I’m pleased to share this article that I originally wrote for my friend Leland Hawes. Leland wrote the Tampa Tribune’s history and heritage column for about 20 years, but his experience as a journalist goes back much farther. As a boy in the 1940s, he created a little newspaper called The Flint Lake Diver in Thonotosassa. These days, he is a key member of the American Amateur Press Association, a group of people who print home-grown publications. He is an amazing fount of knowledge on local history and very generous to up and coming writers and historians. It is my pleasure to contribute to his Gator Growl when I can.
When he mentioned he was assembling an issue on family, it inspired the following piece that he called “Culinary Chronicles.” I finally shared it with my mother when we celebrated Mother’s Day recently. Other family members thought she might take offense to some of the things I wrote about her cooking, but she laughed and took it all in stride. Just as she criticizes her sons out of love, I wrote this piece out of genuine love and respect for my entire family. There will be more content related to family food.
Culinary Chronicles
In 2003, my mother created a family cookbook and gave me a copy on Christmas. Many of the recipes are not particularly historic or special from a scholarly perspective, but all have sentimental value. The dishes evoke an amazing album of memories. I can trace my family’s fortunes through the food we ate.
In a sense, every cookbook is notable for what it does not contain. I knew times were tough after my parents divorced in 1980, when I was seven. My mother worked nights, clipped every coupon she could find, bought in bulk, and made her own dressings and sauces to avoid paying retail. Her version of Bull’s Eye barbecue sauce was quite close to the original.
My brothers and I were reminded of how tight things were every time when mom served us powdered milk with our cereal. Besides the flat flavor and watery consistency, we dreaded the lumps of unincorporated powder at the bottom of the pitcher. It was a real bummer to get glops of powdered milk in your cereal. Mom tried to fool us by filling empty milk containers with the powdered stuff, but the bits at the bottom always gave away her secret. When she remarried, we couldn’t have been happier. When our step-father banned the use of powdered milk, we rejoiced, and he became family.
The family recipes themselves bring up happier thoughts. On my mother’s side, most of our ancestors’ Anglo-Irish recipes were lost somewhere in the Midwest. On my father’s side, the German-Polish Huse clan, evidence of our roots was much more evident. Grandma Huse made excellent Sauerbraten and roasts. On adventurous nights, my mother dabbled in Midwestern versions of Chinese and Tex-Mex. Her chili is still an inspiration.
Mom also made excellent Sloppy Joes. It is often the simplest dishes that become the most revered. When my parents first married, my mother began to make Sloppy Joes one night. When dad found out, he insisted that she call his mother to get her recipe. Understandably, his stubborn insistence insulted my mother, whose recipe was perfectly good. Dad kept saying that Grandma Huse’s recipe was the best in the world, and he wouldn’t back down. My mother gave in and made the call. It is testament to the recipe that my mother grudgingly wrote in her cookbook, “I have to agree, it is one of the better ones.” But the episode wasn’t a good omen for my parents’ marriage.
The recipe itself is pure simplicity: ketchup, mustard, water, brown sugar, vinegar, and ground beef, served on cheap hamburger buns. About a year ago, I decided to make a huge batch for a party I was throwing. A friend thought Sloppy Joe would somehow be too humble for entertaining. He was dead wrong. Not only is the recipe delicious, but the finished product makes for great drinking food, and that night called for handy sustenance.
Sometimes, the recipes stir mixed emotions. I always found the “Russian Tea” distasteful. It makes sense now when I look at the recipe. Two of the key ingredients are powdered iced tea and Tang, which the astronauts should have jettisoned into outer space. My step-grandmother Lakins’ recipe for Spinach Balls proved to be her only positive contribution to the family. Tasting those Spinach Balls at age eight or nine was a revelation to me: Spinach could taste great.
Then there are Steak-Ums, a questionable potted meat product sold in frozen slices. I loved them as a kid, and I learned an important lesson from them. After having Steak-Ums for dinner one night, I clearly remember looking at the serving platter. The small puddles of industrial grease had coagulated into hardened white clusters. That was the first time I sensed that grease probably isn’t a good thing to eat. Our relationship has never been the same.
The Taffy Apple Salad seems like a throwback to the 1950s, but it sure works: pineapple, tart apple, Spanish peanuts, and mini marshmallows, all bathed in a sauce of Cool Whip, egg, vinegar, and pineapple juice. The Poppy Seed Chicken was probably fancy in the 1960s, and it still tastes great today. Who knew that chicken, cream of mushroom soup, sour cream, egg noodles, poppy seeds, and Ritz crackers could taste so sublime? When I make it these days, I add scallions, peas, and fresh mushrooms.
