Comfort Food

Three quarters the way through the memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, the author Rhoda Janzen begins discussing the foods of her Mennonite upbringing -- Borscht and streudel to name a few.  It made me think about the foods that I grew up with and what they mean to me.  I grew up in a modest household where my parents pinched pennies to feed a large family of kids (five to start with a sixth late-in-life addition).  We knew that a pot of beans one day, meant chili the next.  Chicken on Sunday, meant chicken soup on Monday.  If the garden gave us acorn squash, we ate acorn squash. Grocery shopping day meant a special treat of lunch meat sandwiches on fresh deli bread.  I grew up knowing how to stretch a dollar and how to make big pots of food.  And those foods that came from that stretch are the comfort foods of my youth.

My mother is Polish which brought us pierogis, creamed cucumbers and stuffed cabbage.  My father is Mexican and Cuban and that came with tortillas, refried beans, and black beans and rice.  We lived in the country.  So that provided us with fresh garden vegetables and fried bluegill, catfish and bass. 

Tortillas were a staple in our household.  As the oldest daughter in the bunch, I remember being very involved in the household responsibilities with my mother.  I remember the feel of the soft floury tortilla dough in my hands as I gently but swiftly folded and tucked them into small pockets the size of my palm.  I remember taking turns at rolling the tortillas flat and cooking and flipping them on the cast iron skillet.  A pile of warm tortillas 8 inches high stacked beneath a clean dish towel was always at the ready.  I remember the warm aroma of refried beans when I came home from school. 

My father and brothers would fish in the local ponds and rivers and freeze the fillets as they caught them.  Once we had enough for dinner, we had a fish fry.  It felt like a special event.  Maybe the big fisherman were proud of their catch and for providing the family dinner?  Maybe it was just good eatin'.  No matter, fish fry day was a cause for celebration.

Gardening, on the other hand, brings back memories of dry clay and hard cracked ground, long sunny days, hauling buckets of water out to the garden, setting jar lids full of salt water out to catch the slugs.  Weeding. Lots of weeding. It was hot sweaty work.  No matter how hard we toiled, the burn pile would beat us out.  The burn pile out back grew the best largest yellow squash and zucchini.  No one planted them or tended to them.  They were just outgrowths of the burn trash.  I wonder if we gathered more from the burn pile then from the garden itself. 

My boyfriend has a beautiful piece of property that he so generously shares with us.  He has a pond and a river for fishing and enough space for me to garden to my heart's delight.  He plows me up a little garden big enough for two rows of this and two rows of that.  Last summer I froze green beans and peas, and made everything out of zucchini (much to the dismay of my sons), we had creamed cucumbers and I tried my hand at homemade tomato sauce (still in the freezer, the verdict is still out).  When I hold a red plump juicy tomato in my hand and breath in the fresh aroma, I can close my eyes and I'm back in my family's backyard garden.

To this day, I cook my comfort foods often.  I enjoy sharing that with my boyfriend and my two boys.  I set up traditions in my household with the hope that my kids will look back on their childhood fondly and warmly.  I don't roll my own tortillas anymore since you can easily buy quality tortillas at a good price.  But I do cook my own refried beans and occasionally black beans (my kids haven't acquired that taste yet).  I associate a great wedding with a wide spread of Polish foods and polka music. We have lunch meat and fresh deli bread on many grocery days.  And there is nothing like a good fish fry when I catch some good catfish on sale.  To my delight, my oldest son is making fishing his hobby.  I'm thinking, that one day soon, my son will be providing us with a good 'ol fish fry dinner and we'll have ourselves a party!

Little White Church

My Mennonite Story...
Looking for a new book, I went to the local library.  Usually I go with a list of possible good books off some booklist.  And then I get there, and none are available.  I get myself on a waiting list and I wait, and wait, and wait until a month or so later, I finally have a book in hand.  This time, I saw a pile of blue books with literature.  I asked if they were for a book club.  Yes, they were.  It was open enrollment.  Hmmm.  What would it be like to join a book club and not know anyone?  I thought about the book clubs I had joined before that have faded away into oblivion.  How many well-intentioned book clubs had I joined?  I would venture to say ten over the course of years.  Actually, I feel as if I've been in a bit of a transition stage as it relates to friends.  In other words, I'm lacking some close friends for the moment.  Feeling a need for a little girl-time, I'm thinking this might be a good thing.  If nothing else, at least the lot will enjoy reading.  We'll have that in common. 

We're reading Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen.  Funny how I said, "we."  Hey, I'm already part of the club!  The book has its own book club questions in the back.  But the list the library shares is a combination of the Mennonite book questions and someone else's questions.  The book is supposed to be humorous as per the quote on the front cover from Elizabeth Gilbert author of Eat, Pray, Love (that was a good book...Eat, Pray, Love - btw, much better than the movie). 

It just so happens that my boys and I used to attend a small Mennonite church.  I was going through a tough time in my life and I had the urge to connect spiritually.  A couple of girlfriends, sisters in fact, invited me to attend. The church congregation was warm and inviting.  The church itself was plain, simple, and without much ornamentation.  It was white and clean with wood pews and a single aisle to the pulpit.  The little white church was nestled within a rolling valley.  You drove down a road meant for one car and around a bend.  There it sat right by a pretty little creek, on a perfectly green lawn with a white gravel parking lot.  The minister was the best I had ever heard.  He was young and dynamic.  His message was straightforward and down-to-earth.  He was a family man and clearly supported strong family values and spoke strongly about family roles.  Men were supposed to be men and step up and take care of their family.  And a wife was supposed to take care of their man.  Great concept.  A little hard to do when I was on my own at the time.  No matter, it was healthy fodor for my soul.  It made me look at my life and put my priorities in order.  I appreciated the simplicity of my Mennonite church family.  I felt the message hit the core of my values and resonated warmly in my heart.  I look fondly back at that time. 

So, I'm off to read and chuckle over Mennonite in a Little Black Dress.  In a few days, look for a book critique.  The book club meets April 20th.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Elephants

In desperate need of a good read, my son and I stopped at the little second hand bookstore in town.  Its been there for a couple years and I've wanted to stop many times before.  The bookstore is in the basement of a very old building on the square of a quaint country town. It was dark, with a low ceiling, a maze of little rooms crammed from floor to ceiling with books, and little overloaded tables and shelves shoved in any available spot.  It smelled dusty, musty and a little like cigarette smoke.  A book reader's haven at best. A perfect fire hazard at worst. There were a half dozen visitors perusing the tight aisles -- a mom and her kids, a few men of which a couple were Amish.  The guy behind the counter (the owner - or so I assumed)  inquired as to my taste.  My genre is usually women's contemporary fiction or books off Oprah's book list.  He suggested, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.  He said that he thought this would be right up my alley.  I read the back of the book.  It didn't say much about the story line.  By the cover, it had something to do with a circus.  It was #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list.  I did remember seeing this book on a few book lists.  I went with his recommendation.

Then the book guy suggested that I take a look at another book that he read called, When Elephants Weep -- the Emotional Lives of Animals, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy.  And I wondered what was up with the elephant theme.  We walked back to another room and he pulled that book from the shelf.  He said it was non-fiction...it was about animals and how they really do have feelings and emotions.  I must have been an easy sell that day.  I walked out with two elephant books.  The dilemma:  which elephant book should I tackle first?