimes seemed like the next frontier - but down the lane and across the creek. I still can recall their little farmhouse quite well, perched precariously on that steep hill above the county road, their tractors and cows roaming in the field behind. I still see the narrow steps climbing from the road to their front door, and from there you could turn to look at our home across the creek between barren deciduous trees. As I remember, though, we went around to the back kitchen door to be let in.

Their home was very simply decorated, and the gathering was a quiet one as Mrs. Andersen stirred hot chocolate in a humble saucepan on the stove. I don't remember whether the cookies she served with it were homemade or store bought, only that they weren't as good as yours. I loved getting the hot chocolate, but for me there was no one to talk with as she had two big boys who liked my older sisters far more than they ever noticed me. I probably stayed around that little farm kitchen to listen to your conversation with that gentle woman. She had a very good heart but few and quiet words. Her kitchen was like her, warm and unassuming.

And Mr. Andersen, if possible, was even quieter than his wife. I think he and Dad mostly sat in companionable silence with every now and then a word floating between them.

I wonder now why that is such a persistent Christmas memory? But it is, and a very pleasant one. Perhaps it just breathes simplicity and purity and a time before Pinterest put so much pressure on celebrations. Ha, I say that, and I'm not even on Pinterest!

This letter didn't quite take the turn I thought it would. I thought I would talk about how I'm beginning to see this first year without my children at home as my "lost year", a time of rediscovery like a backpacking trip across Europe after high school. Maybe talk about my writing disappointments and how hard it is to be a woman. Maybe admit that sometimes I kind of want another baby.

But, no. I will say this, though: I miss you, and I do wish we could sit over fancy coffee or simple tea and talk for a long while. The more I grow in this parenting business, the more clearly I see all that you gave and gave up for our family, Mama, and I appreciate it.

And, boy, do I appreciate the memories! Especially now as Thanksgiving approaches, so many scents, sights and sounds remind me of what you did to make our home a home - all while working with Papa in the woods, too - and I am so grateful.

So rest assured that as I bast the turkey, whip together the sweet potato souffle, knead that dough for the Parker House rolls, and roll out the pie pastry, I'll be thinking of you, Mama Darling.

Love,

Hoodoo

Hobo Potatoes

I remember the potatoes and the woods and the time with my family. The smaller details? I get creative, though I do in fact recall some of the words we spoke.


One evening of my childhood, my family headed across the cornfield to the woods behind our home carrying a sack of potatoes and a large tin coffee can. Dad had matches in his pocket and old paper in hand. Reuben and Mandy, our dogs, trotted by his side.

We entered the woods by a worn path, rustling through the underbrush and crisp leaves in single file, As we journeyed to a small clearing, the sun’s fingertips still brushed the western horizon with a golden-red, fiery hue. We gathered some logs to use as benches around a stone fire pit, built a year or two before. Then Dad started a blaze. Small twigs were added as the flames grew.

The large coffee tin was placed in the middle of our fire. On this went the potatoes for our supper, wrapped in foil and one for each of us.

The last light vanished from the woods, and the glow from the fire spread as twilight descended, enveloping the little clearing. I trembled slightly, but not just from the sudden chill. The woods were eerie in the dark and every little bit there was a rustling of leaves by some living thing on the forest floor. For many minutes our family was silent. Then, as was common with us, we began conversing about our dreams for the future as the fire writhed around the coffee can and cooked our hobo potatoes.

“If I ever make it in this music business…” said Dad, but he was interrupted by some thought of his own and digested it for a bit before continuing, “If I ever make it, what would you guys want from our life here?”

Unanimously, we agreed we would buy that land from Mr. Warf with its fields and woods and lovely cold creek; Dad wanted to build a house on the big hill in the field someday. We talked of helping other people, too - especially at Christmas, but I don’t remember anything else my family said except for my brother’s wish. At the time he was eight, I believe.

“I want a car bed,” he said. “Like a race car bed. Billy had one.”

That may seem funny, but I suppose we all know what it is to be a child and think, I wish I could have that kitchen set Mary has or that big boy bike my friend John just got. The desire does not go away after we’ve outgrown the object we so long for, because we don’t get the chance to outgrow the desire, and we would outgrow it, of course, if our wish were granted.

