My Son-In-Law; My Son

Memory:

My real husband has a nick-name for everyone. I am "Pumpkin" (paying tribute to my round loveliness); my mom was "Smithie" (for Granny Smith Apples), and our son-in-law has been dubbed "Fast Eddie" by him and my father-in-law since Ed was 15 years old, and had dinner in our home just about every Sunday in Saco, Maine, until he went off to join the Air Force and later married our daughter when he was 21 and she was 20.

I can understand how he would be connected with quickness. Ed was the most aggressive athlete on any of the school's teams. What he lacked in height and girth, he made up for with guts and speed. He is still that person today. My son-in-law has broken many a finger and injured himself in innumerable ways playing on his church soft ball teams. You can't make him ease up.

He has a booming voice that can carry across a soccer field like an atomic bomb, but like Teddy Roosevelt, Ed " speaks softly but carries a big stick, " about what he believes. Ed never brings up his thoughts on politics to hit you over the head with them, and he respects each person's right to be wrong.

He could care less if you like him, but if he likes you, oh fortunate one, you now have the most loyal and giving friend you will ever have. He will never give up on you or say a bad word about you. He will defend your name and protect your well being with his life. He is the most honorable, decent, honest man I know, and he's a dish.

Because Ed and Shannan married so young, I was afraid for the prospects of their marriage, but the two of them are a perfect fit. Shannan can be controlling but she has a wonderful sarcastic sense of humor to deal with Ed for all of that. He enjoys her banter and knows just how far to let her go before reeling her back in. They are the best parents to their three kids. They protect them and teach them, but at the same time allow them the room to grow up to leave them one day.

A few years ago Shannan called to say that Ed was praying about going to Iraq to work for a year or more as a Contractor to instruct Iraqi police. I wasn't supposed to say anything to Ed or anyone else until he had made up his mind. I knew I didn't want him to go, but I have always supported their decisions no matter what. Once the choice was made and he was ready to leave, I fell apart. My health deteriorated and my spirit died for the whole time he was gone. It was a long tour. Ed and I communicated by email while he was away, and I learned so much more about him. And then I learned he was even more a man than I realized, when he came back from Iraq. I tell him as often as I can how proud I am of him in every way. He and Shannan are my blood and heart, and I am a blessed woman to have two such wonderful children.

My recipe for my Pot Roast would have to be Ed. He is the meat eater. Don't bother him with sandwiches or any kind of sweet fluff. Just show him the meat and the gravy.

Recipe:
Mom's Yankee Pot Roast

3 lbs chuck roast
1 large onion chopped
4 - 5 carrots sliced (good size)
4 - 5 white potatoes cut into fourths or eights depending on size
oil
salt
pepper
water
2 cubes of chicken bouillon (I like chicken better than beef. Subtle)

• Dry the chuck roast with paper towels.
  

• Salt and pepper dry meat and pat to make sure it sticks
  

• Add 3 to 4 tbs oil to just cover a very hot dutch oven and brown meat on all sides
  

• Add enough hot water and dissolved cubes of chicken bouillon to come up half the way of the meat. Bring the water and broth to a boil, cover and lower the heat to a slow simmer. Let cook for 3 to 4 hours. Check for fall apart tenderness.

• I don't care for the taste of my gravy loaded down with veggies, so when the meat is pretty close to being done, I cook the carrots first in a separate pot of boiling salted water and add the potatoes 10 to 15 minutes later. I let them cook for another 10 to fifteen minutes and move them to a large bowl until they are ready to go into the dutch oven. Reserve some of the veggie water.
  

• When the meat is done, take it out of the dutch oven and let it sit on a dish for 10 or 20 minutes, while making the gravy. This is the easiest part.

• Bring the meat juice back up to a slow boil and add a "slurry" of flour and water. (I use a nice little jar with a good tight lid. (I put 1/4 cup flour into the jar and add 1/2 cup cold water. This will work with any measurement for the slurry, just double the cold water to the flour. Put the lid on tight and shake until there are no more lumps. Pour the smooth slurry into the slow boiling juice and stir with a whisk until the gravy thickens and the flour taste is cooked off. If the gravy is too thick, add some of the veggie water you saved from before. If it's not thick enough, try a smaller - 1/8 to 1/4 - mixture of flour and water. If for some reason there are still lumps, pour the gravy into a bowl through a sieve, and just throw the left over lumps out. No one will ever see them.).

