Grandmothers' Cooking

I'm being held indoors against my will.  A wet storm is bumbling around, looking for an exit and having found none, now sits on us heavily.  I think it's going to be a while before I'll be seeing the sun again.

I'm remembering comforting meals I've had, rustic peasant foods, made of unsophisticated ingredients by hardworking people in simpler times.  Tables in many kitchens over many decades, centuries, were like magnets to the families that sat down together.  At the end of a long day, they were soothed with savory meats, vegetables, flavors and fragrances.  Their words and expressions, gestures and laughter come to me if I cook the same foods they did, taste the flavors and savor the aromas they did.

I was fortunate to have grandmothers who lived nearby and that I could spend time with and learn from, make a connection to what their lives were like, taste their foods.  It's a relief to know I can recall them whenever I cook a food they taught me to make, and it's very easy to see them across the table from me.  We sometimes sit in silence as we eat, but we are content.  It's a strong comfort and a true pleasure.

I like to give myself a challenge:  If my refrigerator looks bleak and empty, I take what little is there and come up with something - not only edible but grand.  Something from nothing.  I believe a memory is like that, too, and has the undeniable power to recreate other, former lives out of what might be said to be nothing.  Life from remembered love and a shared common experience.

Because of my grandmothers and almost in tribute to them, I've learned to keep these things on hand, no matter what:  Salt, pepper, onions, garlic and olive oil.  You could take an old dried stick (practically) and make it delicious with those things.  I haven't actually done that, but nearly so.  When I am fortunate enough to have a fresh tomato, a bit of protein of some sort, I can conjure heaven and set it out on the table to enjoy.

The grandmothers taught me this:  You must coax the soul of the food you are preparing out into the open by handling it with respect and attention.  Cook it slowly if it's to be cooked.  Use sharp knives if it's to be cut.  Cook it, don't kill it.  You mustn't rush it.

When you've had food that's been prepared by someone who understands the nature of the food they have cooked, who appreciated having it to cook, then its flavors are fantastic.  At those times you are elevated to a place of collective memory, and your ancestors gather around with you and sit at your table again.

So, on a funky day like today, I feel the call of the kitchen and hear the whispers of many centuries of ancestral women who took time in their kitchens coaxing forth the soul of food they had available to prepare and eat, even if it was a weed in the garden or a scrap of fish.  They had listened to their mothers and their grandmothers, learned, watched, and became teachers themselves.  Sustenance, the role of food, feeds my spirit today.