Food, Family, and Memory

The Widow’s Guide to Recovery

Depression-conceptual My husband Mike passed away suddenly two years ago. A “catastrophic coronary event,” I remember hearing before the doctor launched into the “We did everything we could” speech. I sat motionless in the Naugahyde chair in that dimly lit room they usher people into to tell them such things.

My husband Mike could put the caption on the cartoon we call life. I can still be felled by a wave of sadness when the world calls out for his wit, but it usually passes as the business of life encroaches and forces the sadness aside. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that grief is not a linear process or a series of predictable steps. It comes and it goes, lingers or dusts by. It can overpower or gently remind. Now you see it; now you don’t.

The second year into loss, the cycles of grief had given way to the flat, dark monotony of depression. Since action is my default response, I checked out inspirational websites for those contemplating putting themselves out of their own misery, and I downloaded into my iPhone Kindle any number of self-help books about depression and the powers of positive thinking, and I answered every “Are you suffering from...” and “On a scale of 1-10...” quiz that the books offered.

My Mother's Guacamole

My mother made guacamole. Its key ingredients were avocadoes, diced onion, sour cream, and worcestshire sauce, (at least it didn't have mayonnaise like her famous cottage cheese dip, which also had worcestshire sauce) but it wasn't really like the guacamole that we make or serve today.

It was fabulous, though, because it was elegant - at least, we thought it was fabulous then. It was smooth. Absolutely mashed to a pulp with a fork and blended with sour cream, almost pistachio green.

La Vie Bohème en Giverny – Monet’s Palate

Aileen Bordman Giverny Naively, I asked for larks. The grocery clerk seemed perplexed.
“You know,” I added … “song birds? And, laurel branches, please.”

Armed with my shopping list from my 1954 edition of the Alice B Toklas cookbook (the Hashish Fudge recipe was expunged from that edition) I was beginning life as a newly wed. I didn’t realize that Alice B Toklas was not Betty Crocker; that our local grocery store in Fort Worth, Texas was not a wildfowl and gourmet food purveyor circa Paris 1920’s; and that I wasn’t cooking for Picasso, Hemingway, Matisse or Braque. I was a recently graduated art student and lookin’ to live La Vie Bohème. Anything that associated delicious food and painting was what I most wanted in life. Since I was a woman and not a man-with-a-wife, if I wanted it, I was going to have to do it all myself! And, so … arm in arm with Alice, I started my career as a would-be painter/chef. Never made Alice’s Larks. However, the super impressed clerks at my market thought I was an authentic epicurean, and I never dared tell them otherwise.

Sisters

For the last year my sister and I have thought what a neat thing it would be to go back to the exact places that we visited on our first trip to Europe with our mother 50 years ago. I am not exactly certain how this trip idea started but the one thing that I am certain of is that it centered around a lively food discussion. Somehow all of life's most interesting memories seem always to involve food. So the idea of retracing our first trip sounded like a interesting idea.

My sister and I take an annual trip to France together and we have done that forever but this trip was going to start in Madrid and then would end in Paris which always feels as comfortable to us as an broken in old pair of shoes. We planned on two things happening: first, that it would jar both our memories on long forgotten details that some how through the planning stage seemed important and second, returning to somewhere that you are not totally familiar with is a good thing to do when you are over fifty.

We vowed that we will now travel each year to an unknown place together as a healthy thing to keep mentally nimble (and it sure beats learning Chinese or doing crossword puzzles.) The unknown, the piecing together and non-predictable is a healthy silent partner as we all age.

Caviar Pie and a Mother's Love

caviarpieslice There are moments during the holiday season where recipes are true soul food. Instead of feeling sadness about the ones we have lost and are no longer seated at the table sharing the day with us, we can feel happiness by knowing how loved we were by recreating their favorite recipes that they would make for us.

This Russian Caviar Pie is a secret Medavoy recipe that is only made for Easter, Thanksgiving, Birthdays and Christmas. The caviar that tops it can run the range from red salmon caviar to Beluga. Osetra has the best taste but even the black unknown variety for ten bucks has done in a pinch.

My mother, terminal with liposarcoma, feeding tube in her, unable to eat, still made her traditional Russian Easter for us one month before she passed away. The Caviar Pie was the center of it. You slice it, you serve it with a shot of vodka or champagne and life is good. It was her way of saying "I love you" - nothing will change if you keep these traditions up. Remember me. I will be watching over you and your son and husband.

"Everything that matters is under this roof right now" I had just become a mother, my son was two months old, and she was teaching me what was important. God, How i miss her. And when I slice up the pie, I can see her, feel her, and have so much joy that she is still at our table. And as I am sure she knew, it's my son's favorite recipe at holiday time.

Food, Family and Memory