food for the soul

Like many people, I have a list of things I want to do "some day" or "when I'm retired". Now that I am retired, I'm beginning to check some of those things off a list. I read all 7 volumes of the Harry Potter books in August and September. Currently, I'm watching Season 4 of the Sopranos. I'm trying to learn Photoshop

Another task I've been putting off is going through all my mother's recipes. This is less because of lack of time, but rather an avoidance on my part of the memories that would follow. After she died, Patrick gave me a stack of folders containing recipes she had brought with her when she moved in with him. I don't remember when she organized the recipes into these pocket folders, but it must have been during the 1980's. After returning home to Portland from Alabama, I stuck them up in a shelf in the kitchen cabinet along with cookbooks and my own folders of recipes. Jon made the comment that my recipe files look " just like your mother's". I was a little offended at first (mine are surely better organized!), but I realized he was right. Both were collections of recipes collected from magazines, newspapers and other people stashed into dog-eared folders with general labels like, "Desserts" or "Pasta". Many were decades old and some were dishes that had never been made.

Last weekend, I decided it was time to go through my mother's recipe folders. It was like walking through the last 50 years of my mom's life. A woman who loved food, she gained a lot of weight during her late 30's and 40's, which is not so unusual. However, her overeating was a way to cope with the depression from her unhappy second marriage. She withdrew and became semi-reclusive, but her world revolved around food and making meals for her family. My grandmother and aunt were also good family cooks and many recipes were from them as well.

Since I was looking for a couple of my grandmother's old Christmas cookie recipes, I started with the largest folder labeled "Cookies". There must have been 250 recipes in this folder. When I saw Mom's handwriting on the recipes for Snickerdoodles and Raspberry Squares, I immediately went back to that kitchen on Mulberry St. where we lived before my father passed away in 1958. Then there were the dozens of recipes clipped from women's magazines like "Good House Keeping" and "McCalls". There was even a recipe for persimmon cookies which must have been inspired by the persimmon tree in our neighbors yard in St. Louis, but I don't remember her ever making them.

Some of the older recipes had been clipped from boxes or bags of American Beauty spaghetti, Domino sugar and Old El Paso. There were some truly horrible early microwave oven ideas (deviled ham loaf) clipped from the "women's section" of the St. Louis newspaper dated 1973. I counted 37 recipes for variations on broccoli-chicken casserole. Funny, I don't remember eating that very often. Possibly she was on that kick after I had left home. The newspaper's food writers were really reaching for it when they came up with concoctions like"Pesto Mexicali" or "Mexicana Mostaccioli". Nacho pasta anyone? There were at least 6 versions of Tamale Pie, which, if memory serves, was a favorite of my brothers in the late 60's and early 70's.

As I made my way though the folders, I was reminded of some of her favorite foods just by the sheer numbers of recipes (Mexican food) as well as her dislikes by the absence of others, like fish. The only fish my mom ever cooked was shrimp or canned tuna. She loathed fish.

I recognized food fads and trends that came and went over the years - remember twice baked potatoes, breakfast casseroles or layered salads, calling for a cup each sour cream and mayonnaise? Speaking of mayonnaise (another favorite of hers), I found oodles of dips and appetizer recipes. Remember those ham and cream cheese roll-ups? There was even a mayonnaise pie. Huh?. Then came the 80's & 90's when she tried to make everything low fat in an attempt to lose weight. (It didn't work.) Everything was made with fat free mayo, fat free sour cream, low fat margarine, (it wouldn't melt!) and lots of whole grains, beans and rice.

Mostly, when my brothers and I were younger (roughly between 1955 - 1964), she didn't cook any of this stuff (except the cookies). Our dinner staples as kids were fried chicken, ham, corn and potatoes (any and every style), frozen vegetables, gumbo and jambalaya. We also had liver and tongue, which my youngest brother, Patrick (who called it "cow tongue") refused to eat. He said, "I'm not going to eat something that can taste me back!" I refused to eat the tuna casserole. We sometimes had hamburgers, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese (homemade) and spaghetti with meat sauce. After my mom remarried in 1964, things began to change. I was 13 and my brothers were 10, 8 and 7. Suddenly we were eating more red meat and BBQ was big, but fried chicken still reigned.

I found her recipe for BBQ sauce and chili sauce which she used to make with tomatoes from her plants in the back yard.

The recipes I discovered that made me smile the most were from my Uncle Thad. One was for his Bloody Mary (which I pleasantly remember getting hammered on as a young adult) and his Scotch Old Fashioned, which my mother adored. I made one for myself (even though I didn't have the required marischino cherry juice from Thad's recipe) and toasted to my mother, my grandmother, my aunt and to Thad for an afternoon full of tasty, bittersweet memories.

PS I didn't find my grandmother's cookie recipe I was looking for and I realized why. They were called Bourbon Cigars. My mother didn't care for bourbon, so she never made them. However, my aunt did have the recipe which she promptly sent to me.