Monday, January 10, 2022

Hallie mines a pathway from the kitchen to memories

HALLIE EPHRON: It's WHAT WE'RE WRITING and as usual, I get to lead off


Last week I made lists. On the list: Make chicken paprika. When I was done, I ticked the box. Does that count as writing? Actually, it does.

True, I was preparing to host old friends for dinner. But I was also developing a project I’ve just begun to tackle: how food opens gateways in my memory.

Making chicken paprika always conjures memories of my mother, Phoebe Wolkind Ephron

. “Mother,” never “Mom” or “Mommy.” She of the designer suits and Cherries in the Snow lipstick. I can’t remember her ever dusting a table, making a bed, or washing a dish.

She was a Hollywood screenwriter who'd grown up poor in the Bronx and prided herself on being able to buy her own mink coat. We had a live-in cook and a nanny and, as she once told a New York Times reporter on the eve of the Broadway opening of a play she’d written, she only set foot in the kitchen “to get ice cubes.”

Here's a picture of her leaving the Twentieth Century Fox commissary with my dad.

Dinner in our house was always delicious (our live-in cook Evelyn Hall was brilliant) but basic. Three courses starting with grapefruit or melon or canned fruit cocktail. Then meat (roast beef, lamb chop, fried chicken…) with rice or potatoes or corn, plus green beans or a salad. Nothing with sauce. No vegetables as exotic as acorn squash or eggplant or cabbage. Salt and pepper and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt.

Me and my three sisters could eat or not eat. No tantrums if you didn’t like what was on your plate. The only rule was you sat pleasantly at the table, and if you didn’t finish your milk, you didn’t get dessert. There was always dessert and it was a powerful incentive.

And then, one day when I was about nine, CHICKEN PAPRIKA drew my mother to the kitchen on cook’s night out.

I try to imagine her, lying in bed the night before. Paging through THE JOY OF COOKING which sat alongside a pile of OZ books and an Agatha Christie on her bedside table. Landing on the recipe for Chicken Paprika.

I can see her heading into the kitchen on a Sunday night. Maybe she wore an apron – for my imagination, that’s a bridge too far. What I do remember is how she taught me to chop an onion – skinning it first, cutting it in a checkerboard pattern nearly all the way through, and then slicing off narrow the layers. The recipe has as many onions in it as it does chicken.

There was much fanfare in the dining room where my father, in his usual role, ladled our plates with flat noodles and chicken paprika, topped with a dollop of sour cream. There was silence as we tasted.

A dramatic pause.

Then we oohed and aahed. It was delicious and so totally unlike anything I’d ever had before.

Inspired, she described her cooking adventure. Act by act, beat by beat, how she’d chopped and sauteed and thickened. Where she’d followed the instructions and where she’d improvised, tasted and seasoned.

This woman who wrote scripts for romantic comedies and dramas, who “put in a full day at the office” (as she told that New York Times reporter) and turned out pages and pages of dialogue and set directions, typed in triplicate, and never gave me even the tiniest hint of what being in that world was like, gave us chapter and verse on what she’d been up to in the kitchen.

Chicken paprika – the recipe is about two inches long in my (mother’s) copy of The Joy of Cooking.
It's blessedly simple and direct, as are all of Rombauer's recipes. That page is bespattered with sauce drippings and stained where the red ribbon that came attached to the book had to have marked the page for ages.
I like to think those are the spatters she left behind as she launched a tentative, voluntary foray into domesticity.

Do foods conjure memories of people for you, too? Or is it a smell? Or a place? Or maybe even a word that opens a gateway?

111 comments:

  1. What a special memory, Hallie . . . you made my heart smile.

    Sometimes food conjures memories of people for me, generally when I’ve made something that I know was a particular favorite. It’s always a warm memory not only of the person, but of something special shared . . . .

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    1. Me, too - remembering the times I've made something I know was a favorite of a favorite person. Making lamb chops for my daughter (shoulder chops with the little round bone and the 4 tiny bones along the edges). Walnut cookies for my other daughter. Mac and cheese for the grandkids.

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  2. Such a great memory. Thanks for writing it for us.

    I can't think of any foods that conjure memories like that for me. However, there are some smells that do, like a redwood forest. There are several memories associated with music for me. A song that takes me to a certain place or time no matter how many times I've heard it in the decades since it is associated with that memory.

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    1. A redwood forest. Thank you for that, Mark! I grew up camping with my family for two weeks every year in Sequoia National Park. What a unique and memory provoking smell from a magical time.

