Watch & Learn

by: Annie Wilson

I was not even counter-top height when I began asking my mother if I could help to make dinner. Her typical response was usually along the lines of: “It would help me if you would set the table.” Insisting, I would ask for a different job, one involving something more important than napkin-fork-knife. With an irritated sigh she would then say: “You know how I learned to cook? I learned by watching my mother.”

This remark always bore a lot of truth as I did learn my cooking fundamentals just by watching. I watched until my attention drew me to other things: homework, piano, soccer, the dog, phone calls, sliding down the floor in stocking feet… Reaching this certain age, my mother would check my loud adolescent self with a sharp “Watch! You’ll learn something!” After years of diverting me from the stove, she again wanted my full attention. I did learn, though I never understood my mother’s fierce guardianship of the kitchen; what threat was I to her culinary dominance of the house at seven or even fourteen? However at twenty-two, returning home from college after two years as a line cook, I began to see that this protection was merely insecurity at recognizing that her own daughter could take her place at the stove.

My mother is a Virgo: organized, methodical, testy. My grandma was an Aires: fiery, passionate, all-encompassing, and possibly a little unkempt as a cook. Being born among the fire signs myself, I know something about this passionate messiness in the kitchen. Mom always used to say “You have to clean as you cook,” and I do, although where my mother’s drawers and cupboards are a tribute to Martha Stewart orderliness, organization, and labeling, mine might need some work. I remember grandma’s cupboards being the same way: a little messy, mish-mash of pantry items, and utensils you didn’t know did what. When grandma died, I was just returning from college and back into my parents’ home – a home where I was pointedly not allowed to cook. However, I was allowed to pack and store my grandmother’s kitchen things for my future apartment. Among this odd array of bundt pans, aspic molds, and dishes, are the cookbooks.

Nothing printed or published, just two smallish books, one a spiral journal and one a binder. Broken, wrapped in rubber bands, tattered, stained, sticky with old food crumbles and spatter. It is clear why my mother did not want them. Going through the books is a bit like time-travel. There are recipe cards from friends, clippings from old newspapers, and all kinds of things jotted in odd places. There are clippings of a food column from a bygone newspaper whose titles always began with “The Thing About…” My grandma kept “The Thing About Root Vegetables,” “The Thing About Leftover Turkey,” and “The Thing About The Eggplant.” Clearly, grandma was a fan. There are even repeats of recipes; there must be three or four versions of Green Goddess dressing, or Chicken Divan, the same recipes, but with slight additions or omissions of ingredients, perhaps? I suppose one got lost and had to be reprinted. But the type of cuisine is interesting too, traditional things my mother always adamantly refused to approach: rutabagas, tripe, and Lieb Kuchen, but also the kitchy 1950s cocktail fare no one would consider serving today, such as a rainbow of different Ambrosia Salads. (Anything where sour cream, whipped cream, diced fruit, and Jell-O are combined.) My favorite things are the additions – the handwritten notes to self stating “add a dash of…” or “really good with…” Sometimes, the recipes themselves are handwritten, either in my Grandma’s tell-tale left-handed flourishing script, or someone else’s perfect Catholic-girl cursive. Sometimes I see the script is a bit loose, and I can imagine the author was a dinner guest who had been implored to give up the recipe after too many Sidecars.

There is a popular recipe for something called “Canary Cocktail” among these papers. Popular, because I have found multiple versions of this recipe too, yet, who was the mastermind behind Canary Cocktail? No one knows for certain. The story goes that Canary Cocktail was reserved for those ladies luncheons or meetings when especially boring women were to attend. A few sips of the yellow pastel punch later, and everyone was charming. My mother has never made Canary Cocktail – at least not in the last twenty-five years of my memory.

I do not know how the mother-daughter kitchen politics worked in my grandmother’s house, although my mom tells the story of the day she refused the yearly drudgery of the immensely difficult family tradition of making Lieb Kuchen at Christmas. (A German gingerbread recipe given to friends as gifts, involving mountains of ingredients and hours of time.) My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, and watching the cook. She must have been at the age when “watching” in the kitchen finally involved a choice: pay attention and learn, or shrug your shoulders and say to yourself “I don’t need to know how to make that.” Clearly on this day, she was seeing the cooking only as swelter and stress rather than a valuable lesson. My grandmother apparently looked at her and said: “You’re never going to do this, are you?” One swift glance at the blanched, chopped almonds, hot oven, and thin veil of flour dust on everything, she gave a quick puff of smoke, and the answer was “No.”

Every year I have thought of tackling the Lieb Kuchen recipe and while I still have not attempted it, I know it will turn out well. Each time I use my Grandma’s kitchen supplies in my own apartment, my own kitchen, I feel my hands are guided. Pie crust is flaky, cookies never burn, meats braise beautifully. When I wash her old mixing bowls and put them on the rack, I chuckle at the red “IDA” in nail polish on the bottom. She is my kitchen blessing, and since my mom never comes over to supervise my own cooking or kitchen tidiness, I like to believe we are safe in our messy cooking.

(Above: Mom & Grandma enjoy a new Schwinn on Christmas - circ. 1947?)