Not all of the family’s food used Tang, canned soup, and Cool Whip. My uncle Roger, a colorful guy who comes off as bitter, funny, and inspired, passed a great Chicken Marebella recipe to my mother. It is simple, but uses more interesting ingredients than we normally ate. After marinating the chicken with garlic, oregano, red wine vinegar, olive oil, prunes, olives, capers, and bay leaves, it is all baked with brown sugar, white wine and parsley. My mother loved the recipe for entertaining, especially because all the preparation had to be done in advance.
Uncle Roger is known for a few other recipes, including 30-clove garlic chicken, which didn’t make the family cookbook. He was a rather fiery figure in his younger days in and out of the kitchen. My most vivid memory of Roger is when he was living with us. He made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me after school one day. I was probably 8 or 9. He made the sandwich too big, and I didn’t want to eat it. Angry at my ingratitude, he shoved the whole thing in my mouth. If I hadn’t found some milk in a jiffy, I might have choked on that oversized sandwich.
Christmas was always special in my family, and brunch has become our favorite holiday tradition. My mother makes a great spread, and we eat as soon as we’re all gathered on Christmas morning. Gifts take a back seat to mom’s French toast with berries, egg casserole with mushroom sauce, breakfast and Italian sausage, fruit salad, and an array of Christmas cookies. Being a nurse and a bit of a health nut, cooking such a rich meal for her family only happens once a year for my mother. In her cookbook, she warns against reducing the fat or sugar in Christmas cookies—they should be enjoyed in all of their obesity-inducing glory. The thought of a low-fat version of her Buckeyes, sweet peanut butter balls dipped in melted dark chocolate, is depressing indeed.
My mother has certainly cooked her share of amazing meals, but these days, I try not to arrive at her house too hungry. I was appalled when she recently put frozen skinless chicken directly on to the grill to make for supper. The ubiquitous half-frozen shrimp cocktails she serves taste more like shrimp-flavored ice. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. My mother worked hard to make food interesting as her boys grew up. And lately, she’s quite busy nursing full time and running her own business, Smooooth Sailing School in Dunedin Beach, Florida. But it felt clear that the next generation had to pitch in.
My tastes were quite bland until I first started to cook at age 17, when my feeding habits became more unpredictable. Strangely enough, one of my biggest revelations was supplied by Steak-Ums, that evil frozen potted animal product. As I cooked up some of the mystery meat, the smell must have reminded me that it didn’t have much flavor. All that goodness must have been leached out in the factory. Then I did a very strange thing. I diced some green bell pepper and onion and added them to the pan. Up until then, I never cared for those blessed ingredients. That day, I loved them. It was a rare occasion when an industrial meat product encouraged healthier eating. I picked up on most other vegetables after that, though I still don’t fancy cauliflower.
Some of my early cooking can be found in mom’s cookbook. I lifted the rustic chicken and dumpling recipe from John Egerton’s Southern Food when I first began studying history, food and culture at the University of South Florida. In most of my subsequent writings about food, I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable writing in the first-person. I never considered myself an authority on food and cooking, just an enthusiastic trainee.
Like many novice male cooks, my first earnest efforts at cooking took place outdoors, on a grill. The smoker became my dearest fascination in the late 1990s. During grad school, my buddies and I threw parties every weekend at our apartment with whatever money we could scrape together. I punctuated every event with barbecue specialties like bourbon-glazed spareribs, beer can chicken, and turkey “Toolong”—which was injected with beer and butter, then smoked for 18 hours. Neighbors begged for scraps at our door the next morning. It was one of my proudest moments.
Thanksgiving is a demanding holiday for an ambitious family chef, and my mother has done more than her share. I began smoking turkeys each thanksgiving. Then, my brother Tim took over turkey duty, using a great German stuffing of toasted pumpernickel bread, gizzards, bacon and spices. I offered another cut of meat from the grill or smoker, usually lamb, London broil, or boneless country ribs. These days, I make a meat and all of the sides, my brother handles the turkey, and mom makes the pies. It is a wonderful arrangement that I wish could last forever. Somehow, having the recipe book makes me much more sentimental. So many people who contributed their recipes are no longer with us.
Shortly after my father died in 2004, I had an intense dream. He had moved into a new apartment, and I brought him a bunch of fried chicken and biscuits. Dad was a happy spirit that night. Then, we took a drive with my brothers deep into the forest. Dad took a sapling out of the SUV, walked into the woods, and didn’t come back. I drove my brothers back into the city.
My brother, Tim, and I take don’t add recipes to our family tomes often. But we feel a sense of responsibility and compulsion to make new additions into our culinary chronicles. I have a few recipes of my dad’s to add to the cookbook. My brother and I have many more of our most recent specialties. Cooking and writing for each other makes and preserves precious memories.