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    2. Nice, Mark. For an East Coast native, I've been to the redwoods and Sequoias a dozen or more times. Each time I have experienced feelings of awe and elation that are hard to describe. Thanks for that memory today.

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    3. Mark, this is reminding me of the smell of eucalyptus, so omnipresent were I grew up in Southern California. And lilacs blooming here in the spring.

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    4. Mark, I have certain songs that always remind me of a place, even if there is no real memory worth remembering. Like a certain stretch of freeway where I heard the song one time out of 100. Maybe I’ve been stuck in temporal loops without realizing it.

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  3. Wonderful, Hallie! Now I have so many more questions: Did she branch out to other recipes? Make Chicken Paprika over and over on cook's night out? Never make it again?

    The Christmas cookies my mother and grandmothers made evoke warm memories of baking alongside Mommy. Also pumpkin pie, and her bread dressing with loads of butter, long-sauted onions, celery, walnuts, and that little can of herbs that only came out at Thanksgiving.

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    1. Bell's seasoning?
      Love those memories, Edith - Actually I only remember my mother making chicken p once. For her, cooking dinner was a command performance and she did not repeat herself.

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    2. I finally got the word - the label on the can was poultry seasoning. Basically powdered sage, thyme, rosemary, and I'm not sure what else.

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    3. EDITH: My mom also used a similar jar of poultry seasoning for the sausage-bread stuffing twice a year for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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    4. Sounds like poultry seasoning in a Schillings or McCormick can.

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  4. HALLIE: That is a wonderful memory of your mother's cooking adventure. I am surprised that there was paprika in the kitchen cupboard though since you mentioned most meals were seasoned with S&P or seasoned salt.

    Yes, certain Japanese foods conjure up memories of family meals. If my mom took out a special cooking pot in winter, I knew we would be eating mizutaki for dinner. It is a regional Japanese dish common in Osaka (where my mom was born)
    https://www.japanesecooking101.com/mizutaki-recipe/

    Mizutaki is similar to a Chinese hotpot (or shabu shabu) but the raw chicken is added to the water first to make the chicken broth. Then each person would cook their individual portions of napa cabbage, noodles, tofu and other japanese vegetables in a simmering chicken broth. We would then dip them into our individual bowls of ponzu (soy sauce-lemon sauce) and eat. I always stuffed myself full when we ate mizutaki since I controlled how much I put into the pot to cook.

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    1. FYI, I own that original mizutaki pot which looks more like a bundt pan with an electric cord than the pot in the recipe link I shared. There was a tube at the top which contained a small cup where you kept more broth to add.

      Using that mizutaki pot for a group dinner at my home is a big hit with friends on a cold winter's night. The aroma of chicken broth and ponzu fills the room.

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    2. What a great memory. Anything dipped in ponzu sauce and I'm in! And the communal ceremony of the shared cooking! LOTTA prep work for someone. This is reminding me of the (seems like) brief period when in the States we were all into fondue -- cheese, beef, chocolate.

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    3. I LOVED shabu shabu the once I was invited to a dinner at one of my students' homes.

      We had a fondue pot in college in the early seventies, Hallie. Cheese fondue dinners, and chocolate fondue desserts.

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    4. HALLIE and EDiTH: Yes, fondues were really popular in the 1970s. Our family did not have one but I remember eating fondue for dinner, and yes, chocolate fondue desserts!

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    5. My 28-year old son became fascinated with fondue somewhere along the way and it remains a huge favorite of his. For his past two birthdays, his choice for his birthday meal has been grilled steaks and cheese fondue. (I secretly love that choice because he is not by nature chatty, but fondue keeps him at the table chatting for a nice long time!)

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    6. GRACE: Thanks for that great video. It's all new to me and looks both fun and very yummy!

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    7. Grace, I have used Kikkoman Ponzu ever since our local grocery began carrying it---so great for marinating meats and seasoning a variety of saucy dishes! Edith, Mom learned to make fondue on a trip to Switzerland in the late 60's, so we got 2 fondue pots as wedding gifts in 1973. The smaller red one we used for meat or melting chocolate.The big ceramic one for cheese mostly or bigger crowds, and was the same pattern as my Lennox(temperware) Blue Breeze dinnerware! Lasted til DH's 30th surprise party in March 1980, when my youngest brother was supposed to keep an eye on it but had a few beers and was chatting with our old friends when it cracked/blew up on my friend's dining room table, oops.

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  5. I love this memory, Hallie. Yes, there are foods that evoke memories, and smells and songs. The interesting thing about these triggers are that they take you back whether you will or no. Now I think I'll spend my morning remembering my grandmother baking sugar cookies, camping in the White Mountains with the kids, and the first time I heard "She Was Just Seventeen."

