Home cooking heroes
My mother's devilled eggs, her shrimp creole, stuffed mushrooms, meat balls, meatloaf, her holiday hams and wonderful soups, the cinnamon toast she served me for breakfast.
My father's crab cakes, his Toll House cookies, grilled salmon, popovers, his pancakes and one-pan breakfasts.
My grandmother's fried chicken, hush puppies, peppers and onions, her pimento cheese and fig preserves, banana pudding, frozen eggnog.
My dad baking Toll House cookies at a cabin in Lake Arrowhead. He used the recipe from the Nestle chocolate chip package.
My grandfather's roasts. My step-grandfather's lasagna and grilled T-bone steaks. His Christmas fruitcakes.
Famous family dishes. Referred to as such: "Your grandfather's famous country sausage." Not well documented, almost purposefully not, because that's what made them famous. They were personal, proprietary, and owned by their maker. No one would just up and make someone else's signature dish. You were lucky if you could get the recipe. Special foods, made year in and year out. I didn't just look forward to them, I counted on them, on my mother's daily cooking, on the way the year unfolded in remembered dishes and holiday feasts.
Georgia, Pennsylvania, California and a little bit of Italy via New York.
My mother and grandmother arriving at a family reunion in Georgia
My grandmother never used a cookbook. Her cooking was remembered, and enriched by recipes from colleagues that were copied down on notepads in the office. My mother gathered all these together, plus the ones cut out of McCall's or Family Circle, or copied from a package and "doctored up" with some lemon or a dash of Tabasco.
My mother came into her own cooking in Southern California in the early 70's. I remember our kitchen counters filled with produce she had bought. Salads in the wooden bowl. Monterey Jack cheese. So many different kinds of plums and apples. Lemons from our tree, and homegrown tomatoes. My father gave her Mastering The Art of French Cooking, signed by both Childs, and with a romantic inscription of his own.
Pat's lasagna.
It strikes me now that I have almost no photographs of my mother cooking, or of the wonderful meals she prepared, apart from a birthday cake or two. She took pictures of my father, and one of her Italian-American stepfather with a lasagna he made on a visit to us in California. Her mother wouldn't let him cook with garlic at home. He looks satisfied, a bit sweaty, and I suspect that the drink on the table wasn't his first.
Winter holidays are right around the corner, and the home cooking heroes are readying their sausage balls and party mix, their cabbage roles and tamales, whatever they make this time of year that is native, elaborate and personal. The dishes and gifts that others are counting on.
My grandmother's egg nog recipe, written on a memo pad, with my mother's notes.
I propose my grandmother's frozen Holiday Egg Nog to you. It was originally frozen by mistake, but that's the only way to serve it.
Separate 6 eggs. To well beaten yolks, add 1/2 cup of sugar. Beat egg whites until stiff and in peaks. Add 1/2 cup of sugar, dash of salt. Mix with yolks and add 1 pint of whipped cream, 1 pint of milk, 1 pint of bourbon, and 1/2 pint of rum. Mix well and freeze. Serve sprinkled with nutmeg.
You might question the frozen aspect of this in the winter. Trust me, when you serve this in glasses with little spoons to get the creamy unmelted part, you'll feel the greatness.