• Add back the veggies into the hot gravy and let simmer for a minute or two. Slice the meat, put on a pretty serving dish, surround the meat with the veggies, and put the gravy in a boat.
  

• Sit back and wait for your son-in-law to devour.
  

Thought:
I didn't like my little punky son-in-law the first time I ran into him, but he grew on me and my real husband, and there is no one on this earth I love more.

The Ex

Memory:

I have learned two things about my failed first marriage. The first is that, once I love someone, it is forever. It doesn't matter how many hurts or disappointments happen, I can't turn off love. The second is that I know it takes two to make a marriage work and it takes two to wreck it. Saying all that, it just makes sense to me that, since we had this remarkable, intelligent, gorgeous daughter together, why should we give up our mutual history and family simply because of a failure on our parts? So my ex-husband, John, is still very much a part of my real husband's and my life.

I have seen so many bitter ends to marriages and I want no part of it. Fortunately, I have a husband who isn't intimidated by anyone or anything, and jealousy isn't a part of his make up (even when it would be nice to see a little of it once in a while). So once a year when John comes in from New Haven, Connecticut to North Carolina to see his daughter and grandchildren, he stays with us for the week. The three of us go out together and talk about old times and friends. He and Michael talk about sports and politics. This Thanksgiving John will come to our house and share the holiday with us and the family. Cozy, huh?

Oh, I don't mean to imply that none of this is uncomfortable. There were reasons for our break up, but none of those are more important than what we still share, and I believe with all my heart that forgiveness is not only necessary for my faith but sometimes even more so for my sanity. I become a nasty, crazed little person when I can't let something go.

It's difficult also to equate a recipe with my ex. Like our Shannan, food doesn't really mean that much to him, but he does love a good story to tell. So my recipe for Scottish Eggs is my Ex, John.

Shannan was about 3 years old and the three of us were living in a tiny third floor apartment on Orange Street in New Haven. I was particularly in love with my Gourmet Cookbook, Volume 1 and was trying to wow my husband with my skills. He always likes the unusual and out of the ordinary about everything so I tried the most unusual recipe in my book that I could afford. I followed the directions to the tee, but the eggs came out terrible. I'm sure it was my fault because I tend to take every direction way too seriously and literally, but one way or the other, the Scottish Eggs were horrible. The egg story has become a part of our living legend and every time I am hit with it, it grows more spectacular and legendary. I have since rewritten the recipe in my own words so that if the opportunity ever comes up again to wow my ex with eggs, I'll be ready.

Recipe:
6 hard boiled eggs chilled
1 lb of sausage meat
2 tbs fresh minced parsley
1/2 tsp ground sage
1/4 tsp pepper
2 eggs beaten
1/2 to 3/4 cups breadcrumbs
oil for frying

• Peel hard boiled eggs. Make sure the eggs are well-chilled so that the sausage meat will cling to them more easily.

• Combine sausage, parsley, sage, and pepper in large bowl; mix well.

• Press meat mixture evenly around eggs, keeping the oval shape.

• Sprinkle eggs with flour, coating lightly all over. Dust off the excess

• Dip into beaten egg; then roll in bread crumbs to coat

• Pour oil into deep-fryer, or large heavy saucepan, to fill 1/2 full. Here's the tricky part. the oil has to be hot, but if it's too hot the sausage will crack and you have greasy, gritty, fatty egg balls. Yum!
  

• Cook 1 egg at a time, for about 4-5 minutes until meat is well-browned.

• Drain on paper towels; cool

Thought:
I heard a great conductor being interviewed on NPR just a few months before he died of pancreatic cancer. The reporter asked him what he wished to be remembered for. He said he wanted to be remembered as a musical entertainer like Bach, Ira Gershwin or Beethoven. I thought about what I would like to be remembered for when I am history. It would be that I lived and loved every minute of my existence. Life is too short for anything less.

A Tale of Two Women

My daughter, Shannan, and I are as different as any two people could be. It's funny too, because so many people think because our voices are similar and we both have the same mannerisms that we are alike, but nothing could be farther from the fact.

