Pre-Stuffing Stuffing

Trip Start Jun 18, 2005
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Trip End Jan 01, 2006


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Flag of United States  , Washington,
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Eating is a tradition in my family. I mean, we don't get together to hike, or to stand around the piano and sing. When we get together, it is to EAT. When I was five, my grandmother would cram a couple of folding tables into the corners of the dining room for the kids, row the grownups around the mahogany oblong, and there we'd be, jammed tight, elbows touching, bowls and platters touching, all the bounty of the season before us to share. My grandfather sat at the head of the table, his back to the double windows that framed the tree with the swing he hung just for me; he began our meal by saying grace. Head bowed, he thanked God for his family, for all the food that was before us. It was food he had planted, tended, harvested. He raised the chickens, hogs, and beef that we ate. The house was surrounded by pecan trees, peach and pear, by grape arbors, by beehives filled with honey. The cow was milked every day, the butter churned; jams and jellies sugared on the stove in the heat of summer; autumn corn was hauled to the mill and stone-ground into meal for bread 736 There'll be no witches on my watch
736 There'll be no witches on my watch
 . Our daily bread. "Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, and our bodies in service to all," he'd say, "and thank you God, for Maude."

Maude was my grandmother, a nervous bundle of energy that never sat still, never got quiet. She perched on one hip at a corner of the table, jumping up every time she saw a vacant spot on anyone's plate, immediately filling it with a spoonful of whatever she thought was missing. "Here, you need more potatoes," she'd say, and PLOP, you had a blob of mashed potatoes on your plate.

My mother used to sit on the porch to shell peas, string beans, shuck corn; she cooked okra, squash, cornbread in a black iron skillet; that was summer fare; in winter I remember salmon patties, canned sockeye mixed with cracker crumbs and egg; a contest between my brothers and me -- who can find the most bones? Crunchy rounds we'd bite into and shout "I win! I win!" Christmas was ambrosia time; my Dad would hammer-crack the coconut, shredding and grating till his fingers were raw; oranges were peeled and sliced, pineapple too. Pecans cracked, can you remove the halves without breaking? Cookies baked. "Slice the ham in even slices!" Mother admonished Dad. "Except I want a few pieces thin."

I married into food 737 Curses!
737 Curses!
 . My mother-in-law roasted turkeys, tented with aluminum foil in a low-slow oven all night long; butterbeans, collards, pork chops, German chocolate cake. Summers on the Gulf of Mexico, shrimp right off the boats and boiled in the shell, newspapers on the picnic table, hot sauce bottles in the middle; peel and eat and fold the newspapers around the shells when you're done, no dishes to wash. My in-laws taught me how to fish, taught their grandkids how to fish. We ate fish, fish, red snapper, hushpuppies fried in fish grease; salads cooled with cucumbers from the second southern summer crop, gleaned from the fields after the truck farmers were done.

I was a lousy cook to start with. Weiners and kraut on a married student's budget, sitting at a rented table; spaghetti dropped whole and hard into the meat sauce when the family came for a visit (the cookbook didn't specify that it should be boiled so how was I to know); but finally, my own traditions evolved. Homemade chili on Halloween night. Cold wind blowing, doorbell ringing, candy piled, children freezing on a sugar high. You need good hearty chili at a time like that. And I perfected STUFFING. Lessons from the years, my grandmother's recipe (too gloppy), my mother's recipe (not enough sage), my mother-in-law's recipe (too greasy); just like Baby Bear, mine was JUST RIGHT.

Halloween was coming up."Come on over," I said to my kids and theirs. "I'm making chili." We have entered the eating season.
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