Excerpts from the mind and memory of a chef (installation #2):
My maternal grandparents lived in Foley, MN. They had an old farmhouse replete with a
dilapidated red barn in which we had our unsupervised childhood fun (mostly
hassling the “polydactylated” barn cats).
When my family would gather, feeding everyone was quite a task. To understand the volume of food that would
be required to feed a gathering of my family, consider that on my mom’s side of
the family, there are 43 grandchildren.
Some of those grandkids had kids, include aunts, uncles, friends and
you’ve got a healthy sized group. Now,
rest assured that every get-together did not include everyone for any number of
reasons. But what my grandma produced
out of her farmhouse kitchen was nothing short of extraordinary.
My grandma worked in Wayzata when my mother was young,
tending to the children of the Whitney family.
As I progressed in the culinary world, she was always inquisitive of how
the operations worked, what we did, how did it compare to when she was in the
“industry”. Her interest in my work, as
well as that of my youngest brother always brought her a smile. Conversely, the first time I beat her in
cribbage was the last time she ever played with me (that, I suppose was the
German in her). My grandpa did tree work
and worked construction, worked on the Alaskan pipeline where he witnessed men
drink antifreeze to keep warm (they were drunk, then dead) and in Guam where he
lost the lower half of his leg in a pile-driver accident. But what they
cultivated on their property is still talked about in my family.
My grandpa planted a fruit tree for every grandkid, mine was
apricot. He had two gardens where ALL of their fruits and
vegetables were produced. They canned
and froze everything. Sauerkraut was
made in clay pots and buried in the ground to be exhumed the following
spring. Rows and rows of the best corn I
have eaten in my life, potatoes both Russet and sweet, peas, beans, beets, red
currants for jelly, strawberries, raspberries and cucumbers for pickles to name
just a few things. The cellar shelves
were loaded with year’s worth of supplies.
It was a true cellar, one light bulb, a wringer dryer and a toilet. But try getting a kid to use it with all the
spiders and other creepy crawlies down there.
No thanks.
Meal times were chaos.
Adults ate first. If kids entered
prior, they would be chased out of the kitchen with the fly-swatter. It hung on the wall and I have no idea how my
grandma commandeered it so quickly. The
kids ate in the stairway, no room in the kitchen, dining area or living
room. Oldest cousins sat at the top and
the youngest at the bottom. There was
great pride in rising to the top of the stairs.
Reason was, if you were on the top and someone spilled milk (which
happened every time), you were safe and thus could eat uninterrupted.
Once my grandparents passed, my mom and her remaining
siblings were tasked with cleaning out the house. She asked if there was anything I wanted from
the house. Without hesitation I replied,
“the jelly jar that’s shaped like an apple and the little plaque with the
dinner bell that read ‘Good bread, good meat, good gosh, let’s eat.’” She told me later that 25 of my cousins had
requested the plaque. We were fond of
the food, the visits and the company.
When gathering with family now, we still talk about the food. It came from nowhere and it came from
everywhere. Thanks Ruth & George!
See you at the Club, Jake