I am short, fair, all-American looking, and I remind everyone of someone they used to know. Shann is tall and tans beautifully. She has an exotic, European look to her that comes from her real dad, and only has my eyes to testify that she and I are related. I love the arts - all of them. I swoon at Italian operas, never miss a Carolina Ballet production in Winston Salem, adore jazz, history is my favorite pass time next to cooking and I am a loud, joyous singer. My idea of rest and relaxation is being trapped in a car with my real husband and driving 4 hours to Wilmington, North Carolina for a lunch at our favorite restaurant and coming right back home. All of the above would only be torture for my daughter.

Shannan does not live to cook; she cooks to live and would be just as happy to survive on a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee for the rest of her life. She has been bored with my attempts to initiate her into the world of the arts since she was a child. She likes country and western music, hates traveling in a car anywhere, and her idea of history is the last soccer game her youngest son was involved in.

Where I feel the most alive and the most "real me" is when I am singing a solo in my church. Shannan (although she has a lovely voice and enjoys singing) makes herself so sick at the prospect of getting up in front of other people, it just isn't worth it to her.

If you want to show me love, spend time with me and give me words of affirmation. I want to waste as much time as possible listening to every word you say, staring lovingly into your eyes. For Shannan, 25 word or less would be perfect. She, like my mother, would say, "Talk is cheap." And time means nothing to her unless she is being "productive." Yet she is my oldest and dearest friend. No one except my brother can make me laugh harder and louder than she does (I must admit though, that my brother can actually make me snort when I laugh).

I can only remember one time when food meant anything to her at all. She was 18 years old in her final year of high school and her life had completely turned upside down. She had lost 20 pounds from just not being able to eat anything and she was thin to begin with. I would have done anything, made any food to get her to eat. One dish and one dish only did the trick - my quiche Lorraine.

Recipe:
Maine Quiche Lorraine
Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
7 tbs cold butter cut into pieces
1 to 2 tbs ice water, or more if needed

• In a food processor, combine the flour, salt, and butter and run the thing about 10 seconds or until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs .

• With the machine running, add the ice water through the tube and pulse 5 or 6 times, or until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the processor.

• Dump the dough onto a floured surface and roll into a ball, flatten it into a disk, and wrap it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
  

• On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to an 11 inch circle and roll it onto your rolling pin to put into your pan. I use a 9-inch fluted tart pan but a 9-inch pie pan is perfect, trim the edges. Refrigerate for at least 30 more minutes.

• Line the the dough in the pan with parchment paper and fill with pie weights (I used dried beans). Bake 12 to 14 minutes. Take out the paper with the weights, and bake another 8 to 10 minutes. Take out of the oven and cool on a rack. Leave the oven on.

Egg Mixture:
6 ounces thick cut bacon, cut into narrow strips
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 1/4 cups half-and-half
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground pepper
Pinch nutmeg (the recipe calls for fresh - I use what I have)
1 cup grated Gruyere or Swiss cheese

• In a good size skillet, cook the bacon until crispy and the fat is gone, about 5 minutes and drain on paper towels. Arrange the bacon evenly over the bottom of the baked crust.
  

• In a bowl, beat the eggs, yolks, and half and half. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk to combine. Pour into the baked crust and cook until it's golden and puffy. It should be set but still a little wiggly in the center, 30 to 35 minutes.

• Take it out of the oven and let cool on a rack for 15 minutes before eating, or else you'll be calling the paramedics for your blistered and burning tongue.

Thought:
I don't make this very often anymore. For one thing Shannan has never needed it again, and neither my real husband or my son-in-law (and I cook mainly for my son-in-law) likes cheese. I will make it anytime it is wanted. I hope I never have to make it again because it is needed.

The Secret Ingredient

Memory:

My "recipe" for my spaghetti sauce would have to be my real husband, Michael. Both of us lived most of our lives in and near Italian neighborhoods in Bridgeport, New Haven and Stratford, Connecticut. It doesn't really matter what your ethnic background is up north - Irish, Jewish, African American, Polish, Asian. When you live in the shadow of Pepi's Pizza, you grow up speaking a form of Sicilian dialect, and it never occurs to you that the rest of the United States doesn't.

Naturally, our favorite foods are Italian. But now that we live in North Carolina, my real husband and I must travel 2 hours down to Charlotte for a holy pilgrimage to Dean & DeLuca's Delicatessen in the Queen's City when we want to close our eyes and breathe in the heady aroma of Genoa salami and Reggiano Parmesan in one room. It isn't always easy being an ex-patriot far away from home.

