There are some memories that creep into the psyche, that seep like water under a door and into the carpet of consciousness to become a part of who we are and insinuate themselves into the shape of our daily lives. Memories of cooking with my grandmother–putting dishes together for special occasions, for BBQs or Christmas or Thanksgiving–include not only the knowledge of the ingredients, the order they are added or mixed, the the timing for boiling, baking, but her movements as well. Cooking often takes the form of ritual in the way we chop, the way we season, the way we smell and taste our creations. I find myself searching my memories for the subtleties that aren't written down, that aren't included in the handwritten notes in Gram's old white cookbook. Each time I recreate a recipe from the holiday traditions of my childhood, I remember my grandmother's mannerisms, her voice inflections, the way she held the knife, or the point when she gave directions.
Recently I was putting together a BBQ sauce for chicken–not a tomato sauce with a special blend of seasonings–a wine and olive oil based one with a special blend of vegetables and seasonings. It calls for chopped celery and green onions, rosemary, oregano, worchestershire sauce, garlic and "italian seasonings." In the cookbook Gram wrote "slice garlic," but when I was a child and we made this sauce together, she always made me crush the garlic, clove after clove of these masses of garlic crushed to nearly a paste, plopped in with the wine and oil. When I am prepping the garlic, I search the periphal vision of my memories to watch her hands carefully put the garlic into the press and close it firmly before scraping the garlic off the outside of the press and scooping any pod leavings from the inside of the garlic press out to join the rest in the liquid.
I also strain my peripheral vision for the look on her face, the face I love and miss and see in glimpses in my mind's eye. I can see her lean on the sink as she does some sort of prep work into a container in the sink, although I can't recall what she was doing. Sometimes I can see a cigarette in her mouth, as much as I loath that visual memory, it is a visual nonetheless, so as much as I despised the ubiquitous cigarettes, it gives me another glimpse of her face.
I wonder what kinds of dishes that I have made for my family (and my very picky children) that they don't like know, but will learn to love later as I did. I used to hate the Christmas sandwich loaf, a behemoth of a project that involved no less than four different types of fillings, layered between slices of bread cut the long way unlike a traditional sandwich slice and held together with gravity and toothpicks. I hated this meal growing up. Gram made it every year for Christmas Eve dinner. It was serve along with sliced salami and cheese, sweet and dill pickles and olives, and some weird pickled vegetables like cauliflower and pepperoncini. I went for the dills, the salami and the cheese. And then waited impatiently while the grown-ups lingered over their loaf slices extending dinner out impossibly long, keeping me from opening presents.
Will my kids ever learn to like my homemade spaghetti sauce? I know they would like my chili recipe, and my son would like my lasagna recipe, both would like my enchilada recipe. Neither would likely care much about chicken or beef stroganoff and they can both make the breaded chicken that they love so much.
I suspect that even if they don't learn to love some things, if either is ever forced to make dishes they don't like, they will also find that the memories of cooking together are more important than taste of the food. And who knows, maybe they will appreciate my spaghetti sauce the way I now appreciate the sandwich loaf.