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    1. The Beatles and Grandma's sugar cookies! Were those sugar cookies thin and crisp or thick and chewy? I'm on a perennial quest for a recipe for thin crisp cinnamon/sugar cookies that my grandma made...

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    2. They were thin and crispy. I have never found the exact recipe, but a recipe in Joanne Chang's Flour tastes like Grandma's cookies. So, close enough for good memories.

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    3. I just found Joan Chang's Flour recipe for sugar cookies - could workif I butter and cinnamon-sugar the tops.

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  6. Hallie, I LOVE this piece! Keep it up my friend, we are all dying to read it already...

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    1. Thanks, Lucy - you know it's whenever I make granola that I think of you, my dear friend. And if I baked cakes....

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  7. Wonderful! I pulled my Joy of Cooking off the shelf and read the recipe. Easy peasy. Hungarian Paprika?

    I make two Christmas morning casseroles, one with raisin bread, sliced apples, and eggs; and the other, eggs, sausage, potatoes and cheese. The aroma of the baking casseroles, mingled with the scent of freshly ground and brewed French Truck coffee, fills the house and prompts the kids to get out of bed.

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    1. I use a mixture of sweet paprika and smoked paprika. I've also sometimes added a dash of hot paprika, but a little goes a long way, as I've discovered.

      Are your Christmas morning casseroles like bread puddings... baked french toasts? One savory, one sweet. Sounds irresistible. (I'd LOVE the recipe, hint hint.)

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    2. OH! And I always add mushrooms (shitake are the tastiest)... and now I sound like my mother as I go on to wax rhapsodic about caramelizing the onions...

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    3. Tom’s Savory Sausage Casserole

      1 pound new potatoes
      8 ounces mushrooms, minced
      2 tablespoons unsalted butter
      1¼ cups minced onions
      2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
      1 pound Italian sausage, hot or mild, casings removed
      3 large eggs
      1½ cups half-and-half
      1 cup grated Gruyère cheese

      Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-by 13-inch pan.

      Bring a large quantity of water to boil and cook the new potatoes until they are just done, about 10 to 15 minutes. Strain the potatoes and set them aside to cool before slicing.

      Using a clean cloth dishtowel that may be stained, squeeze the mushrooms by small handfuls to remove all excess liquid. When all the mushrooms have been rendered almost dry, set them aside.

      Using a wide sauté pan, melt the butter over low heat. Still keeping the heat low, cook the mushrooms and onions until the onions are translucent. Remove the mushrooms and onions from the pan and put them into a heatproof bowl. Stir in the chopped parsley and set aside. Using the same pan, raise the heat to medium low and cook the sausage until it is brown. Turn off the heat and set aside.

      Slice the cooled potatoes into ½-inch slices. Place them in the bottom of the prepared pan. Distribute the mushroom mixture over the potatoes. Evenly distribute the sausage over the mushroom layer. Set aside.

      In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the eggs with the half-and-half over low speed until the mixture is smooth, about 3 to 5 minutes. Pour this mixture over the ingredients in the baking dish. Sprinkle the cheese on top.

      Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the egg mixture has set in the middle. Serve immediately.

      MAKES 6 SERVINGS

      I mentioned this recipe in another JRW blog and someone cut and pasted the recipe from Diane Mott Davison's ebook, DARK TORT. I prepare the casserole a day ahead, and beat and add the eggs and half and half just before baking.

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    4. I still have my daughter's 2010 email suggesting that we add the raisin bread French toast recipe to our Christmas morning brunch.

      One stick butter
      One cup brown sugar
      8 eggs
      12 slices cinnamon raisin toast (tempted to try thick cut bakery raisin bread; I've always used one sliced loaf Pepp Farm)
      cinnamon
      One teaspoon vanilla
      One cup milk
      3-4 sliced apples (I use good quality pie apples from the produce market)
      Melt stick of butter and mix with brown sugar; spread evenly in the bottom of 11 x 13 Pyrex pan
      Layer six slices of bread on top of sugar mix, then a layer of sliced apples (sprinkle with cinnamon), then another layer of 6 slices of bread.
      Mix 8 eggs, vanilla, and cup of milk in a bowl, whisk, then pour over bread.
      Let it soak overnight in the fridge.
      Bake at 350 degrees 30-40 minutes with aluminum foil cover, then 10-15 minutes without the cover.
      When serving, cut and flip each slice so the sugar layer is on top.