But it is particularly difficult for my Italian loving husband to live in the south. First of all, he has a Yankee accent. He'll ask for a cup of "cuawfee." He'll take his car to a "caa wash," and he calls a friend of ours down here "Chaalie." Secondly, his car's license plate reads "YANK4LFE," and he's not referring to the baseball team. Finally, when he goes to an Italian restaurant to order a cheese pizza, he will ask for a scamorza (or as we grew up saying "scamotz"). No one down here knows what the heck he's talking about. You can't even buy scamorza down here. But does that deter him from asking for it? No. For some unknown reason, he feels he must be loyal to his own strange Sicilian food code.

When he is especially homesick, I know it is time to make his spaghetti sauce. But my Michael is rather high maintenance when it comes to food. He won't eat meat, sugar, white flour, salt or anything else that's delicious, and I do my very best to cook for him the way he likes. But Italians don't cook like that. The sauce he likes has meat in it, and salt and lots of other things. So, I revert to my secret ingredients and only my daughter knows the truth. The biggest secret of all is pure, white sugar. He would die, roll over and come back to life again if he ever knew there was sugar in his sauce. He knows I make the sauce with sweet Italian sausage, but he doesn't eat that part of the sauce, because, as Michael puts it, "I don't eat flesh." Fine, but you do eat sugar.

I got this recipe from the wife of a musician I used to work with in New Haven when I sang professionally. The band would rehearse at his house and his adorable, little Italian American wife would make enough sauce for her family and the entire West Haven Sons of Italy to eat for a week. Since I could never read music I wasn't much help with song arrangements, so I would take a break and keep her company while she cooked. She was a master. I watched; I learned. My recipe isn't exactly like her's. She would use body parts of animals I don't even want to think about to flavor her sauce, but the idea is pretty close. Everyone has their own version of this American standard. This is the one my husband calls the best. But, when my son-in-law comes over, I add meatballs and pork chops to the sauce too.

Recipe:
New Haven Italian Spaghetti Sauce.
Most of this is in my head, but this is the best I can put on paper.

2 lbs. sweet Italian sausage links
Olive oil
1 to 2 onions chopped
3 to 4 minced garlic cloves
8 oz. slice mushrooms
1 palm full of dry oregano
1 palm full of dry basil
salt and pepper to taste
1 large can whole peeled tomatoes (I buy San Marzano - better than fresh)
2 small cans tomato paste (whatever - Michael insists on organic)
2 tbs. or more sugar
1/2 to 1 cup good red wine
equal parts water of the tomato paste and the Marzano cans.

• Place the sweet sausage in a heavy, large, cold pot. Add 1/4 cup water to the pan. Turn the heat to medium high and cover for about 10 minutes or until the meat is steamed cooked.

• Remove the lid and allow the water to boil off and brown the sausage on all sides. Good sausage will make its own grease. Remove the meat from the pan and add 3 to 4 tbs. olive oil.
  

• Add the onions, mushrooms and garlic to the hot oil. Add salt, pepper, oregano, basil and any thing else that says Italian to you at this point and let the vegetables cook until they pick up the color of the meat. Add back the sausage.

• While the vegetables are cooking, I usually pour the tomatoes into a bowl and squash them in my hand to break up the whole tomatoes before I put them in the pan.
  

• Add the tomatoes and one equal can's amount of water to the pan.

• Add the tomato paste and, again, equal amounts of water. Let the sauce come to a boil and reduce the heat to a low simmer.
  

• Leave the lid off the pan. It may splatter all over the kitchen but leave it off. The sauce needs to reduce and that won't happen with the lid on.
  

• After the sauce starts to thicken, taste it for flavor. At this point add more salt, seasonings and the sugar starting with 1 tbs. Let it cook for a minute, taste again. Add more sugar, if needed. Don't go overboard or else it will taste like tomato candy soup and your husband will finally know what you're doing.
  

• Add the wine. If it does get too sweet, add more wine. Let the sauce cook until it is more of a ragu than a sauce. This could take 3 to 4 hours. We Americans like our sauce thick and hearty.
  

Thought:
Wives should never lie to their husbands. But my mother taught me well. She said she never lied to my father. She just never told him everything.

I am GDAWG

Memory:
I am not cool. I am rolly-polly and I have freckled saddlebags for cheeks. I am only two months away from my 62nd birthday. Yet I am the GDAWG.

