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.