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    5. Copied the recipes to my email - THANK YOU, Margaret- Does it matter what brand of raisin bread or kind of apple you use? Wondering if the sausage casserole would be good with breakfast saussage...

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    6. This recipe reminded me of my husband making French toast for our girls out of raisin bread. Thanks for the recipe, Margaret. They will be home in a couple months, and that would be a fantastic family breakfast idea.

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    7. 12 slices of Pepp Farm raisin bread fit neatly in an 11 x 13 pyrex pan. I prefer pie apples but suspect granny smith baking apples would be fine, too. I use mild ground sausage from the meat counter or jimmy dean's mild sausage in a plastic tube.

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    8. MARGARET: Both recipes sound yummy. I checked, and too bad Diane does not include the sausage casserole recipe in her Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook, so I copied it now.

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  8. I pulled my mother's (stained and annotated) Joy off the shelf yesterday to make banana bread - except I used whole wheat flour and added chocolate chips. Yum.

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  9. What a grand memory Hallie. And you must have had a most interesting childhood, growing up in Beverly HIlls/Brentwood/or name an enclave. It is hard for this midwestern who was born in a flyover state to imagine.

    My memory is of my grandmother's home made bread, the only kind we had. Once my aunt Dot was left to take it out of the oven, and I was there too, maybe five. First we cut off both heels, because that's the best part, and slathered it with butter. A little later we cut off one long side. And then the other. Soon the bottom was eaten and next the top. We were left with a crustless rectangle of white bread and a lot of explanations to make.

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    1. THIS CRACKED ME UP! I love a good crust, especially fresh from the oven. Pure bliss. I suppose you could have made croutons from what was left at the end.

      This is reminding me of a story my mother used to tell about my sister Nora sitting at the dinner table in her high chair and eating dessert: a baked apple. She'd been given a whole one. And about ten minutes in she said to my mother, "Here." And like all mothers my mother reached out, only realizing belatedly she'd been given a naked baked apple -- Nora only ate the skin.

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    2. That memory is hilarious, Ann! Yours too, Hallie. JRW certainly provides laugh therapy most mornings.

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    3. Ann, what a novel -- and delicious -- way to eat a loaf of freshly baked bread!

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    4. Ann, you perfectly prepped the bead for tea sandwiches!

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    5. I've been known to do that with a fresh crusty sourdough bread. What a wonderful memory!

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    6. ANN: You guys were trouble at the dinner table! That is hilarious!

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  10. So many cooking memories! Both my parents cooked. My dad showed me how to make baking powder biscuits and dinner muffins, along with Swiss Steak, which is always served with my mom's mashed potatoes. From her I learned how to make desserts like homemade carrot and German chocolate cakes, pineapple upside down cake, and lots more.

    Watching a friend effortlessly making fried apples for our lunch, watching my Brit expat friend in Normandy making us another kind of apple dessert (using apples from her own yard), after an amazing simple soup she whipped up out of nothing.

    I hope my children and grandson have such memories, as well.

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  11. I'm eager for the various "additions" that went into the chicken dish. More variety in paprika and mushrooms! What else? One cup of onions doesn't sound like all that much. Is that all you use?

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    1. Yeah, well, this recipe isn't really all that great, followed precisely as I've learned over the years.

      I use 2 large onions. And I slice them, not mince. AND I brown the chicken (I use boneless thighs that I've cut up into thirds) in oil first, take the pieces out of the pan, and cook down the onions in the leftover oil and drippings.. Then add mushrooms and let them cook a bit... Then add the flour and paprika, whisk, thicken; add stock, whisk, thicken ... then put the chicken back in, put the lid on and let the chicken finish cooking.

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    2. HALLIE: Thanks for sharing. I got an "authentic" paprikash recipe from a Hungarian friend of mine in Toronto and made it for decades until the nightshade allergy struck in 2018. Sadly, paprika is a no-go spice for me now.

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    3. Hallie, totally agree about Joy's recipe...I began tweaking it after the first time I made it as a newlywed, including browning the chicken first, adding 'shrooms, etc. And Grace, I also got an authentic recipe a few years later from our nextdoor neighbor's Hungarian mother-in-law!

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  12. Hallie: I love this memory. Thanks for writing it for us.

    I immediately went to my copy of Joy of Cooking and found the recipe (no spatters on my page), which first requires the cook to "disjoint" a frying chicken. Wow! Did your mother do this or do you think your wonderful live-in cook completed this task ahead of time. I ask only, because I think that is a pretty intimidating first step for an I-never-enter-the-kitchen person!

