Cooking for One Strikes Out

I was chatting with my friend at the gym several months ago and like most days, as we curled our biceps and lowered our  spreading bottoms to squat,  our aging quads groaning like tired old pistons, the conversation drifted to food. She asked me how my "cooking my food" strike was working out.

One of only three dishes that causes the family to revolt.

"Great. I made stuffed cabbage last night," I said.

The "Golumpky" recipe came from my mother's friend Charlotte, a tiny timid gal who reminded me of a Cornish game hen. Her husband, a scientist, fiddled around with more than beakers in his laboratory, his deep blue eyes were like pools of inviting water, so nearly matching the luring Caribbean, that women were quick to plunge into bed with him.

And even though a curtain of brown shaggy bangs and big plastic glasses couldn't mask her sad  eyes, Charlotte found pleasure in the kitchen churning out golumpkies like a machine.

These chubby little torpedoes top the list as the  number one reason for a dinnertime standoff  in our house, inching slightly ahead of roasted pork with sauerkraut and corned beef and cabbage.

See, I went on strike because I'd had enough of cooking only what the kids and the husband liked. I can't help the fact that my palate begs for diversity, for subtle or explosive pleasures. I was raised by a woman who found satisfaction and love in a 5 pound bag of flour, rolling out flaky biscuits or beating choux in the saucepan for cream puffs that were so light, you'd think they'd lift off the baking sheet.

So I wondered what about the cook's hankerings? Chef's choice? Darn it. What about me? I was going to cook all my favorite dishes- like stuffed cabbage, corned beef and cabbage, braised cabbage and buttered cabbage and say to hell with my brood.

I was on a cruciferae  bender and they  were in for a heady ride.

When I told the long faced teens and husband that I'd be cooking "me"  food for the next few days,  they put the local pizza parlor on speed dial and hit send.

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. "I make your food all the time, you should have to eat mine. Besides, we only have my food once a year and sometimes you have to do things you don't want," I said.

"We're not even Polish so why do we have to eat golumpkies," they asked.

"And yeah, we're not Irish so why do we have to eat corned beef and stupid cabbage," they added..

"Because it will make me  happy," I shouted.

"And when mother is happy, the house is happy," pipped in the husband, who knows that the house either perks along in a gleeful hum or roars off its foundation, depending on, well, me.

Not too long ago, I had a little hissy fit one weekend when Teen Boy and Teen Girl complained about going on a cruise in February. Actually, it wasn't a little tantrum, but a catastrophic meltdown and if you've ever seen a middle aged lady throw a wobbly, it wasn't pretty.

Think Joan Crawford.

On steroids.

It all started when Grandfather Bill, who strolled into their lives a little more than a year ago, said he'd be taking four out of the six grandchildren  on a Caribbean adventure and the offspring didn't  want to sail away.

Now, if someone offered me a free ride all expenses paid vacation, where I didn't have to cook and I could just stuff my face with food and knock back drinks while resting my ample duff on a lounge chair, I'd have my bags packed before they finished the details. But Teen Boy says that he's just as happy visiting him in New York for a few days.

"I feel uncomfortable that he is spending all that money on me. I value his intelligence, not his money."

Wow. I'm raising a communist.  I should have named him Che Jones.

"Well, sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do because it makes other people happy," I said. Grandfather Bill wants to take you. He's making up for missed time.

"I didn't earn his wealth. I am not entitled to it." said Teen Communist, adding, "Besides, I've never wanted to go on a cruise."

 And that was my trigger point.

And this is where I pulled out of my archives speech number 65- "Do you know how many times I 've done things for you that I didn't want to do?"

"I spent two hours watching a live performance of Thomas the Tank in Providence in a theater filled with thousands of screaming boys and actors dressed up in creepy cardboard cut outs of Thomas, Diesel and  Daisy. 

"I went ......CAMPING and it rained and rained and my sleeping bag felt like I was stuck in a wet compression sock and I didn't get an ounce of sleep because I  have a nighttime bladder condition and every time I walked to the outhouses, I thought I would get stabbed by a snaggled-toothed  campground killer.

"I took you to Old Country Buffet"

"I ate Dominoes Pizza for years"

Both Teen Boy and Teen Girl just looked at me. And that's when my inner Joan sprang to life.

If you could have measured the unbridled rage whirling around the kitchen table, it would have surpassed a Level 5 Hurricane, made a nor'easter look like fluffy flurries, made Hurricane Bob look like a whisper from an aging uncle. 

I am always doing things I don't want to do. Like emptying the dishwasher, fishing turds out of the litter box, peeling potatoes or cooking pasta six days of the week, But I do these things because we need clean plates, my geriatric cat needs a tidy spot to poop,Teen girl loves my scalloped spuds and they both like my pasta.

