A Course in Mom Cookery

My Mom, Kate was not a good cook.

Not that Kate was a bad cook, but her scope of meal preparation was limited.

And I can say this now, because she’s dead.

There were certain dishes she could whip up with mighty skill, all Italian in nature, which meant my siblings and I ate mucho pasta.

An occasional steak or burger was thrown on the grill for good measure.  Some Sundays she’d make what she called her, Yankee Pot Roast, a roast thrown into a crockpot with some beef boullion, potatoes and carrots. 

 It was Yankee-fied because Kate was a born Maine-iac. But, Kate had learned how to make tomato sauce from a real Italian woman who’s daughter was a friend of mine.

However, Kate's sauce never contained any red wine, and rarely chopped meat. Kate didn’t like alcohol.  Occasionally, she would grab a Pina Colada flavor wine cooler and sip it on a warm night. 

Those big pots of tomato sauce transferred into: baked ziti, lasagna, eggplant parmigiana, chicken parmagiana, stuffed shells or manicotti (Mrs. Leone also taught her how to make her own manicotti shells.) Even her meatloaf, contained a helping of that sauce. My first flavor profiles included vast amounts of oregano, garlic, parsley and basil.  And she did make some killer manicotti.

One rule existed in Kate’s kitchen.

NO onions.

Once she had taste tested a recipe and received a good response, she would make that dish every week, for a month.   I can no longer eat Honey Mustard Chicken for this reason.  Two words for my brother Erik. Moroccan Chicken.

Sometimes, Kate and Betty Crocker would bake some brownies.  She was not a baker and she knew it.  Every Thanksgiving though she would cook down a pie pumpkin, make the filling and throw it into a ready-made Pillsbury piecrust, she would do the same for her Apple Pie(Steve’s favorite) except she’d cut up apples, season them and throw them into a ready-made Pillsbury piecrust and cover it with another ready-made Pillsbury piecrust.

Christmas she’d make her favorite peanut butter cookies, but she said that she just didn’t like to make cookies.  Instead she would whip up some Julekake, (Norwegian Christmas bread).  OR one of my favorites, she'd make some real whipped cream and throw in a can of Fruit Cocktail...yummy.

My father, Steve used to rave about my Kate’s skills, but this from a man who displayed his culinary acumen for me only one time…he fried up some Steak-ums and threw them on a roll with Kraft American cheese.  Yeah, the one in the plastic.  He liked to make cheese sandwiches.  A few slices of cheese between some white bread.

Steve traveled a bunch on business while I was growing up, and oh boy when he was gone then the really fun food would get made. 

Her culinary style was what I call Mom food, quick filling and probably cheap.

Fish Fingers,(with their friend Tater Tot) Kraft Mac N Cheese, Turkey Tetrazzini and one of our favorites  something  she called, “Tuna Noona Casserole”  most people know it as Tuna Noodle Casserole.  She would only make that when Steve was away.  He hated the smell of canned tuna, and he even convinced me for many years that it was cat food and I refused to eat it.

What made Kate’s Tuna Casserole, different than all others were two things:

First, she used Cream of Chicken soup, not Cream of Mushroom.

Second, she never added the peas.(I kinda like the peas though.)

I’m just surprised she didn’t throw in some tomato sauce, although it probably crossed her mind.

Today as I was going through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, trying to figure out if I will ever be able to properly make a nice Hollandaise,  I was smitten with hankering for Kate's Tuna Noona Casserole. Well, I know that these are the types of dishes that Europeans mock us for, but I don't care.

  It was just as deliciously disgusting as ever.  I don't even want to know what the nutritional content of this is, but at least it's got tuna and peas.  It reminded me of nights at the kitchen table in West Orange, windows open to the sounds of the neighborhood, waiting to watch Little House on the Prairie with Kate, wearing one of my Papa's clean white t-shirts as a nightgown, sleeping in my Mom's bed while my Papa was away the sheets cool under my toes and my cat Teddy curled up at my feet.   

Nostalgia.  Campbell's induced nostalgia.

Kate’s Tuna Noona Casserole

1 can Campbells Cream of Chicken Soup

`1 bag Manischevitz Egg Noodles

2 cans of white tuna in water

½ cup of milk

pepper

Saltines

Preheat oven to 375 F

Cook the noodles.

Drain tuna and add to large casserole dish.

Add can of soup and milk.

Stir.

Add the noodles and stir into mixture.

Season with pepper.

Crunch up the saltines and sprinkle on top.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until it looks ready.

I add ½ a can of peas to my recipe and use breadcrumbs.

VOILA!!!  You have now Mastered the Art of Mom Cooking.  Bon Appetite!!

Again

"Tell Pam she's got a good screamer there."
I hear this voice in my head, my Mother's voice and I tell Pam, laughing because I don't know if it's me or some ghost of my Mom talking to me.  Or maybe it has finally happened.
I've lost all sense of sanity.
We were trying to get my niece to sleep, she has this habit of waking up at 11:30PM and not going back to sleep until oh you know 3:45AM!!!

So maybe I hear her voice due to my lack of sleep...who knows.  It's no the first time it has happened, nor will it be the last...I hope.