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    1. In those days our supermarket had an actual butcher counter and you could get our lamb leg deboned or your whole chicken cut into pieces. I just found out that my local Stop and Shop has stopped having butchers... all the meat comes prepackaged. Maybe it's just during covid. I hope that's it.

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    2. Oh, right! Real butchers. We're lucky enough to have an Italian grocery shop at the top of our neighbourhood and the guys at the meat counter will prep your meat, if you ask.

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    3. I’ve been cutting up a fryer all my life but in the past couple decades, they are no longer available. I do still spatchcock a roasting chicken tho.

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  13. A naked loaf and a naked apple! Too funny! Meals, smells, music--all of these are evocative. I could vividly picture the four girls at the table, your father in a suit, your mother waiting for the accolades. Terrific writing, Hallie!

    Peas always make me laugh. Panicked phone call from my brother when youngest nephew was about a year and a half old. My brother was sitting at the table, both boys (11 months apart) in their highchairs, having supper. He suddenly realized that youngest was not putting the peas in his mouth. Both ears were full of peas! To this day, he doesn't eat his peas. But at least they no longer go in his ears :-)

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    1. HA HA HA! I love this!! Reminds me of a story my mother-in-law used to tell, how she had to take my husband Jerry to the doctor to have a dime removed from his nose. WHile the doctor was in there, he found an orange pit. Cracks me up thinking about it.

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    2. That is so funny, Flora, I am guffawing. We had a dog when I was little who would eat any table scraps except for peas. So, you could sneak him the liver, or the spinach, but not the peas. HA, ha, ha.

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    3. Good thing. Squashed peas are hard to get out of the broadloom.

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    4. My college roommate didn't like peas either. Her father made them sit at the table until their plates were clean, so she stuffed her peas down her socks.

      An orange pit and a dime? Whatever happened to pockets?! :-)

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    5. This is hysterical!! Thanks for the morning laugh, Flora. Peas are the only thing I ever remember being forced to eat by my parents. I despised canned peas. What's funny is that now I LOVE fresh peas.

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  14. A roasting turkey smells different than roasting chicken to me. I'm sure it's the sage we are adding to our dressing. We only used the sage for the oyster dressing served for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. but when you think about, the oyster dressing doesn't take as long to cook as the turkey, so it was assembled but not cooked until later in the day.

    Mark talked the smells of the redwood forests. Would that be coastal redwoods or Sierra redwoods, Mark? Wet air vs dry air. I love the smell of the coast. We always called it the coast, not the beach. And I swear the winter coast smells different than summer.

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    1. TUrkey chicken and duck ALL smell different to me. The the southern cailfornia ocean versus new England's ocean - very different smells.

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    2. They are different, and I would take both happily. Back in the 90s I would go to an annual conference on the west side of Lake Tahoe and during every break, all of us from SoCal would be out on the decks gulping in as much clean scented air as we could.

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    3. One of the strongest scent memories happens each time I land at LAX and remember my first trip there with my parents to visit my aunt who lived in Beverly Hills. When you come out of the baggage claim and smell the floral scent of LA. It's so distinct.

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    4. Back when I was growing up there, the smog in the los angeles area was so bad that the air seemed to turn brown as you descended to land at LAX (didn't it have some different name?) - I think the flora smell is when something (jacaranda?) is blooming. Or at night night-blooming jasmine.

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  15. I did a lot of cooking and baking with my mother growing up, but my favourite memory is making bread on Saturday. We made 8-12 loaves in a batch. Sometimes white bread, sometimes brown bread with molasses and oatmeal. I loved kneading it. Getting my fingers all messy with warm goo at the beginning and then the smooth feeling when it was done. I can still remember the rhythm.

    Ironically, my Mom and I were both diagnosed with celiac disease as adults and making gluten-free bread is very different. It only ever gets to the texture where I would dump in one more cup of flour and start kneading, if I was using wheat flour. You don't knead GF bread dough - there is no gluten to develop. Good thing I have those memories.

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    1. That is so sad! Food allergies are no fun. At least we now know what celiac is.. I had a good friend who had years of feeling miserable (told it was 'in your head') before medical folks recognized wheat allergy.

      Your breadbaking reminds me of the first time I made pasta with my friend Donna who'd learned it from her grandmother... make a well in the flour, crack an egg into it, and work it into a paste and then a dough... transformative.

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    2. And Nikki had us making her grandmother's gnocchi--that was a memorable night!

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    3. I haven't been able to duplicate it. So delicious.. and the Italian wedding soup with those tiny meatballs. Oh my...

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  16. Hallie, what a wonderful memory to have.