But my parents listened like friends do and asked what color it would be. Red was the answer. After this there was a small silence that thrilled my little person as I sat facing the fire with my back to the dark forest, turning my head to each side every so often to check for spooks. Then our conversation began to wander like the breeze in the faded leaves of the trees, and Dad told us stories, making them up as he spoke.

When our hobo potatoes were finally cooked, Mom pulled out margarine, salt, pepper, paper plates and a can of pork n’ beans. We sat in the glow of the dying embers, the breeze cooling our potatoes for us, and ate our supper. Our dogs lay by, head on paws or lifted, ears moving in response to the occasional noise among the trees.

When Dad finally extinguished the fire completely and led the way from the woods, it seemed like ages past dark. We crossed the field for home and for bedtime, summer’s cornstalks crunching beneath our feet.

That sylvan autumn supper is something I’ve never forgotten. Maybe we did it once, or maybe it was tradition. Either way, it was my dad’s idea. He often came up with such things. Hobo potatoes and a warm fire in the woods are his inspiration, always having been a man of nature - a woodsman - at heart.

Turkey, Pie (term of endearment)

Thanksgiving in June.

Why not? Christmas in July is very popular as a means to sell merchandise, because, astonishingly, people who are much better organized and generally smarter than you or me actually do begin holiday shopping then.

So why not Thanksgiving in June? I walked into my house yesterday evening, and the exotic perfume of cloves and ginger hung in the air and I exclaimed, "It smells like Thanksgiving in here!"

There can be no higher compliment to spring from my lips in praise of food. Thanksgiving is to me the ultimate feast with the ultimate spread (a belief established in childhood thanks to my mother's cooking), a glorious tradition that can make an American's heart thump in supreme gratitude and proud patriotism over their full belly as they watch football.

So when I walked in and smelled the aroma of my daughter's birthday pie - pumpkin, chosen over cake - I felt like Thanksgiving in June.

I had felt that way a week or so earlier, too, when cooking a chicken for my friend. The poultry seasoning, olive oil, onions and butter mingling in the hot oven brought back the ghost of November turkey. The smell just about drove my husband to steal the bird for his own consumption. Of course, my friend might strongly disagree with our praise of that entree after eating it; perhaps it turned out like the turkey I fed her and her family at Easter. That was also a smell-good bird that was as dry as its own bones, and I didn't even make gravy to save it from its poverty of texture.

And in the spirit of disclosure, shh...come closer...those Thanksgiving pies in June I made yesterday had charred pastry, because I forgot to turn down the oven mid-bake.

So maybe there's a reason we American cooks go into indentured service for just one day a year. The bird's unstable, the pies - especially the pastry - unpredictable. Then there's the rolls, the dressing, the sweet potatoes, the gravy and the green bean casserole to worry about, too. That kind of stress should be reserved for the third Thursday in November alone. We've earned our freedom for the rest of the year. I just wish I could manufacture the smell of all that rich, spicy food to permeate my home until the harvest feast comes round again. All guests would enter, breath deeply and exclaim in gratitude, "Ah, it smells like Thanksgiving in here!"

Tobacco and Jerky (anniversary repost)

I recently wrote about my family's summer of corn.This post is about another powerful food memory. I have not had Dad's special venison jerky recipe since we left Tennessee, but I hope I may have it again. Someday...

I think about Tennessee in the fall of the year, and I can smell the pungent odor of tobacco wafting from barns along country roads. I can still remember a certain barn on Greenwood Rd where it met Spann. Its timbers were various shades of weathered gray, and they looked brittle and dead in the languid afternoon sun. But riding the bus home from school, the smell of the tobacco emanating from between them was robust, intoxicating as I watched its smoke rising to rendezvous with the gray skies above.

In the fall of the year when the smell of the tobacco barns hung thick on the air, Dad piled wood on the front porch. The trees had became so bare near the creek that we could see our neighbor's pigs across the stream and their home over Spann Road, and we felt less secluded in our little world. Reuben, our lab, carried Dad's axe around in his mouth so Dad would have it to hand when he was out gathering wood. When they returned Dad spent many long minutes kneeling by the old woodstove in the living room in the evening, shoving logs onto the coals and blowing into them, his cheeks pink first from the cold and then mottled from the heat as he attempted to coax the ashes to life. The stovepipe behind the old stove would start to glow pale red with the heat and the escaping coals.