A few years ago my oldest grandson, Matt, and youngest grandson, Jake, were forced to share a room together due to lack of space in their home, and Matt hated it. My real husband and I would use this situation as an excuse to lure him to our house for Friday night sleep-overs. Those were some of the happiest nights of my life.

He would bring his XBox-360 over with him and we'd have Pepsi and popped corn, while he wiped my face in the dirt beating me in every video game. I am not a "gamer" by nature. I am a cook, but what wouldn't I do to be with my grandson? Who really cared anyway that I could never make my guy turn around in the cave, or that I got shot before I could even pick up my sonic spear? It made my gorgeous Matthew laugh and I loved it.

One game in particular was my favorite to lose. It was a street racer game, in which each player got to design his own car. The more races you won, the more you could add to it. Matt had his tricked out Honda with flames and skulls and whatever on it. I chose a tasteful little Miata, that would never have the threat of wearing skulls hanging over its English Racing Green hood, because I could never win to earn them. Eventually, the game said I had to have a street name.

My name is Grammy actually. It suits me. But in the game there was all this cool rap music in the background. Pink haired girls were cheering as the racers took off, and tattooed men waved their fists as the cars flew into hyper-space on something Matt kept calling noss. I just couldn't be Grammy around all this pink hair, tattoos and noss. I had to become something more; much more. That was the birth of the GDAWG, and so it shall always be.

After Matt would have his fill of annihilating me, his grandfather and I would watch a movie with him. It was usually some "Lord of the Rings" type production, but oh what bliss. And then I'd poop out, and his Papa would stay up with him to watch "Trick my Truck" or something like that. The next morning we'd go out and do whatever we had to do, and leave our grandson in his bed to waste the rest of the morning sleeping. When I'd get back, it was time for me to make breakfast for Matthew.

It wasn't always easy to make the breakfast he would have wanted. We had issues in our home. My real husband is a vegetarian. No food can be processed. No one can have soft drinks in the house, and especially not in the morning. We only have wholesome, whole wheat or multi-grained bread. My grandson only likes pasty, white WonderBread. He loves Pepsi in the morning and is a carnivore. So Michael and I would hash it out before we got back to the house about how I always spoil Matt; how someone has to give Matt an example of how to eat right, and the food Matt likes might taste good, but it's not good for you. Yada, yada, yada.

I would soothe my health conscious husband and encourage him to mow the lawn, as I pulled the rashers of bacon out of the refrigerator and tucked the pasty white bread under my shirt to make as many egg and bacon sandwiches on his disgusting white toast as I could put in front of my baby with a glass of Pepsi to wash it down. I was no longer just Grammy. I was GDAWG; hear me roar, and this was my time with my grandson. I knew there would be only so many Friday nights left. The time would come (and it did) when Matt would have his own room, his own car and his own life, so I had to make bacon while the sun shined. I miss those nights so much, but, hey, there's always the next grandson.


Recipe:
Matt's Egg Sandwich

• Fry bacon, lots of bacon in a large skillet

• Fry up one egg per sandwich and break the yoke just before turning the egg over in the pan. Don't bother with the salt and pepper. Your grandson will load it down with those anyway.
  

• Toast the mushiest, most deadly white bread you can buy, and then butter the toast with way too much butter. Matt really prefers margarine, but there's only so far I will even go.

• Layer the toast with the egg and the bacon. Slice in half. Pour the Pepsi.
  

Thought:
I happen to agree with my real husband about food, but I don't regret gutsying up and being GDAWG for my babies whenever they give me the chance.

Mama Mia

Memory:

Anyone who truly knew my mother, often called Norma Marie, by my father; Ma, by by brother and real husband; Mama, by my daughter, and GiGi, by my grandchildren, knew she passionately stood up for the "underdog", loved animals and defended her kids like a rabid "she-bear." But we also knew she had a slow burning temper hotter than her red hair, that would explode like a Molotov Cocktail, a sniper's grenade, or a suddenly erupting volcano whenever she had taken enough. She could be standing in a room working on her ironing, and some small thing or word would take her past her limit and "the grenade went off." Mom was never dull.

My mom had a sweet and loving side to her that was genuine, and it was the one she preferred those outside of our walls to see. But there were just so many sides to her, and most of them were good ones (many of which I see in myself and my daughter). She loved people with a love that could border on religious adoration, but it was suffocating. And, if mom were ever crossed, she could put up a barrier that only apology after apology could start to tear down.