So when Teen Boy and Teen Girl complained about going on the cruise, I snapped. It was the crack heard round the Jones' household.

I admit, my scrambled eggs may have become airborne (It's amazing how aerodynamic they are when you add plenty of fresh cream and give them a good whip) and a few saucy words may have escaped my lips.  It is one of those family scenes that you wish you could edit and leave on the cutting room floor of family disasters.

But I'm afraid, like a good drama scene, it's forever etched in our memories. 

I'd like to say that the teens and husband dug into the golumpkies with gusto, confessed that they'd wished they had tried them years ago, wanted them packed up in their lunch boxes,  but my "cooking my food" bender was a disaster, a gustatory failure.

They didn't eat them, they ordered pizza instead and I was left with a pan of golumpkies that seemed to multiply in the fridge.

The kids didn't go on their cruise, but headed to Paris instead.

But I realized that although I love to complain about those Thomas the Tank, Camping in the Rain and Old Country Buffet days,  I actually look back on those memories with great fondness.

And  like all good strikes, you have to have a few concessions and overlook a few pizza boxes.

Dot's Yellow Recipe Box

Not Dot's but close

When our Mom, Dot, died suddenly at 49, she left us the usual trinkets that get passed down from one generation to the next;  jewelery, china and plenty of neurotic baggage, but what Sissy and I really wanted was her simple  yellow plastic recipe box that was jammed  with her handwritten recipes for  beef stroganoff, pie crust and  apple kuchen.
 
Yet in the midst of the upheaval of losing our mom and the dysfunctional horrors that followed, Dot's yellow recipe box went missing.

It was a monster of a recipe box, an ugly neon yellow embossed treasure chest that a recipe club sent her as a gift because she got suckered into signing a ten year recipe contract. She tossed out their shiny recipe cards without ever trying them and began to fill that box with decades of  recipes, from German potato salad to French Chou pastry.  

With her large and fancy script, Dot wrote out her recipes with those gloriously scrolled  D's F's and G's, on index cards that were dotted with drips of oil, smudges of Crisco and butter. It wasn't organized in any particular order, just a haphazard collection of our family's culinary genealogy, a road map of hit and miss recipes,  with happy faces marked on the keepers and  frowns inked on the flops.

Dot was a fabulous cook and baker, a rare combination, who could whip up coq au vin and an apple tart without breaking a sweat. She'd roll out fresh pasta and hang them like tinsel over the kitchen chairs and even went through a canning stage (one season was enough for her), running to our local farm stand for boxes of ripe tomatoes. 

We watched Julia and Graham together, with Mom sitting on the couch, sipping eight o'clock coffee, scribbling the recipes as they flashed on the screen.

"How much mushrooms did they call for?" she'd yell.

We loved the Galloping Gourmet, his lilting accent, his infectious grin, his joy of cooking, plus it was so darn  novel for us to see a man actually cooking because the head of our household could only pour a bowl of Cheerios. 

Mom was  stoic stick figured gal who, during the slow and steamy summer which seemed to stretch for months, would cook in her one piece swimsuit and heels, with a glass of homemade iced tea and a Lucky Strike balanced on her Ruby Red lips. Come winter,  she'd be wrapped up in sweaters and slippers, with a mug of coffee or a whiskey sour as she padded through the kitchen, her glasses perched on her head, the recipes spread out over the counter, like she was orchestrating a battle.


Mom's apple pie was legendary, a six inch high  golden dome of flaky pastry bursting with syrupy apples and cinnamon. Her recipe was simple, just a few ingredients, some flour, Crisco and vinegar and salt, but it was a tricky bugger that didn't like to be fussed with.  She'd roll that dough into a perfect circle, gently picking it up and draping it over the glass pie plate, holding her breath. More often than not, the crust would crack and Mom would mutter and sigh and say she was going to find a new dough recipe but she never did. She'd fire up another Lucky, and start all over again. She'd make pinwheels out of the leftover pastry, sugary bite-sized gems that we'd pop down as fast as they'd come off the cookie sheet, burning our fingers and mouths as we raced to get our share. 

My Recipes

This recipe is a lost  treasure, along with hundreds of dishes that came to our table every night. I've tried dozens of pie crust recipes, even my Mom's namesake, Dorothy, from the Boston Globe, but they're never quite right. Never as light, never as flaky. And they always fall apart.

Though I wasn't a big fan of apple kuchen when I was a toe headed tot terrorizing the kitchen as my mother tried to cook dinner,  I've developed an obsession with it now and long for her recipe, a golden brown cake, smothered in a custard apple topping. Like my quest for my Mom's pie crust, I have trolled through cyberspace looking for a similar kuchen recipe, trying dozens of recipes, only to be disappointed.
 