    I love the aroma of our home when my mom was making Thanksgiving or Christmas meal. It brings up good times sitting around the table sharing events of the day.

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    1. Holiday foods! And barbecuing on July 4. Ribs. But that kind of was my "men's work" in my house.

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  17. Hallie, I’m so looking forward to you writing a family memoir. All the pieces on your mother have been so rich and evocative.
    I also had a career orientated mother and food was lamb chops, a roast but nothing required time in the kitchen except for lamb stew with the leg bone. When I was newly pregnant that was when I craved!

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    1. Thanks for the encouragement, Rhys - Lamb stew... I wonder if she made it with lamb shanks.

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  18. Hallie, what a powerful and wonderful memory!

    Oh, yes, foods are definitely gateways to memory. Creamed tuna on toast (does anyone make anything on toast anymore) will bring me right back to childhood. My mother, a gourmet cook who turned out endlessly complex recipes with ease, made the homely meal for my brother and I whenever we were ill. It slid right down sore throats and provided warm comfort in the tummy. To this day, it's what I crave when I've got a cold. I make it, but it doesn't taste quite the same. I wonder what her secret ingredient might have been.

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    1. For us it was chicken a la king on toast... but I thought wet toast was icky.

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  19. What handsome parents you had, Hallie!

    All the women in our family cooked, cook, improvise. I know how to follow a recipe but seldom bother, so almost nothing comes out the same except my mom's brisket and my grandmother's dunking cookies. My paternal grandmother fed any friend of her kids who showed up at mealtime. I grew up thinking all women had that talent. And knowing I could always bring a friend home for a meal.

    My dad got an apartment with a kitchen or kitchenette when he went to college and med school at UW in Madison. He used what he had learned from his mother, collected a weekly fee from his friends and relatives who were also attending school there, and cooked breakfast (and perhaps some other meals) for all of them, thus eating free himself through the depth of the depression. His scrambled eggs were a Sunday morning tradition throughout the time I was growing up.

    So I have so many food stories-- including the time my younger sister set me up to cooking dinner for Isaac Bashevis Singer on one day's notice (and I also had to pick him, and her, up on campus and drop them off before his evening seminar). I so wanted to talk to him about writing, but I was so frazzled that I left all the talking to him and the two friends I'd invited especially for that reason. The topic of writing did not come up.

    I guess all that is why being a food writer is sort of my default position, even more than my legal writing, my features, and my science fiction.

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    1. Oh Ellen! What did you serve Isaac Bashevis Singer???

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    2. What was he like? Ellen, tell us more.

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    3. Yes tell us more, about both the food and the conversation!

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    4. When I mentioned to my sister that I'd found out he was Writer in Residence at UW, she told me she knew him. I said I'd love to meet him, and she said, "Why don't you invite him to dinner?" Figuring this would be sometime in the future, I was aghast when she called me that night and said, "He can come tomorrow at 5, but you have to pick us up."(I lived 3 miles off campus). "But he has to be back on campus by 7 for his seminar, so you'll have to drive us back."

      "Tomorrow?" I sputtered, thinking of the mess in my apartment, my class schedule, my empty fridge.

      "Yes, tomorrow. See you around 4:45" and she named a place to pick them up. "By the way, he's a vegetarian." And she hung up. And in those days before cell phones and caller ID, I couldn't call her back. Have I ever mentioned that my sister has been getting me into deep doodoo for over 70 years? This was more than 50 years ago, in an iceberg lettuce and Jello mold world.

      Somehow I cleaned up my studio apartment, set the table, got to my classes and the grocery store, came home and cooked, and was on time to pick them up. I also picked up my two best friends who-- although they didn't know who he was-- could talk to anybody. All five of us crammed into my VW Beetle.

      What I served: fresh asparagus with butter on the side (I didn't know if he'd eat dairy), hard boiled eggs (I didn't know if he'd eat them), a salad of cut up strawberries and bananas with sour cream on the side, a bowl of cottage cheese, a fresh crusty white bread, and the only tea you could get in those days, Lipton's orange pekoe. Maybe I also bought a cucumber and a tomato, but they would have been out of season (it was spring) and hard to find in those days.

      It was a terribly rushed dinner, and I was quietly hysterical throughout. My friend Barrie carried the conversation. I don't remember a bit of it. I got them all back to campus on time, then came home to clean up, thinking, "What just happened?"

      I never met him again, although I suppose I could have. By the way, he ate the eggs and the dairy products.

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  20. Such a special memory, Hallie! My mother hated cooking, but most meals were delicious. Or, maybe I was just so hungry by the time my dad returned from work in the big city (Louisville), I'd eat just about anything! Now, I'm off to hunt up a chicken paprika recipe!

