Nostalgia in the Kitchen
Posted on 27. Mar, 2009 by Deb in The Girl
In recent months, my oldest has become interested in cooking. She is watching the Food Network, finding recipes from the show online and testing her culinary skills. A close friend of mine wasn’t surprised: she is creative and with cooking, you can feed your creative spirit while getting gratification of the results as well as praise from those you feed. So very true.
At times in life, cooking is a real chore. I will say I am guilty of not cooking for just myself and will scrounge in the pantry for a can of soup or a peanut butter sandwich some nights; but with family at home, meals of a protein and a vegetable or two is a necessity. It’s nice for my daughter to be the one cooking for me; growing up, I wasn’t allowed in my mother’s kitchen. My grandmother, however, let me experiment.
It never fails to amaze me that when I think about my own childhood, many of my memories seem tied to food. Family gathering were always about food. Each of the women in the extended families had a specialty that was expected at each family gathering. And by expected, I man that it was what each of us looked forward to and would be sorely disappointed if someone didn’t feel like making “the same old thing”. Aunt Bobbye always made broccoli rice casserole, Aunt Dot always made homemade candy, and my mother, at least at Easter, always made a chocolate sheath cake. My Uncle Jim always swore that, even with the recipe, his wife couldn’t quite duplicate the sheath cake. My Aunt was a fabulous cook, so I always wondered if my mother held back some little tidbit from the recipe in either the ingredients or the order of ingredients….
Yesterday, I had a powerful craving for a chocolate cake. Emily insisted upon something that she could make *from scratch*, so I called my mother to get the recipe for her famous Chocolate Sheath Cake, something she hasn’t made in at least ten years. The ingredients were too numerous and the recipe too complex to make without some major planning and preparation, so another chocolately recipe was chosen from the Betty Crocker cookbook. We should have waited (the Hot Fudge Cake was kind of icky). The ingredients for the object of my desire will make it’s way to my grocery list this next week if I am feeling like eating on the dangerous side.
Yes, I said “dangerous”. Old recipes were not analyzed for calories or cholesterol. The recipe for the cake calls for a stick of butter (actually, it called for “oleo”) as well as shortening, buttermilk and eggs. The icing also includes a stick of butter. I am a user of olive oil and fresh vegetables over fried vegetables and lard. My taste buds still love, in very small doses, the food I grew up on. My tummy, however, cannot handle much.
It’s a real shame, though, isn’t it? That the recipes that I have from my great grandmother are recipes that I cannot cook regularly because my body has learned that they arent’ healthy? Occasional indulgences, however, are certainly something we can appreciate. The last few weeks I have been spending some time exploring some old childhood memories, and the ability to find the thread of nostolgia in something I do every day, eating, is a blessing. No matter how I try to separate myself from it, food is tied to memories of comfort and family. Isn’t it amazing how our past come come into our present with just a single serving of a sheath cake or banana pudding brings that sense of comfort back.
Back to the recipe, though. It’s complex. There is boiling to be done and ingredients to be carefully blended. And I am thinking my mother may have given me the secret tip she never shared with my Aunt Dot: whisk together the baking soda with the buttermilk prior to mixing it into the cake…