She was so passive on the outside, but so stubborn and fierce if she thought she was being told not to do something. It set off a charge in her that couldn't be stopped even when she knew it should be. Like the time at age 78, when she married a man who was totally blind and, unknown to her or us, bi-polar and crazy. This was particularly dicey because mom was also blind. Mom was told by his family and hers not to move away from Maine and live in Oregon all alone with him. But that was all it took. Once you told her not to - she had to. Two years later my real husband and I moved out to Oregon to ship her crazy husband back to Maine, and help her with her divorce at age 80.

It would be difficult to pick a "recipe" to be my Mom. For one thing, she loved food; all food; any food. Yet you would never have pictured her to be a good cook, unless you had lived with her for 40 years, as I had. When my brother, Johnny, and I were kids, the best we could hope for most of the time was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Campbell's Soup. On a good day, we'd have some kind of cheap cut of meat, canned vegetables and french fried potatoes and not necessarily all at the same time.

As I grew up and she actually had more food in the house to cook with, I found out my mom was a darn good cook. She could make the best scalloped potatoes, creamed broccoli soup, banana bread and the lightest, fluffiest fried fish I have ever tasted to this day. I don't have recipes for these, because she never wrote them down, and I was always at work when she made them. Her food became our language of love. As she went into her mid-80's and, until age 91, she became my child. Food was again our love language, but now I cooked for her and she ate everything I made as if it were her favorite dish of all times.

When she was 89 years old she took the horrible decision to go into a nursing home out of my hands, and told her doctor she was ready to go. That was the purest act of kindness and love my mom ever did for me (I only hope I have that kind of courage and selflessness for my daughter when the time comes). Once again, food was our bond. I went to see my mom in the nursing home every day at lunch and evening meals on the way home from work. She could no longer feed herself so I did it for her. Once again, my mom surprised me. She became a picky eater in the home and would eat only the things on her tray that she liked. I had never seen this side of her before. She was never what you expected her to be.

I won't pretend that it was easy caring for my mom all those years. I wondered at times if she would outlive me, and I would die at her nursing home with her. I'd feel so guilty for thinking like this and nothing ever seemed normal. But when she did die in her nursing home bed, I knew I had done my best, without regret. But there was regret. I looked down at her, and realize the saddest part of her passing for me was that I had been grieving and missed my real momth - the one who saw and remembered me - for at least 10 year. I looked down at the same face I had seen evey day for lunch I sang her favorite song to my real mom who had been gone for years, "I'll Be Loving You Always" - "not for just an hour, not for just a day, not for just a year, but Always."

Recipe:
Food; all food; any food.

Thought:
I learned the hard way from my mom that parents do the best they can with what they have and that just has to be good enough, because we'll only do the best we can with what we have when we're parents.

A Shumaker by Anyother Name Would Smell as Sweet

Memory:
I was twenty-two years old. I wasn't married at the time in 1970, and I had a baby. A wonderful, blue-eyed baby who terrified me to death.

I was going to be the next Barbara Streisand. I was going to travel to Europe and live in New York. All my furniture was going to be made of chrome, and I was never going to have children. I didn't really like them. Maybe I'd get married when I was in my thirties, but I had plans.

Now the only plans I had were to figure out what to do with this tiny invader who had changed everything, and I was clueless. I handled things pretty well alone in our first floor apartment in Devon, Connecticut that I shared with my mother. That is, until one day when Shannan was a few month old. I had put her in the middle of my bed and surrounded her with pillows so she couldn't move, but darn it all if she didn't figure out a way to do it anyway. She rolled off the bed and landed on the floor right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. I was still in my nightgown when I picked her up off the floor. She was crying. I was crying. I ran out the front door barefooted into the street holding her in my arms so afraid I'd crippled my baby for life and screamed, "Help me. Somebody help me."

Thank God no one came out. I was always a drama queen, but this would have secured my reputation beyond all hope. I finally skulked back into the apartment and called a doctor's office to ask how badly my daughter might have been damaged from my stupidity. The nurse told me not to worry. Just check a few things and, if they still worked, everything was OK. I checked; she worked. I hadn't killed her. From that point on we did better.

A few weeks later a neighbor and younger high school classmate of mine, Linda Shumaker, who lived across the street from me with her mother, saw me and asked how my baby was doing. She told me that her mom had seen me in the street that day and hoped I was doing alright. I can't tell you how much I loved Linda's mom right then. She hadn't come out to make me feel even more stupid than I did already. She hadn't told Linda what a jerk I'd been. She just cared about us, and so did Linda.

