1990's Of Chocolate and Artichokes and the Ghosts in my Kitchen

I have neglected this blog, in spite of good intentions.  In spite of the fact I have spent a fair chunk of 2013 cooking my way through the 20^th century.  Some of those occasions were taken from my grandmother’s recipe box or the cookbooks I swear belonged to Rosa Alba.  And certainly each and every one of those meals deserved a blog.  Or, each and every dish deserved a blog. 

 

Any writer is good at making excuses.  I think it is second nature, just as much as the idea of writing.  It is curious, then, that all of a sudden I find that idea itching my fingers to return to my laptop and type up a reflection – before I’ve even finished my cooking.

I wouldn’t have thought the 1990’s would be the trigger.  It’s not really a decade that returns very often with a smile.  It was the decade when I was a teenager and early twentysomething.  When I was very lost and uncomfortable in my skin.  And with regards to food, it was easily when I was taking out that sense of loss and discomfort by losing myself in poor nutrition and the habits I have to undo today.

But it is a decade I remember.  Indeed, the decade when I remember cooking.  Not just as a special treat with my grandmother.  It was one of my every other day chores, as the oldest child of a working two parent household.  I learned and perfected my pizza crust, which I started using to make calzones.  Calzone has been a staple of my entertaining menus… except, oddly, for supper club.

I can make that in my sleep.  And sort of did, actually, first thing this morning before coffee or breakfast.  But I have 8 people coming to sit around the Brennan dining room table tonight… so in Brennan tradition there will be ample offerings at all courses of the meal.  What, of our traditions, I thought came into our lives in the 1990’s?

Maybe it started in the 80’s, but I decided to make my Aunt Lisa’s artichoke dip.  That’s another thing I can make in my sleep… and something I’ve varied every time with types of cheese and adding spinach or spices.  But today I will go back to the original.  With yogurt and more mayonnaise than I want to think about.  I have that in my oft used Brennan cookbook, but I did find a card with Gram’s handwriting to reference.

(the tip about the artichokes was an amusing revelation)

Of course that recipe is as much present as past.  It is a staple.  At every Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, random gathering that suddenly becomes a holiday.  If Lisa isn’t there to make it, someone else will step up and supply it.  And usually the supply is two dishes because it gets vacuumed up within minutes of landing on the table, no matter the spread of other appetizers around it.

The other recipe I did find amongst my grandmother’s cards, written in my cousin’s handwriting.  I laughed because I know the name was changed… probably because it was given to my grandmother.  But I figure its true identity will be excellent fodder for dinner party entertainment.  Sex in a Bowl.

(more notes... and the stains are hers, not mine)

It’s funny.  Getting the ingredients together for this one has put me back a few years.  Maybe not even so far back as the 90s… but to a time when I used instant cake mixes and instant pudding.  I confess I am compromising this recipe by using real whipped cream.  The stuff in a can … gross.

But as I stood at the counter stirring together the eggs and oil for the Pillsbury goo, I reflected on how I spent a lot of time stirring and cooking at that counter 20ish years ago.  I often fantasize about updating this kitchen.  I’m not a fan of the 80’s countertops and the linoleum.  But I love the length of my counter.  And how the light attacks the eating area through the French doors.  I thought of when I might have first had this glorious dessert… wondering if it made an appearance at a 4^th of July cookout, when that kitchen was full of Brennans and the table covered with rotating courses that would fill our paper plates.  Coming in from the pool with water dripping from our hair.  The dog or dogs weaving in and out looking for a crumb that would fall… that would inevitably fall. The volume of one aunt only to be outdone with another’s laughter.  Smoke wafting from the grill.  Faces who are gone now… through death or divorce or distance.  When we were all still kids and the world so unknown.  

Cooking my way through last century has been an exploration of flavor and the distortion of real food.  Of how we cook.  How we eat.  But tonight, the food will taste like those shadows I saw of my kitchen. 

A Walk Through the Neighborhood - or a Memory Stew

When I started this blog, I had intentions of countering all these Crisco, corn syrup, and margarine laced recipes by pursuing another of my grandmother’s routines.  Taking a walk.  The 8 month delay of those intentions suddenly ended on Sunday night when I found myself at the start of a week at Mt. Pleasant Ave. 

 

Sunday was actually the perfect kickstart to this dusty inspiration.  It was one of those perfect, almost summer evenings.  My weeklong companion, Nutmeg, was still unsure what to think of me… so I figured we should explore the neighborhood as the sky slowly ebbed into magical golden cotton candy stretched across the blue.  