I'd like to think that Mom's yellow recipe box found a new home somewhere, found a family that needed her recipes.  But if you happen to find a big yellow recipe box at a yard sale, take a peak inside. If you see a recipe for Dot's Pie Crust with a smiley face on the upper right corner, let me know.

We'd like to bring a bit of Mom home.

Don't Wake the Cade Sisters'

Three of the Four Cade Sisters

Sissy and I stood in front  of McVeigh's Funeral Home and eyed each other.

 "After you, Sissy," I said, waving her ahead.

 I figured she'd get the initial  blast of funeral parlor smell, that familiar but unsettling odor that curls up your nose, triggering for us, an avalanche of atypical funeral home memories.
And like all of the family wakes we've attended, we headed straight to the restroom to freshen up and do the pre-wake pow-wow.

Sissy lowered her head; her big brown eyes peeked over her funky glasses and warned me like only a big sister can.

"You'd better not laugh,” she said. "I'll kill you."

See Sissy and I have a little problem when it come to burying people.

We laugh.

It started with Great Uncle Snook Stangel and his cowboy hat.

Great Uncle Snook was married to Myrtle, a lively wide faced freckled woman three times his size. Her raucous laugh could crack a hundred double pained windows. The more Manhattans she downed, the louder she grew. Her infectious laugh would blow through the room like a giant gust of wind. And she made the best lip licking shrimp remoulade this side of Louisiana.

Like most people, Snook shrunk as he aged; losing what seemed like a good foot during the last few decades. Or maybe he was always that small. We Cade's are big boned can-do gals so we felt like Amazon wrestlers next to him. Snook was so tiny that he needed a booster seat when he motored round the city in his big three-ton tank of a Buick. He would sit on a tufted pillow, his little white head looking like the rising moon over the dashboard.

So when we got the call that Snook had passed on, there was a big "to do" because Snook was cremated and the Stangel's get buried, not scattered. But Snook was a white haired renegade and did what he damn well pleased and when we walked into the funeral home, Snook was resting inside an elegant and stately vase, fit for a giant.

But the trouble started when Sissy and I walked up to pay our respects to Great Uncle Snook. On the pedestal, next to Snook in the Vase, was a picture of him with a giant cowboy hat on. That damn hat just about swallowed Snook and if you know our family, we do not have an ounce of cowboy blood in our bodies.

And we don't wear cowboy hats.

That's when the Cade Sisters' lost control. Something about that big cowboy hat and Great Uncle Snook in the Vase triggered something primal.

And it wasn't pretty. 

We're not proud of our juvenile behavior that day. In fact, we were downright embarrassed, but since the Cade Sisters' have an aberrant acting gene floating around in our DNA pool, and while the rest of the Stangel's were overcome with grief, or catching up on the latest church gossip, no one seemed to notice that the we were howling as we stood in front of Great Uncle Snook's remains.

It's a good thing the Stangel's have bad hearing and eyesight.

Snook's cowboy hat started a pattern of bad burial behavior that continues to this day. And always begins with a stern warning from Sissy who seems to have very selective funeral home memories.

There was the Great Aunt Rally Debacle where my nephew, who may be following in his Aunty's giant footsteps, joined me as we walked up to pay our respects. As we knelt  down before Rally, I felt it coming, like a runaway train, building speed as my knees made contact with the prayer bench. Once it begins, it is simply unstoppable. Our eyes met in a cockeyed sideways glance. And it started. As I buried my head in my hands, my impressive shoulders shook. I begged Rally for help. Even Snook. Called upon God, Buddha, Allah, and Zeus.

But no one answered my distress call.

Sissy wouldn't pair up with me because she knew I'd jump over that thin line that separates grief from laughter. She was relieved that it was me this time, not her.

We recently returned from New York where we buried the last of the Greats- Uncle Len. Bless him, at 88, he was the baby of the family, and was our favorite Uncle. And throughout the four hour car journey Sissy reminded me that I had better not laugh.

"Behave yourself," Sissy warned.

"Hey, it's not always me," I sassed back.

"You started at Snook's," I reminded her.

"You did at Rally's," she said.

So as usual, we made a beeline straight to the ladies room for the pre wake pep talk. The Stangel's previous funeral home, Frederick’s ,was much nicer, plus they gave away those plastic nail files that you could push up and down, making a wonderfully addictive zipper-like noise. We still can't figure out why those skin color nail files were the funeral parlor rage, particularly since the metal tip was so damn sharp and who wants to pull out a file with a funeral home's logo plastered all over?

We paid our respects to Len, standing over the open casket, without any hints of laughter. No smiles, no side glances, no funny breathing sounds,no shaking shoulders. We didn't say he looked good, because well, he didn't and whoever caked on his makeup has a lot to answer for when they meet up with Marge Stangel.