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    1. Family dinner -- so complicated because with parents working and kids in school (in normal times) dinner together really is family time. It was the only time all of us were together. And my mother could mandate it happening at 6:30 sharp because, of cou
      rse, it wasn't up to her to get everything hot and ready just in time.

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    2. And weren't you just starving by 6:30, Hallie? I know I was. Most of my friends ate an hour earlier than that, but my father, who had his own business, worked until six.

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  21. Thank you for sharing this memory Hallie.

    Most of the time, it was my mom who cooked at home but my father had his specialties. He was the best to make the sauce when mom cooked ground beef patties. He made salad adding pieces of apples and oranges to lettuce and used cream as dressing. When I feel blue, I make this salad with fond memories of my father and it perks me up.

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    1. That's so sweet. He sounds like a very special guy.

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  22. What a brilliant piece, Hallie. Thank you for giving us a such a significant glimpse into your memories of your mother. All the women in my family are wonderful cooks. I am the outlier. I like to bake. I can cook but I don't enjoy it. What I do enjoy is going through my grandmother's old recipe boxes and studying her spidery handwriting for a long forgotten trifle, cake, or pie recipe (she made a killer elderberry pie). Those recipe cards bring her back to me and I cherish them.

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    1. This is making me remember the file of recipes my sister Nora gave to each of us sisters... Xerox copies of her handwritten recipes. Food was about the only way she was ever accessible to me, so it's bittersweet. It's one of the things I intend to write about.

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  23. I love all these stories! Sunday evenings we frequently had salmon patties. The larder was close to bare; stores weren't open on Sundays so Mom made do. I just about lost it when a college friend had Sunday dinner with her future in-laws and the lady bragged that for such a special meal she made salmon patties. Who knows? Maybe that's special in Austin. Snort.
    And then my little brother cracked us up when he refused to eat sliced mushrooms declaring he doesn't like blubber.
    I'm at an age where memories seem to pop up out of nowhere. The scent of grass and the sound of mourning doves cooing bring back several wonderful memories of different places.

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  24. Hallie, this is a wonderful, wonderful piece of writing about your mother, and food, and all around the edges, what she had to do to be a successful working woman in a deeply competitive field in the 40s and 50s. I love it.

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    1. It's hard to even imagine. The only thing I remember her saying was that to 'get along' in an all-male meeting, all she had to do was smile and nod like whatever they said she thought was brilliant. Fortunately she had my dad there to do the heavy lifting if they disagreed. He wasn't shy about expressing himself.

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  25. Hallie, I absolutely love this piece. If I had this in my hands as a book, I would not be putting it down. So evocative! I hope you will write more!!!

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  26. My sister is trying to recreate my grandmother's Jell-O mold salad and fruit salad. Both will instantly take me back to any number of family dinners.

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  27. Hallie, what an interesting piece on your food memory, which was so much more than a food memory. Your glamorous childhood and my small-town childhood are such worlds apart. I would love to read a memoir of not just your childhood but your relationship with your parents and sisters as an adult. And, how you ended up in your wonderful life as a teacher, author, wife, and mother. I just think you have so much to share about finding the best in life, Hallie.

    Food is definitely associated with lots of good memories for me. Growing up, I found such comfort and love in the smells emanating from our kitchen where my mother fixed dishes her children still fix. Holidays were especially exciting, as the smells of the many delicious foods were a large part of the holiday celebrations. One food memory pretty much sums up what comfort I found from my mother's cooking. I was in junior high and had been on an out-of-town trip with the speech club, one in which we encountered heavy snow on our return home, which made it a slow, difficult road trip. When I finally arrived home, I walked in the back door into the kitchen and smelled the roast beef dinner my mother was cooking and saw the steamed-up windows, and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of well-being. I've tried to give my children some food memories to carry with them, too.

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  28. Oh, I have so many food memories! And of course, my Joy of Cooking looks just like that, read ribbon and all.

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  29. Hallie, that is such a wonderful memory! But I had a memory of my own when you said your mother was Mother and never Mom or Mommy. I must have been in my late teens, I don't remember exactly, when out of the blue, at least to me my mother said that from now on I was to call her Mother. What! No explanation or maybe she said I was old enough or something. In any case, that bothered me then and still does. I know she called her mother, mother, but i never even thought about how or why. My children better not ever call me mother. although my eldest son did once when he was being very firm with me. You can bet I gave him the stink eye.

    Sorry, I went way off topic there and it must be time for my nap, so maybe another day.