But that stove was good for more than just providing heat. It was excellent for smoking jerky. And Dad's jerky...well, it was the meat equivalent of Mom's blackberry cobbler - something never to be forgotten in culinary experience and something which still grabs my senses if I pause to recollect the taste and smell of it.

In the fall, you see, hunters would begin to appear on that piece of land we rented. The woods on it were substantial, but they also bordered the woods of our neighbors to either side and the back. They were lured, too, as the years wore on by the regular exchange of a tale about an enormous and elusive buck with an incredible number of points on his antlers that roamed the property.

Sometimes, they came to the house first to let us know they were there. At other times we'd find their vehicles parked in the field at the turn-off just past the creek.

Our landlord didn't think to set limits on who he allowed to hunt the property. So occasionally we knew there had to be three - maybe four hunters in the woods. Dad forbade us to play in the field most autumn days, because some of the hunters seemed to defy safety (their own and others) as a matter of pride. The rifle blasts could be heard from the house, echoing through the trees and the hills.

But from where did Dad get the meat for jerky? From those same gentlemen, of course. Dad himself is not a hunter, but he always graciously accepted the meat offered to him by those who were. Usually, they helped him dress the deer. Some of them, though, just dumped the carcass with a, "There you go, Dan!" and cheerfully left with the head or the antlers in the bed of their truck.

The proffered deer was hung on one of the Walnut trees in the side of the yard where daffodils flourished in the spring, its poor head limply pointed toward the ground, the eyes wide with their last expression. It was sad to see, but the venison was a boon to us throughout the winter.

Nate, when older, helped Dad dress the deer. And it was the rib meat and the front quarters to which Dad assigned the great destiny of becoming jerky. The hind quarters and backstrap were cooked in his Swiss Steak, salted and hung in the basement, or frozen for later in the winter.

Once the appropriate meat was apportioned into thin strips, it was seasoned deliciously with salt, pepper, sage, oregano, thyme, basil and cayenne. If any of these were missing, Dad rooted through Mom's spice cabinet for some other pungent spice (but don't mistake it, when I bring that lovely, chewy deer meat to mind, it always, always tastes the same; its ghost smells the same, and I wish I had some now). Thus prepared, the meat was spread beneath the top grate on our wood-burning stove to slowly cook.

In the morning, we'd wake, and the odor of the meat and its spices was there. We kids would open the door having come home from school after a long, chilly walk down the lane, and the incredible smell was there to draw us in and drive us crazy with temptation.

Dad had a strict rule about his venison jerky; it had to cook for three days on that old stove. We were forbidden to touch it or taste it before that. Still we'd lift the grate and stare at it longingly for a few moments each afternoon.

Then, at last, one evening he would come home from work, lift the grate and carefully examine the puckered slices of venison - testing its texture with his fingers, smelling it, and taking a small bite from the end. We'd watch in fascination as he slowly chewed with an intense expression in his pale green eyes. I invariably hovered by his side, eagerly waiting.

Suddenly, "It's done!" he'd announce, and my hands seemed to jerk forward of their own free will, looking for that sweet gift of jerky that made a mockery out of the variety so falsely named at the convenience store.

We had deer meat most years. Sometimes a good deal of it, and when that was the case Dad would use all kinds of cuts for his special recipe and give jerky to many of our neighbors and friends. At any rate, it was not a good year until Dad placed meat on that wood-burning stove that provided heat, the secure feeling of home...and jerky!

The Cobbler and the Cobbler Pan (anniversary repost)

I just made a Memorial Day blackberry cobbler. My husband came home with a whole case of blackberries from the Farmer's market, and as I washed each pintful and spread them out to drain on a kitchen cloth, I was having flashbacks to the summers of my childhood - pounds of blackberries piled in milk jug pails!

