The intersection of food, love, and memory
If it wasn't frozen,
processed, or heavily laced with sugar, my
grandmother didn't cook it. I have her old
recipe box, which includes many selections
from the "Kitchen of Duncan Hines," as well
as things like Pow-Wow Sandwiches, English
Liver Bake, and salad molds, recipes that are
products of the sixties and seventies. My
grandfather made the box, designed it to hang
between the refrigerator and the stove in the
kitchen at Hollywood Beach. We use it to hold
keys now. One of the first things I do when I
move to a new place is to hang it by the
front door, a reminder of a past so long gone
that it feels like fiction. I may look
through the recipes, but I never feel an urge
to actually make any of them.
When the corn
and tomatoes are at their peak, however, and
I steam a dozen ears to eat for dinner
alongside a salad of freshly-picked tomatoes,
I feel a tug on the line that connects me to
those long-ago meals. Corn on the cob with
butter sits at the intersection of food,
love, and memory for me. It has the power to
bring me back to a time before I was born, to
Hollywood Beach in the late fifties and early
sixties when my mother and aunt were still
children, before my grandfather was
injured in
an industrial fire. On late July and early
August evenings when my grandfather was
working late at the plant, Mom-mom could
be persuaded to abandon the freezer and
let the canned food gather dust in the
cupboard. She would prepare farmstand corn
and sliced tomatoes for dinner, maybe add
some sliced bread on the side. Perhaps she
was feeling as lazy as Ludlam's
dog, unwilling to turn on
the oven or chop loads of vegetables,
happy with simplicity.
It's the only meal she made that my mother
and I still talk about. When I was a kid, my
cousin and I were given weekend corn shucking
duty, sent outside with paper bags to do the
messy work of removing the husks and
cornsilk. We would sit on the white-washed
metal lawn chairs out front under a canopy of
maple leaves, kick our heels against the
grass. After passing the naked corn to my
aunt through the side door, we would wait for
the moment at the table when we could smear
the cooked kernels with squeezable Parkay. I
was fascinated by the prongs, shaped like
tiny ears of corn, that Mom-mom stuck into
either end of the cob, and studied them
between bites, felt the neat rows of
miniature kernels like braille against my
fingertips. We ate until we are too full for
anything else but a thin slice of tomato.
You probably have summer food memories of
your own, can bring back an evening lit by
fireflies, your lips stained purple by
blueberry cake. Your parents didn't care how
late you stayed up and you got to light a
sparkler even though the fourth of July had
been over for days. Or maybe you remember
your mother, already unsteady on her feet,
placing a platter of swaying Jello on the
picnic table. You swirled the first bite
against your gums, pushed it between your
teeth before swallowing and then refused to
eat any more. After dinner you and your
brother played tag in the dark while the
grown-ups drank bourbon on ice and talked in
voices too low for you to understand. When
you slipped in a pile of dog shit, they
laughed until you started to cry.
Image: Recipe from my
grandmother's collection.