I turned left at the bottom of the driveway, walking up towards Main Street.  This is not an unfamiliar path to me – nor, I suspect, to many of this blog’s readers.  So many summer morning/afternoons took these first steps in flip flops, clutching a plastic bucket or shovel, a towel wrapped around our shoulders, anxious to kick off those shoes and sink toes into the sand of Eagle Lake.  Or at the opposite time of the year, bundled up in a snowsuit, mittens, gloves, and hat.  Dragging an inflated snow tube or toboggan across the street, passed the embankment, and up the hill to see if the sledding could get you as far as the frozen swamp.  Both walks made you forget it was a golf course.  Because who cares about golf when there is swimming or sledding to be done?

Nutmeg and I did not take the shortcut through the parking lot of the former Jefferson School that would bring us to Eagle Lake.  I imagine the administrative offices have no need for the playground that was often a distraction from our destination.  Nor would my furry companion if it was even there.  So we walked along Main Street. 

There were many mornings I would drive to work and see my grandmother on this very path.  Sometimes she would see me and wave as I sped by in my car – something I actually got to do to my aunt as she passed me.  Holden is like that.  Or maybe… maybe it’s because I was following my grandmother’s steps.  She always knew someone wherever we went.   And it always made me feel good knowing that – that no matter where you go, there is a chance to find a connection or commonality.

So I passed the school and the house that was once a veterinarian office.  I honestly couldn’t tell you when that business went away, but I do remember going there with my grandfather to get Abigail, the poor dog who suffered my toddler pinches under the kitchen table.  I passed the white gothic looking house on the corner of the street that will take you to Eagle Lake if you don’t take the school parking lot shortcut.  The mill buildings that always signaled the anticipation of arriving at Ma and Bubby’s.  The antique store that was closed, but in which my affinity for old things had to look, and coveted some bar accoutrement that could easily have belonged to Don Draper… or Vinny Brennan.

I turned the corner onto Princeton Street.  There was a graduation party happening that Sunday night.  I could hear the teenagers playing volleyball - or whatever silliness the liberation from high school provided - well before I passed the house.  I wondered if that senior had lived in that house all his/her life.  If he/she had walked this street and knew it in the sappy sense of nostalgia I did… and I realized that the senior wasn’t even born when I was the child walking around this block.  But I didn’t think of that as an oh my God, I’m old… just a progression of time that had already manifested itself in the weathered paint on houses I knew, overgrown vegetation, and cracks in asphalt I remember seeing repaved many times.  This walk was very timey wimey, so indulge me.

Anyway, just about the point I got to the house where those teenagers were making happy noises of celebration, I noticed the last street light flicker on.  I am always awestruck by watching street lights come on.  It’s probably because I love the in between times of night and day – twilight and (when I’m awake for it) dawn.  Something magical.  A thinning of perception maybe.  And… I realized the first time I ever noticed a street light go on or off was on that street.  Maybe it was even that very street light.  I was 19 at the time.  And it’s… just one of those things that you go through life not paying attention to… or taking for granted.  That street lights will always be on when it’s dark.  And somehow turn on without anyone looking.  They don’t suddenly go off in the middle of the night.  Except that one (or one of its close by neighbors) did a February evening as I was driving with a car full of cousins back to MPA from my grandfather’s wake.  I’m sure it could easily be explained as a burnt out bulb… but I always remember that.  I think of him every time I see a street light suddenly go off or flicker on.  And… not so very strange that I should think of him that night.

I can’t deny a little water in the eyes as I followed Nutmeg towards St. Mary’s.  The church to which I am most connected, even if not by faith.  So many weddings and baptisms (indeed my own), anniversary parties and showers in the hall… and sadly, the more recent occurrences … funerals.  The parking lot was vacant, but I remember getting out of the car in my Easter best, following my grandfather into the church where he always sat at the edge of the pew so he could pass the basket.  The rectory where once upon a time I remember Christmas caroling with my parents and some collection of aunts and uncles.  And the priests rewarded us with a box of chocolates to take back to my grandfather.  

Then we were back at Mt. Pleasant Ave.  The post office, which was the most common reason to walk down that street.  I don’t remember much about the post office.  It’s a post office.  But just before the corner where one crosses the street is a bridge over the Asnebumskit Brook.  So many stones have fallen from my fingertips into that brook.  An urge that I still feel in my palms and prompts my eyes to look for obliging stones nearby.   

The last stretch is so familiar, tread so many times in my childhood, after filling my stomach with a Christmas buffet, walking to see my uncle’s house in the various progresses of construction… I could probably describe it, smell it, feel it without taking Nutmeg down there.  The houses are more familiar to me than those in any neighborhood in which I lived.  Even if the one that was built underground now has an above ground story and its stone wall is no longer a dare devil attempt to walk with balance.  The Christmas lights turned on inside a living room of another house.  Not that I don’t turn on my Christmas lights all year long, but these… well… made me smell the turkey on my clothes.  The bear at the bottom of Mr. Novak’s driveway.  I looked up to his windows and wondered if he would know who I am.  The baby he held so many years ago.  The daughter of a daughter of one of his very good friends.  