I made the cobbler in such a way as to make my Mama proud, I hope. The pastry was thick, the blackberry filling deep - no lemon zest, just a hint of cinnamon. It was delicious. Still, I can't believe it held anything to Mama's Tennessee blackberry cobblers. I told my friends that the preparation of her cobblers was like witchcraft - stirring hot, bubbling juices for what seemed like hours in a cauldron-like pan on the stove...well, despite the grueling nature of its preparation, I'd like to have it again if I could. At any rate, this post melds two earlier ones about that tremendous cobbler and about the very special pan that held it every summer.

The Cobbler

Where I grew up in Tennessee, wild blackberries grew in abundance. They were plumpest and juiciest in late July and August, fully ripened with the heat and the humidity. My parents, siblings and I would hike down the long lane from our little house and climb a gate into Mr. Spann's field. There in a hollow shaded by trees, the blackberry bushes formed a beautiful tangle of leaves, berries and thorns. For our equipment we had milk jugs with the tops cut off and our own two hands.

My sister Vinca was an expert at not getting pricked with the thorns as she harvested the deep purple berries. Annie and I kept up a chorus of "ouch!" the whole time. My berry-picking form was not the best in other ways, too, for I would obsessively pluck practically all the berries from a bush, no matter their size or degree of ripeness. When Dad glanced my way, he'd say, "Whoa, Hoo-doo! Leave some for the birds."

He should have added, "And some for the pail!" because many berries got eaten before they landed in our humble milk-jug pails, our fingers and mouths stained purple with the evidence. But those lucky ones that made it back down the lane to home were destined for mom's blackberry cobbler.

To this day I have yet to find anything that could compare with my mom's blackberry cobbler. It was the culinary equivalent of heaven, but the preparation, at least to us kids, was brutal. We had to take turns stirring the blackberry, sugar and cornstarch mixture over the hot stove until it had practically formed a jam. Mom would come in to inspect every few minutes, lifting the spoon from the bubbling mixture and shaking her head tersely in answer to our pleading eyes.

When she finally decided it was ready, the mixture was poured into the dough-lined cobbler pan (a pan with a slightly rounded bottom that was so large we kids used it to go sledding on the rare occasion we got snow). After what seemed like an eternity, it emerged from the oven, steaming from beneath its thick golden layer of homemade pastry. I can still see it resting on the grates of our old wood-burning stove in the living room, Mama slicing it open with a thick knife as steam rose and the smell of it bloomed in our home. We always ate the first slice warm, very warm - cooled only enough to prevent the burning of our mouths with its delicious purple filling. The taste and smell of it is something I can still conjure up in my mind and something, too, which will always embody the bountiful summers of my childhood.

I won't have that cobbler again, I imagine, but it is still my favorite dish in the world. I don't have my mom's talent with pastry dough and, sadly, I never attempted to learn it growing up. And the last time I had wild blackberries was the final summer I spent with my parents in Tennessee. My siblings had all journeyed away from our home, and it was just my dad and me braving the humidity and thorns to pluck memories from the blackberry bush.

But here's my summer wish for you, my friends, wherever you may be: I hope you are lucky enough to find or make for yourself your own perfect berry cobbler. And may you share your bounty with family and friends.
 
 
Ode to the Cobbler Pan

While driving with my family to Christmas Eve Mass today, I was admiring the clear skies and clear ground and the sunshine of this desert valley town. Indeed, this is my first year living here that the persistent sunshine around the holidays has not irked me as ill-placed winter carols jingle from my car stereo. Though we've gotten a little rain lately and the sky has not been its usual bright self, today I truly thought to myself, "Ah, boy, this is Christmas! Warm. No snow on the ground. Clear and beautiful."

Strange. I never thought a southern gal like me would let her roots sink in this clay soil. But here I am in Arizona, and shockingly I'm finding I'm beginning to yearn for my own southwest ranch home, maybe some horses and a back porch that abuts BLM land. And I wouldn't mind more Christmases spent beneath a clear sky and full sunshine.

Still...a tune such as White Christmas never fails to call me warmly back to that traditional idea of a snowy cold Christmas with mittens on my hands and furry boots for my feet and my kids and dogs prancing through the fresh powder on the lawn...oh, and a good long slide in a sled down the nearest big hill.