Shannan was about a year old when her dad, John, and I finally had her christened. He picked a friend of his from New York to be Shann's godfather. Never seen him since. I asked Linda to be her godmother. Wise choice on my part. Years passed between that time and now. I married Shannan's dad; moved away; divorced; remarried; inherited my son-in-law; had grandchildren. And one day I found out Linda had been searching for Shannan and me all that time, but now her name was Martin.

A while back Shannan called me to say it was Linda Martin's birthday.
"Linda Martin; Linda Martin, who the heck is that?" I asked her.
She said, "You know -- my godmother?." Once again I felt so stupid around my daughter (never the invader anymore, but the best thing that ever entered my world. Besides, who really wants chrome furniture anyway?).
"Oh, you mean Linda Shumaker?" I said red faced. In my mind and in my heart Linda would always be a Shumaker - my little, blond, big eyes "Shumaker" not a "Martin." I'm not good with change.

The best present I ever received from anyone was a gift Linda gave me back in the scary days; a Gourmet Cookbook, Volume 1. It was enormous. It was the first cookbook I'd ever received of my own. It lit a light in me that has never gone out. I love to cook, and I'm good at it. I love that cookbook even when I can't afford the ingredients; even when I can't read the French titles. But, of the titles I can read and the ingredients I can afford, I have made recipe after recipe and seen Linda Shumaker in every one of them. She was my spark! I love her still.

Recipe:
Out of my Gourmet Cookbook: Volume 1. (The way it's written in the book, and with an English accent. Anyway that's how I've always read it).

Chicken Cacciatora
In a large skillet in 2 tablespoons olive oil saute 2 medium onions, coarsely chopped, until they are slightly browned. Remove the onion from the skillet and reserve it. Cut into serving pieces two 2 1/2 to 3 1/2-pound chickens and dredge the pieces with seasoned flour. Saute them until they are well browned on all sides in the oil in which the onion was browned, adding 3 tablespoons olive oil. Add 2 cups fresh tomatoes, peeled and seeded, or canned tomatoes, one cup seeded and coarsely chopped sweet green peppers, and 1 garlic clove, finely chopped. Return the reserved onion to the pan and simmer chicken and vegetables together, covered, for 15 minutes over very low heat. Add one cup white wine and season with salt and pepper. Simmer the mixture, covered for about 30 minutes longer, or until the chicken is tender.

Thought:
Names change; people change, but friends never do - still as sweet.

Irish or not - here I come

Memory:
My real husband, Michael, and I are both of Irish/Catholic descent. So much so, that my daughter was named for the Shannon Airport in Ireland after it was bombed in 1970, and my younger brother, Johnny, and I were as close to being IRA supporters as any two Bridgeport, Connecticut idiots could be without carrying a gun.

But my "recipe" for my Irish Soda Bread is Emi, my 14 year old granddaughter. Nothing about this girl is Irish, but that has never stopped me before. My daughter is mostly Polish and Russian from her real father, John, and her husband, Ed, is French Canadian and Native American, which means none of my Irish eyes and red hair ever made it near my little Pocahontas. But, once a year around March 17th, this dark eyed, dark skinned beauty starts to look more and more like me when we make our soda bread together.

There is a certain ritual to this event. We use a special, huge pottery bowl and only this bread bowl to mix up our precious dough. We always watch "The Secret of Roan Inish" movie to help create the mood. Otherwise, how could the two of us believe we were doing all this in a whitewashed cottage on one of the Republic's sod covered coastal islands.

This dough is one of the stickiest, messiest muddles I've ever worked with (so be warned), but I wouldn't change it even if I knew how. It wasn't that way when I originally got this recipe from an Irish friend of mine, Alice Conway, in the 1970's. Back then it always had a firm dryness to the mixture, and when it was put in the cast iron pans, it was easy to crisscross the top before baking, but not since Emi and I have been making it together. Don't know what made the difference, but it was one of the happiest mistakes that has ever happened to me, and I really believe the bread tastes better. There is nothing like goo up to your elbows and a grandchild to turn a round loaf of bread into a holiday.