I thought of the neighborhood in the days when he and my grandparents were my age.  When the outdoor fireplace grilled hamburgers and the bourbon sloshed in glasses as they sat in lawn chairs.  As I walked back towards the golf course and saw the (relatively) new condos made to look like the old hotel and the lights that came on in the clubhouse, I thought of those nights my grandmother told me about.  When my grandfather would go up to the bar and bring a half full glass home.  Of the bartender who would bring my grandfather a set of keys and the request to get someone home safely.  Of the concerts – Tina Turner – who apparently rocked me out my mother’s womb.  Of the fire.  The wedding receptions.  And I see the hill again where we raced in our sleds to get to the edge of the swamp.

So many memories in less than a mile.  I wonder how many of us have ghosts there – happy ghosts – but a piece of us that will always live on Mt. Pleasant Ave.  I felt like I was walking with them, as well as Nutmeg.  Even the ones I didn’t know – Rose Alba and Frank and Rhea and Lee Michael.  So much of our family is embedded in the air there.  Laughter and love and sorrow and childhood joy echoing through the years into the twilight of a June evening.

Soul House Cookies

It’s been a while since I’ve set words down to publish on this blog.  In spite of my lack of narration, I have continued with my recipes.  Hosting a regular dinner party does afford one the discipline to look into cookbooks… at least monthly.  I even started an entry that I left in draft form some place on this computer… but I’m afraid I let the mental occupation of my past few months distract me from posting.

Part of that was work.  So I guess I can’t feel too guilty for giving attention to what pays for the ingredients of my kitchen.  The second – and more recent – part of my distraction was the fact I agreed to step into a play halfway through the rehearsal process and perform two weekends of it.

One major reason I agreed (in spite of my better judgment to avoid doing plays during Banned in Boston season) was because of the director.  The last play in which I was involved was his production of Crimes of the Heart.  It closed on September 16^th.  I remember visiting my grandmother the following Sunday.  We talked about the play because she had read the review in the Worcester Telegram.  That was the last conversation I shared with her.

I thought of that as I drove home the nights I didn’t have rehearsal and would pass her house.  I knew the tv room light wouldn’t be on, that she wasn’t reading the review of this play.  I knew the house was lit for different, exciting reasons… but I couldn’t help but sigh and acknowledge this was the first time I have been in a play and she didn’t know.

She didn’t come to all my plays.  And that’s probably a good thing.  There have been times in my life when I’ve been involved in shows right on top of the next… and that’s not reasonable for anyone, never mind my 70,80, 90 year old grandmother.  But she did come to a lot of them.  Even when they were in the basement of Hovey and required descending those stairs and going backstage to get to the bathrooms.  Even when it was a bleak Irish tragedy, with no real redemption when the stage goes black.  She wouldn’t hesitate to express an opinion of the story… or the appreciation of the work.

She always liked to tell me how George Edward liked theater.  Because in a family of sports fans, I was noticeably the artistic one.  But then another cousin or two would do a show… and she would tell me.  Because theater was my thing.  So I would appreciate it.  She also told me about a professor at Clark who used to put on plays.  She would go to those plays with her father.  Or maybe it was her brother… but she always liked those plays.  He did a lot of Shakespeare, so I would probably like them.  That Clark professor, it turns out, went up to Barre in the 1950’s and revived the Barre Players.  The theater where I cut my teeth on directing and got to act in some of my favorite roles.  Where my grandmother sat in the audience several times.

I missed those conversations this month.  Even though the story of the Clark professor was a familiar tale. It was a comfortable routine.  A sort of warm blanket to fall into when I felt the letdown of a show’s closing.  I knew it wouldn’t be there at the end of last weekend, but I decided some comfort was necessary.  So I made cookies.

Actually, this used to be one of the things I did at Hovey.  Not for every show… but certainly the ones that I really enjoyed being part of.  I like to bake and a cast full of actors in need of a quick sugar fix was always the perfect opportunity to share a batch of cookies and not be left with the lot for myself.  So that’s what I made before our last Saturday show.  It proved most handy after the show… as our performance was next door to a bar… and these cookies were necessary carbohydrates.

Her recipe is the one you can find on the back of Nestle’s chocolate chips.  But… somehow… it tastes better because it is in her handwriting.

I actually have six or seven left that I put in the freezer.  For a rainy day.  Or a day I just want to think about sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea, one of these chocolate chip cookies from the tin in the pantry closet, talking to my grandmother about theater.

Alligator Pear Cocktail

It is 1:30am.  The dishwasher is running.  I am sitting in the living room across from the fire to which I added a log not just an hour ago… even though I could have let the coals die out and saved a log of my dwindling wood supply.  But… I kind of want to hold onto this evening, this very good night… and not go upstairs and shut my eyes on it quite yet.