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    1. That's exactly what happens! A pure sensory memory leads right to the core of a relationship... Heavens what could she have been thinking? I'd dwell on that for years after if my mother had said that to me, too. She must have been going through something in her own life... I have to wonder what she called HER mother. A mystery...

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    2. So interesting! My grandmother always called her mother "Mother" and it was not a happy relationship. So much involved in such a simple word...

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  30. What a delicious memory! May we all make many such memories. Many of the best dishes were made without recipes and can only be approximated, trying to follow vague instructions and memories of favorite foods. A friend told of trying in vain to duplicate her aunt's rice pudding, and finally relaxing when she heard her daughters wondering if they could ever learn to make "Mom's rice pudding." We love what those we love have made for us. <3

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    1. "We love what those we love have made for us." Exactly.

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  31. Hallie, what a fabulous blog, sharing memories of your family with us! You had such an interesting life, and you tell great stories! I could spend all day replying to everyone's posts here, honestly. As I've mentioned above, JofC was just one of 3 cookbooks I got at my bridal shower and most often used. The other two were a Vegetable cookbook and one for Fondue!...Yikes, while I was in the middle of typing this our electricity/internet went out for 2 hrs. Hubs & brother called to report, then went to run errands and even CVS & some other stores had to turn away customers as about 5K places all lost power, due to a new development they're adding in nearby woods, grrr. Now 2 hrs. later I lost my train of thought, except to say thanks to everyone for sharing great memories. Now back to doing laundry!

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    1. Welcome back, Lynn! Sadly I don't need a power outage these days to lose my train of thought... You made me think what my first cookbooks were. As a wedding present I got a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking - at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Joy of Cooking. A JoC recipe is 2" long; one in Mastering the Art is 2 or more pages, including directions to refer to stuff elsewhere in the book. Begin by rendering pork fat... Aaaaagh.

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  32. Thank you for that memory! My copy of The Joy of Cooking falls open to cornbread, perhaps the first thing I ever learned to make.

    These days, making cornbread reminds me of my nephew who we lost almost 2 years ago. He had come to Canada for a visit a few years earlier and we spent two weeks taking various cooking classes. The first Christmas without him, I turned up the Canadian Tenors singing Christmas music and made chili and cornbread. This is what I wrote that night:

    Every time I reach for a cutting board, I hear his voice say 'Wow, you have a LOT of cutting boards.' I cannot eat fruit cobbler without thinking of him saying, “I’m going to make that for my Mom.” There is a celestial phenomenon happening next week that will be a “Bethlehem star.” Heavenly peace to celebrate Zach in a year where civil unrest, fentanyl and enforced isolation conjoined to take him away.

    “Tidings of comfort and joy.” Zach is gone and my heart aches for that. My sister is alive and I wish with all my heart that I could help her. She is far away, so I cannot even give her food. But I want for her is to find some peace and, one day, joy.

    “Make me an instrument of peace.” Today, with the intersection of song, memory and making food, I grieved Zach.

    “Even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.” Who but the Canadian Tenors would put Leonard Cohen on a Christmas Album, but there it is. I can sing along, at the top of my imperfect voice, making chili and cornbread for Zach.



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    1. CD: Your memory brings me to tears... My heart goes out to you. Loss compounded by loss... Thinking of you and Zach and your sister. Food memories can be sweet and sad at the same time. Grieving is new to me and I still don't really know how to process it.

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    2. Thank you. One of my sisters is a clinical psychologist. She says new experiences are like going downhill on a curvy highway without barriers. Grief adds darkness to the trip. Your brain doesn't have any markers. But your brain will redraw the boundaries over time and, given time, you learn to navigate. So she says, anyway.

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    3. that is a beautiful tribute to your nephew--I too am so very sorry for your loss.

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    4. Thank you for sharing that, CD. Your psychologist sister sounds like a wise woman. I hope what she said helps you a bit, Hallie.

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  33. I LOVE this Hallie! Your dinners sound so much like ours growing up. Although we would have pork instead of lamb -- Iowa girl here. And that's exactly how my mom taught me to chop an onion.

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  34. Cherries in the Snow! I have three tubes in my dressing table at the moment. Several years ago I was involved in a British mystery website and one day someone mentioned Cherries in the Snow and off we went, totally off topic, for several weeks.
    Your description of your Mother was fascinating. Few things are more evocative than food. Thanks so much Hallie!

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  35. Loved reading this story, it holds so much, marks so many moments and inspires me. Love the small things that became place savers in our lives. Thanks Hallie.

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