My run-till-I-drop lifestyle leaves little time for domestic chores. It’s resulted in a housekeeping style best described as do-it-as-I-go-as-long-as-I-can-stand-upright. There just aren’t enough hours at home to take care of it all at once, and no matter how willing I might be, I can’t clean house when I’m in the car.
Cooking usually means popping something into the microwave or maybe scrambling eggs and making toast. This is the world I live in and, fortunately, my spouse has always accepted it.
There are a few made-from-scratch dishes I can produce — when I have just a little bit of time — but it doesn’t happen often.
Gail Nickerson, who often berates my cooking (but always lovingly), noted recently that I can make good spaghetti and then she proceeded to name a few other dishes that she thinks pass muster. But, truth be told, she needed only one hand for her tabulation.
I often relate what a wonderful cook my mother was. She excelled at food preparation and loved every minute of it. Amazingly, I’m her daughter. Sometimes the apple DOES fall a little way from the tree.
Recently, we had a reunion with some Hot Springs church friends who, like Mamma and Gail, are REAL cooks.
These women actually make their own catsup.
When I first heard them talking about it several years ago, I was flabbergasted.
The only thing I recognize as catsup comes in a bottle with a factory label. Finding out it could be produced by loving hands at home was a major wake-up call for me. Heretofore, I’d never been aware of anyone among kith and kin who could create their own condiments.
I remember an old Doris Day movie in which she made catsup, but that was Hollywood. This was a chapter out of REAL LIFE.
The day I listened to Katie Atkinson and Phyllis Pipkin tell about catsup-making, I felt as if I were in the presence of Julia Child and Martha Stewart. I didn’t know whether to bow or kiss their rings.
The following is a condensed version of my culinary practices:
•I don’t can.
•I don’t make jelly or preserves.
•I don’t make pies or cakes.
•I don’t make biscuits or rolls, unless you count opening a can or package, dumping the contents onto a pan and letting the oven do the rest.
My singular effort at making biscuits from scratch is chiseled into local history and has been detailed in previous columns. They were a facsimile for anemic vanilla wafers. A lot like flat rocks, to tell the truth. Even the dogs refused to eat them and our canine assembly at the time included a beautiful blonde cocker spaniel that begged daily for bread. Barney bit into one, shuddered, then spit it out at my feet.
In a former life, I occasionally made cakes the old-fashioned way. I thought some of them turned out pretty well, but a “friend” set me straight. After a quick perusal of what I considered a nice-looking chocolate layer cake, Shorty Wilmoth’s evaluation was: “Offhand, ma’am, I’d say your cow has too much bulk in her diet.”
My ventures into homemade pie crusts are so pathetic that they don’t merit mentioning.
To my credit, there is a singular pickle-making success story I plan to include in my memoirs. Unlike the batch prepared by Aunt Bee of Mayberry fame, my bread-and-butter pickles were good. Pickle aficionados, like my cousin Paula, begged for them.
I didn’t get into the pickle project because I wanted to. I was the unwilling recipient of what appeared to be enough cucumbers to fill a pickup truck, and I just couldn’t bring myself to toss them out. I had been indoctrinated by Mamma’s “waste not, want not” code for living, and my conscience would have killed me.
Punishing myself in this manner sounds even more stupid when you consider the fact that I don’t eat pickles. You’d think a non-pickle person would have skedaddled, but I went blindly forth into a day of what is best described as cucumber-induced bondage.
Looking back, I’d diagnose it as a case of temporary insanity. I naively expected pickle-making to be about a two-hour project. Twelve hours later, when my period of incarceration ended and I collapsed, I thought of this.
This happened a lot of years ago, but not long enough for me to ever consider a repeat act. Some things, like childbirth and abscessed tooths, are indelibly inscribed into one’s memory.
Anytime someone brings up the topic of pickle-making, I can truthfully say, “Been there, done that, over and out, Lynda has left the building.”
I can make really good mashed potatoes (in our family, we always have called them “creamed” potatoes) and they have NO lumps. This is important to me. I gag on even a tiny serving of potatoes if I encounter the most minuscule lump.
Again, Gail would nudge me and remind me of the time I served her instant potatoes, which she considers less than garbage. It’s true, but that was a time issue. What she won’t acknowledge is many times when you eat mashed potatoes in a restaurant, they’re anything but the kind that you peel and cut up before cooking.
I also can make decent potato salad if I carefully follow the recipe of Carolyn Caperton of Cotton Plant. It’s mayonnaise-based and enhanced with just a dollop of mustard and celery seed and, blessedly, has NO ONIONS. For years, I wondered why mine wasn’t quite like Carolyn’s and it was because I was using Miracle Whip. Only Hellmann’s, Carolyn says, adhering to the recipe that came from her wonderful mother-in-law, the late Ruth Kyle Caperton.
Another food I prepare reasonably well, albeit not from scratch, is cornbread. I like cornbread sticks cooked in an cast-iron cornstick pan until they’re slightly browned and crisp. Even if it does sound like I’m espousing a commercial, I would swear that cornbread made from Cotton Pickin’ cornbread mix is as good as it gets.
And there’s the old standby that’s saved my reputation at many a potluck dinner — green bean casserole. I think my version of this is better than most because I let it bake until most of the soupy stuff is gone and it’s nice and thick. Also, I vary the standard ingredients slightly. Instead of just cream of mushroom soup, I half-and-half it with golden mushroom.
Just for the record, I never would try to make catsup. And we are all the better for it.
Lynda Hollenbeck is associate editor of the Courier.
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