Recipe:
Grammy's Irish Soda Bread
Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees
Grease and flour two cast iron skillets about 8 or 9 inches round

1 quart buttermilk
2 eggs beaten slightly
1 tbs. oil

8 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tbs. salt

2 cups raisins or one box
1/4 cup caraway seeds.

• In a small bowl combine all the wet ingredients.
• In a large bowl (pretty darn large, too) sift all the dry ingredients. Combine well.
  
• To the dry ingredients, add the caraway seeds and the raisins. Be sure to coat the raisins in the flour or you'll have raisin balls in the thing.
• Make a deep well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid mixture.
• Stir this until blended.
  
• Divide the dough in half to make two round loaves and place in the prepared skillets.
• Bake for 1 hour until golden.
• Be sure to make a cross on the tops of the bread before placing in the oven. AMEN

Once you get the bread out of the oven, cover the warm tops with lots of butter. When you are ready to cut the bread, cut it down the whole length of the middle of the loaf. Then cut it across the small sides of the halved loaf for a manageable size portion.

Thought:
This might not make you an Irish Soda Bread lover if you are not one already, but it's pretty good and my family thinks it "gold."

A quote from my "Black Irish" dad, "The Irish are lovely people," and he ought to have known.

First day; first memory

The Memory:
My recipes are people - not ingredients. My dad, my mom, my brother, my ex-husband, real husband, daughter, son-in-law, grand kids and others always make my recipes more than just "whip it up; put it in a pan." Baked macaroni and cheese is always my Aunt Joyce and my granddaughter Emi. Scottish eggs are my ex-husband. Pancakes and spaghetti sauce are my real husband. Yankee pot roast is my son-in-law and so on.

My oldest recipe is my Aunt Joyce. She gave my mom and me her recipe for Vermont Baked Macaroni and Cheese when I was seven years old in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She was no more my "aunt" than our landlord who kept live chickens in the basement of our city apartment building on John Street, and chopped the poor chickens' heads off in our backyard, but I loved her until the day she died when I was thirty-eight years old. Aunt Joyce and her "husband" were hard drinking; hard smoking; hard swearing folks from Craftsbury Commons, Vermont, who moved to Bridgeport trying to find a better life. When Aunt Joyce left Bridgeport and moved back to Craftsbury Commons "because no life was better than there," no street address or zip code was ever necessary for my card or letter to reach her in her village not far from the Canadian border. All I had to write on the envelope was her name, the town and end it with VT, and the mailman always found her even when they moved to a different home. Now the recipe is my granddaughter, Emi. I don't have to ask her what she'd like me to make, but I do it anyway, because no one says it sweeter than she does when she tells me "your macaroni and cheese, Grammy."

My recipe is always made with sharp or extra sharp cheddar cheese, and I never buy the pre-grated kind. There is something that says home and cold yankee nights taking a block of Vermont Cabot cheese, holding it in my hand and shredding it- taking all the time I need - relaxed and in love with everyone who will taste my love every time I make it.

The Recipe:
Vermont Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Pre heat the oven to 375 degrees

1 8 oz. package elbow macaroni
1/2 cup butter (3 tbs. and 5 tbs. in different parts of the recipe.)
1/4 to 1/2 cup of finely chopped onions
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups milk
8 oz. block sharp or extra sharp cheddar cheese (grated, the sharper the more Vermont it is)
3/4 cups bread crumbs (I put 2 to 3 slices of bread slices in the food processor - pulse until it is fine.)
1/4 tsp. paprika

• Boil elbow macaroni for 6 minutes (it will finish cooking while baking). Drain well
  
• Grease casserole dish and put aside.
• In heavy sauce pan, melt 3 tbs. of butter
  
• Saute chopped onions until clear, but not brown
• Stir in flour and salt - let the flour taste cook off
• Very slowly add milk to the onions and butter in 2 to 3 intervals stirring constantly until it is thick
  
• Pour drained macaroni into the casserole dish, followed by the white sauce
• Add the grated cheese and combine until completely mixed
• In a small pan, melt the rest of the butter (5 tbs.)
  
• Stir in the fresh bread crumbs until golden and toasted.
• Spoon the bread crumbs over the top of the casserole
  
• Finish by sprinkling the paprika over the bread crumbs.
• Place in the oven and cook for 25 to 30 minutes.
  

Thought:
You might have to have some "Yankee" coursing through your veins to fully appreciate the complexity of this simple, straightforward, no nonsense dish. But I don't think so.