I never had a real sled. In Tennessee, the opportunities to go pell-mell down a hill on such a contraption weren't often or good enough to warrant the investment. But when the snow came and it stuck, you can bet my siblings and I were rooting around for something, anything that would give us the speed we craved in flying down the big hill in the field.


Ode to the cobbler pan!


Whose cobbler pan this is, I think I know


Mom will not mind if we use it though


To send our bottoms racing down the hill


And hitting a cornstalk, take an awesome spill


Which our siblings will see and laugh about


Til we head home...cold, worn-out


The pan was shiny aluminum, rounded on the bottom and deep with a small lip around the rim. It had been given to my parents in a set for a wedding day gift, I believe. I don't know who first thought of using that old aluminum pan for a sled. Maybe Mama suggested it, giggling at the idea of our little bottoms stuck into the pan in which she baked the deepest, purplest, most scrumptious blackberry cobblers one could ever hope to experience. Or maybe it was Annie, who always was so very skinny and was able to fit into it years after she should have outgrown it. But maybe it was destiny...for us four kids and for the pan.

I can remember many an occasion, heading across a white field toward the long slope that came down between the lines of trees with one of my siblings swinging the cobbler pan in their hands. We usually had hubcaps, too, but the bond there was never strong. We didn't feel love for those hubcaps, no loyalty for their many years of faithful snow-day service. They were just something we picked up as extras along the way. But the pan? We hunted it down on a packed snowy day, pulling it with clatters and clunks from beneath a pile of other pots and pans in the kitchen, dragging it out into daylight after its months of hibernation post-blackberry season.

On the hill we kids would spend a good deal of time clearing our sledding paths of pebbles and broken cornstalks from the summer's harvest. It was cold, hard work. Good exercise, too, and we loved it even if we did have to stop and breath the life back into our fingers which were adorned only in some of Dad's old socks.

With cleared paths at last, we'd balance the pan and a hubcap at the top of that hill - two of us at a time, and two behind ready to give a push whether requested or not. If you were the one in the pan, you held onto that tiny lip of metal around the rim as you teetered near the launching point, then you lifted your legs and got a shove from behind. Down you went, spinning all the way with the world a blur of barking dogs and laughing siblings, and all the while you're thinking, I hope I don't go into that gulch at the bottom or biff it hard on a cornstalk. You knew you'd get a few colorful bruises if you did. But if you were still intact, pan and kid, when you stopped spinning and slowly skidded to a stop at the bottom of the hill, you laughed in victory before hauling the pan back up the hill to the sibling waiting for their turn in it.

We'd take turn after turn speeding in the pan until our hands, noses and bottoms were thoroughly frozen. Then we'd head home, satisfied as only kids can be in their puerile pursuits of adventure, with the smoke curling above that little square house serving as a beacon to call us to a warm harbor. At the front porch we'd quickly stamp our shoes on the steps, and going in, we'd dump the cobbler pan on the ground and peel off our wet jackets and Dad's old socks by the front door, eager to reach the wood-burning stove and hold our numb hands above its hot surface.

A snowy day did come when none of us kids could fit into the cobbler pan, and it would have been embarrassing to even attempt it. Our ingenuity did not fail us, though. The hubcaps could still be used, and there was some old linoleum that Mom had torn up from the living room floor. Nate and I used it, and its slick surface worked well - until it shredded on the way down the hill, leaving nothing but a scrap beneath our bums. Because you see, no sled or other downhill transport could ever be as durable as that cobbler pan. And we treated the poor thing roughly; each good hard snowfall, it got a few more dents in its bottom. And yet come summer it was again receiving and heating Mom's beautiful cobbler.

This Christmas, I wish I had that cobbler pan to hold in my hands again and marvel at the mere fact that there used to be a time when I could comfortably fit my rear end into it while racing flat-out down a slope. Then I'd like to hang it on the wall in my kitchen.

My friends might say, "Hillary, why do you keep that old pan hanging there?"

And I'd look up proudly and get a little misty-eyed as I replied, "There was a big hill in the field where I grew up. It'd snow sometimes, and that pan was just right...."