As I write this I am watching Beatrix crawl around on the living room rug, playing with her new teapot toy.  In moments when I speak to Bebe or buy her things, I think about what Kate would've done.  The dresses and cute toys she would have gotten for this little lady.  I try to see if there is anything I recognize of Kate in Beatrix and there are flashes of her stubborn nature, but mostly I see a baby Erik.

I am trying to go easy on myself these days.  To not be saddened by the past events of this year, some who read this know the extra sadness...some don't.

Palm Sunday
Pam, Beatrix and I found ourselves in church Sunday night.  I could not remember Easter from 2013, I believe that I was at Morristown Hospital with my Mom, but I cannot recall huge chunks of time.

We sat in the beautiful church, listening to the singing(Bebe sings along now).  There is something peaceful in religious services, a calm, a certain sense of what will come next.  And this is strange for me because for someone who was once so connected to a God, a Christ I no longer feel that connection in the same way.

This is the week of celebration of death. We celebrate a death on Friday. We are supposed to embrace the suffering of the Christ, hope in His risen self.

I've read that they believe Jesus began his ministry at age thirty and died at thirty-three.  I am thirty-three, this past year has been one of my own death, I am only beginning to understand this now.
How or what it means to be resurrected.
I watch as Bebe has been pulling herself up to my coffee table, she can almost stand, but is not steady on her feet yet.
She takes a tumble, maybe bumps her head but within minutes she is up again.  Anastasis is the Greek word meaning resurrection Ana means again, or anew and Stasis means to stand.  To stand again.

I am learning to stand again.  My niece and I are learning the same things.

In 2013, I witnessed a death and a birth.  Perhaps I could say two births, because I too am climbing out of my own egg shell, learning Anastasis--to stand again.

My own life, or I should say, my hopes of what my life would be, have been put to death within.  I have been trying to learn how to accept this new life.  I am a baby, or a wee chick emerging from that egg.
At thirty-three, I do understand a bit of the suffering of Christ or how the mystery of holy things pervades my thoughts.

Horror Vacui

All of this stuff, (except the recycling wine bottles) came out of the closet in my front hallway.  Boots, gloves, coats, a tapestry, a bucket, a giant bag of napkins...it was all in there.

We've been cleaning out clutter, getting this house ready to go on the market ASAP.  Anyone interested in a mid-century, center-hall colonial hit me up!  It's in a great town.

So anyway, I have put off going through any of Kate's possessions for the past nine months.  They've  been in all kinds of bins...

I read once that Nature Abhors a Vacuum...

I'm creating a vacuum in my life and in my possessions. There is something very freeing in losing things, losing people.  This "loss" changes a person, makes you view the world in a very different perhaps fatalistic way.

I'm tired of others(the media, blogs etc) telling me how to live.  Don't put this on your skin, don't eat this, eat this, don't smoke that, don't eat that...it's all too much for a human to grasp.

Peace of mind at the end of the day is being able to know that you did your best.  I mean why don't we want all these toxins and GMO's?  We think that WE are in control.

Guess what, we're not.  Death, is inevitable.  In 1780, folks lived to be about 45 years old.  Why do we think we are actually in control of such things by eating/not eating things?  I don't get it.

This is what I know, when I die, I just want to think I enjoyed my life.  I loved others, I made a difference even in a small way.  I may go next year, I don't know.  Death is such a strange part of life, we cannot grasp it until we see it and experience.

Don't be afraid of it.  Fear motivates people in the most disgusting ways.  I say be as free as possible, free of fear.  Fear will add NOTHING to a life.  Remove fear like the clutter I am removing, fill that vacuum with something, anything else and trust me your life will change.

I too am learning not to fear.  I am no longer afraid of grief or sadness, I'm learning to embrace them, realizing that I am tougher than I ever knew.


Some days I wake up with the sun streaming down on my face and a deep longing in my heart.  An urge for going somewhere new, setting down my own roots because I am free in a way most people will never experience.  I am some orphan in a sea of possibility.

And I keep dreaming of finding some land somewhere, raising some sheep, making some hard cider from my own orchards, running solar power, breeding horses,  a bountiful vegetable garden, a bunch of lilacs in my windows, mountain views, a pond for late afternoon dips, canning my produce, waking at 4:30 AM and falling into bed after a long day of working on my land.  

All that I'm describing is so very different than my current New Jersey existence.   

I don't want to pay to get some tan on my skin, I want it to be there from being out in a field. 

I don't want to read "Made in China" in my sweater, I want to grow and knit my own wool, have my own stove heating my house, jars of my sweet summer tomatoes preserved on my shelf, bacon from my own slaughtered pig, eggs from hens I've cultivated....

The vacuum in my own life is authenticity.  I long for it.  I'm not sure yet where I will purchase this land.  May be in Vermont, Oregon, some midwestern place, may be Southern....

I just know that I am not made for the life I've been living, I'm made for something much more simple yet complex in other ways.  I need to see the actual fruit of my labor.  

SO, I'm cleaning out closets.  Selling my Mother's house so I can go out into the wide world and discover exactly what is missing in my little vacuum of self.  Maybe I will grow some Christmas Trees on the side of a mountain--who knows?  To be all cliche, the world is my oyster.