Tonight was my supper club of March.  We have approached the 1920’s in our theme of decades this year.  I even applied gray eye shadow for the occasion…  but left my cloche hats in their boxes.  Still, it was… it was just one of those nights when life is simply, good.

Part of that, I’m not going to deny, is due to the compliments to my cooking.  Tonight was a total experiment.  By experiment, I mean to say I cooked four dishes outside of my norm.  Things that might even be considered weird by modern definitions… but appropriate for my dinner theme… and all from a cookbook that came from my grandmother’s… and I have no doubt… my great-grandmother’s kitchen.

As I type that… I’m not exactly sure which great-grandmother passed on these recipes.  I want to say Rose Alba, because one of the recipe books is stained so completely in the pie section – on the page of a prune pie recipe, that I have heard was one of her trademarks. I am certain she was the one opening up the book of Lorain Cooking to double check her measurements, even when she knew them after baking pies every Sunday.

There are no stains on the second cookbook, a guide to good housekeeping from Better Homes and Garden.  Indeed, I had a renegade splatter of tomato juice this afternoon and panicked that I was damaging this piece of history… even though the cardboard binding attached with my grandmother’s masking tape has already fallen away.  I wonder if that was given to my grandmother by her mother-in-law… or by her mother.

I never saw a photograph of Teresa Conroy until last October.  Well, let me say this again.  I didn’t realize I had seen a photograph of Teresa until I started sifting through pictures to make a database for my family.  There was a family portrait (that I have yet to scan and will not be including in this blog post at 1:30ish in the am) that hung in the dining room of Mt. Pleasant Ave.  I did not know that one of the young women in that early 1900s serious photo was my great-grandmother.  I knew that my grandmother lost her when she was 18 in 1939.  I don’t know if the fact that was the year Gone With the Wind was made into a movie makes that detail register in my brain… and that my grandmother was probably more concerned with the grief of her mother than Vivien Leigh that year… or the idea of being 18 and losing her mother is such a startling thought that I have never forgotten it.

I found an envelope of her pictures… just a handful of pictures.  Compared to the world of Facebook and iPhones, that seems like such a poor representation of a life… well lived, even if she died before either of her children reached the age of twenty.

My favorite is her dressed in Frank’s (the man who would become my great-grandfather) WWI uniform.  

But, there is another – actually a couple others – of her with a friend, when she is smiling, off the cuff, and so genuinely… happy.   

There is also a picture of her in a nurse’s uniform.   And, in the pile of pictures of her eventual husband, a picture of him in France, dark in shadow… handsome.  On the back is inscribed, “Dreaming of you.”

I piece these details together into a story… a story I will never know.   A story I probably would not have really known if I had asked my grandmother.  What do we know of our parents and their youth?  Their recklessness, their hopes and dreams before the burden of responsibility… before the larger problems of the world turn their hair gray and dull the shine in their eyes?  When they shift from hopeful dreamers into authoritarian stewards?

I never knew Teresa Conroy.  I don’t know if this cookbook I used tonight ever spread open on her kitchen counter as it did mine today.  Maybe it did.  Maybe she cooked spaghetti for two and a half hours in the oven as opposed to on the stove.  Maybe she made a white sauce for tuna or filled a cocktail glass with an alligator pear and catsup.  Maybe she cheated on Prohibition.  Maybe she thought it was a good idea.  Did she?  I wonder what she would have thought if she knew her daughter liked bourbon and ginger beer.

Maybe I’m more in tune to these speculations because I am writing a novel that takes place over several decades, but focuses on the 1910’s and 1920’s.  Maybe it is because tonight I had a supper club gathering that focused on the decade that decided alcohol was taboo.  Or maybe… I just find the recipes of these cookbooks an interesting challenge to our contemporary tastebuds and idea of easy cooking.  Whatever it is… whatever informed my fascination… tonight I had a good meal.

At some point I will share all four with you, dear readers.  But for the now, the most amusing is the cocktail dish.  And, yes, I mean dish instead of drink.  I don’t know if Teresa Conroy or Rosa Alba Rivers (Brennan) would have served a cocktail to her husband or group of friends in the 1920’s.  I don’t know if either woman would have snuck a shot of moonshine or vodka into this recipe… but one of them, I suspected, bought this collection of recipes.  And whether or not she contemplated filling a martini glass with an avocado and ketchup, I still like to think by serving it tonight, I knew her more.  Even as I laughed at the odd concept, I felt for a fleeting second that I could have had one of those women at my dining room table laughing and scooping up the surprisingly tasty concoction in delight.

A list of cocktails.  Alligator Pear is at the top.