Sunday, October 21, 2012

Rocking the kitchen like Paula!

When Gene and and I got married, I was a sophomore in college. Back then we had Viet Nam looming for him and a less than promising career in theater for me. What was I thinking? I will concede that a background in theater has helped me with my real career as a domestic goddess! More on that in another post.

We set up house-keeping in a small apartment in a suburb with a tiny Barbie-sized kitchen. Now, my mother was a fabulous cook who collected recipes and tried new dishes out on us during my growing-up life. She was always the first person on the doorstep after a death, an illness, or a birth with a pot of soup, a cake or some sort of casserole, because that is what we do in the south. Is there a verse in the bible that covers that sort of kindness and thoughtfulness? If there isn't; there should be one. She tried repeatedly during our almost year-long engagement to teach me to cook even the simplest of dishes. Was I interested? That would be a negative. Who was I kidding? Gene and I picked out beautiful china, crystal and silver. We even got pots, pans and every sort of small appliance for the aforementioned Barbie kitchen. Did I have a clue about what to do with any of that stuff ? If you guessed, yes, you would be wrong. Thank, God, Mother was a phone call away every day at about dinner time. I remember her laughing until she cried about my reading the package of wieners for instructions on how to cook the rubbery tubes! Gene wanted hot dogs for lunch and by golly that's what I cooked. That was only the beginning of my personal cooking journey.

My mother-in-law was a gourmet cook. She followed Julia Child for heaven's sake ! Julia, who? She even grilled me about my culinary skills one night over a gourmet dinner at her house. "Can you cook?", she asked. Squirming in my seat I answered, "No, ma'm." "Well," she said, "If you can read, you can cook." There, just as easy as pie, she drew the line in the sand, or mashed potatoes, as it were. Gene's family had always had a full-time cook named, Katie. She was the sweetest, dearest most lovely person anyone could ever hope to meet. I wish you could have known her. Katie could make biscuits so light that they fluttered to your  plate. Her fried chicken was a legend in its own time. Pies, did you say? Her apple pie would make you want to slap your mother. She and my mother-in-law, hereafter known as "she who must be served' or swmbs, were dynamite together in the kitchen. Meals came out of that place that would make one swoon! See what I had to deal with? Gene, bless his heart, was a trooper. Well, most of the time he was. The rest of the time that first year or so, he was, shall I say, less petulant? Most young women just have their husband's mother to live up to. Me, there were three excellent cooks to aspire to be. What was I to do?

The first real shockeroo was that the news of our rapidly approaching wedding was the cause of conversation at the local newspaper! One morning, rather early, about a month before the wedding, a reporter from the paper called to ask if she could do an article about what I planned to cook for our first meal? What? The reporter explained that there were three couples being interviewed. Okay, so why me? She went on to say that since my intended's mother (swmbs) was known for her culinary skills, the curious minds at the newspaper wanted to know what kind of cook I was. I had recently read (translate-attacked) a book titled, _The New Cook's Cookbook_, so I was ready with an answer. Spaghetti with bolognese sauce, salad, garlic bread and a nice red wine, I replied confidently. Now, all I had to do was produce the meal because, after all, it was in the newspaper for God's sake.

The wedding and the honeymoon behind us, Gene and I tackled the grocery store for our first "stock the larder" trip hauling what, at the time, seemed like a hundred bags of food up the two flights of stairs to the tiny kitchen. Now, all I had to do was figure out how to cook. Gene went off to work on Monday morning and I set about doing the things all young brides did in the early seventies, turned on the TV for a little soap opera watching while I got everything out to begin the sauce. The darn stuff had to simmer all day. Following the recipe to the letter was not hard, but when the recipe directed me to "taste to adjust the seasoning", I was answering the phone at the same time. A magazine salesman was pounding my ear about buying his wares when I dumped instead of dashed the red pepper. OHOH! I was an early failure at muti-tasking. Lesson learned: Don't try to adjust while talking.

Gene arrived home and I greeted him at the door with my very best Harriet Nelson smile and led him to our table for the promised meal. Let me pause right here and say that calling the moving boxes a table was stretching the truth. I had set the "table" with our fine china and silver. We even pulled out wine glasses from a box, despite the fact that neither one of us drank red wine, unless Cold Duck was considered red wine then. Well anyway, I served up my first culinary masterpiece and to my horror, Gene turned red and gasped after taking a bite! The lovely sauce was was as hot as a firecracker! I spilled out my sad story and he was very understanding. All was not lost, however, the bread and salad were really good.

After that first disaster, I decided that swmbs. Katie,  as well as my own mother were not going to get the best of me. I begin to read cookbooks as if they were novels and bought  magazines in the checkout line at the grocery store. Even my conversations with my friends turned to food. We begin to share and exchange recipes too.What was happening to me? The answer is very simple. I became a cook, not because I had to, but because I wanted to do so. You see, this is the south. We cook to show love and to be loved. We want to please that special someone and be appreciated in return. No one leaves a southern cook's house without being offered food and drink. Even ice water served in a crystal goblet becomes a treat. All this I learned at the feet of the master, my mother.

Earlier in this post I said that I refrained from letting my mother teach me the fine art of cooking, but that's not entirely true. I did learn from her but it was more by example than hands-on. Mother played an extremely important role in my culinary journey for it was to her I turned to ask questions when my reading skills failed me. For instance, when a recipe called for an egg, I called my mom and asked if that meant the yellow and the white. She said yes, everything but the shell. How did she keep from laughing? Until the day she died, Mother was always ready to answer my questions about cooking. The more I cooked the more I found that I really liked it as well as my mother did.

I have cooked in sub-standard kitchens for most of my married life. Five years ago we decided to do a major overhaul of our house and finally add a new kitchen. For the first time in our forty-one years of wedded bliss, Gene, the kids and grand-darlings are getting meals turned out in a beautiful, functional and well-designed space. I love it and find that I am the happiest in my new kitchen and dinning space. It isn't really fancy and the meals aren't either, but they are prepared and offered with love. Some of my mother's cookbooks came to live in the new bookcases and they live alongside those I've collected since the beginning of my cooking journey. My sister and I divided those cookbooks up after Mother's death. She and I cried at the smudges and spatters and lovingly touched the notes written beside some of the recipes. I still choke-up when I cook "Brunswick Stew" because Mom had written, "Tom's favorite", in the margin. Tom was her husband, and our beloved, "Daddy".

Cooking has taught me a lot about being a wife, a mother and a person. My mother, my mother-in-law and Katie helped me in my journey to Flavortown (a shout out to Guy)but what I learned all by myself is that you don't need, although it' s nice, a fancy or not so fancy new kitchen or top of the line pots and pans to create a yummy meal for family and friends. She-who-must-be-served was right when she said that all you really needed to do to be able to cook was read. I am still reading, learning and loving everyday as I prepare food. My mother would be happy and, although she never saw the new space; I think she would approve.