Had we matured since the last family funeral? Had we finally outgrown the wicked bereavement behaviors? Cracked the Cade Curse? Would we finally be able to get through a wake or funeral without falling apart?

But then the priest walked in.

And all hell broke loose.

The thickly accented Priest called him Leo instead of Len. If their outrage was measurable, that side of the family would be multimillionaires. Heads turned, tongues clucked, but the little priest carried on with a wide smile stumbling over the virtues of a guy named Leo.

And that's when Sissy bowed her head, and her shoulders started to shake, like the rumblings of a great volcano.  Mount St. Sissy. Her face wasn't red; it was aubergine.  She was suppressing the monster of all laughs. Luckily, we Cade Sisters' realize our limitations and always park our behinds in the back row so Sissy got up, head bowed, her hands covering her eyes and walked out.

I knew Sissy wasn't grieving. In fact, I thought I heard the faint echo of a gasping laugh coming from the restroom.

Don't get me wrong. We love our extended family and these funerals are difficult for us particularly since we've lost the Greats in our family, a wildly eclectic, kooky bunch of  Stangel's. And we hate that we break out in laughter. But somehow, I think, the Greats are looking down at us, shaking their collective white heads, their soft blue eyes twinkling with delight. Because if there was one thing the Stangels' appreciated most, it was a good laugh.

 

The Cade Sisters' Rule(s)

Every family has its own unique set of rules-a code of conduct, a blueprint for behavior, like no farting at the dinner table or closing the bathroom door while you are doing your business. But I hadn't realized how many rules we Cade Sisters' have until one day a friend remarked, "You certainly have a lot of rules for a Democrat."

"What are Democrat's lawless rogues?" I asked.
.
"No, I just think you sound like a Republican."

"Hey, no name calling," I said.

But she got me thinking about the Cade Sisters' Rules. Had me wondering about the Cade Sisters' Manifesto. And I suddenly realized that Sissy and I had missed several of our many unanswered callings- we should have been running a string of prisons. I could envision the Cade Sisters- Wardens Extraordinaire. We'd march through the cell blocks, our heels clipping the concrete floor, our arms moving like pistons, as we threw citations up and down the corridors. There would be no weapons tucked inside mattresses, no messy cells, no hair pulling-cat scratching brawls.

We also should have joined the military. We both love those crisp uniforms, patriotic songs and crave order and routine in our lives. And besides, Sissy loves Hummer's and I love setting my clocks to military time. But there were just a few tiny snafus- we both have slight issues with authority figures and we only follow rules that make sense to us.

But back to the Cade Rules. The hubby complains that they are arbitrary and make little sense, particularly the one about eating meat on two consecutive days. But often, rules only make sense to those who either write them or enforce them. We do both. And we break them, too.

"That's a stupid Cade Rule," he says, lusting after a slab of frozen sirloin in the freezer. That man could subsist on meat and sex alone.

He's also ready to overturn the "Window Open Year Round"Rule." That's a really stupid Cade Rule," he says, wiping the snow flakes from his pillow. I blame my mother for this one- she parked our prams outside in all sorts of weather- hail, snow, wind, rain or lightening, the Cade babies were bundled up like little stuffed cabbages and left to 'air out' on the patio while mother sipped her coffee and sucked down Lucky Strikes. Having this rule can certainly be a problem, especially when  you're staying in a high rise hotel or at a friend's ski condo where the windows have been superglued shut and you've spent most of the night with your face pressed against the cool window, gasping for a taste of that frosty New Hampshire night air.

We're pretty sure Sissy got her curls during an earth shaking electrical storm.

The hubby openly flaunts the "No Coffee with Lunch" Rule."That is the dumbest Cade Rule," he says, juggling his sandwich and coffee cup as he makes his way to his office."You're not an old fart," I protest.

"Only old people drink coffee at lunch."

Visions of my plaid shirted grandfather nursing a cup of black coffee and munching on an egg salad sandwich flash before me every time I see the hubby cradling his coffee cup and eating a cheese sandwich.

Sister has a different set of house rules that equally inflame her spouse and offspring. The "Carpets Must Be Vacuumed Before Leaving the House" Rule has never been broken. Even if Sissy is a tad bit behind schedule, (and that is rare since the Cade Sisters' run like Swiss clocks), she'll drag out the old Hoover and lovingly drag it across her carpets, in perfect slightly overlapping rows, the vertical version of crop circles.

But our rules reach far beyond our property lines. When the Cade Sisters hit the road, the rules follow and this is where Sissy morphs into her alter ego- Psycho Sissy and thankfully, she hasn't found a way to mount automatic guns on her car's hood and trunk. And this is why Sissy must never, ever get behind the wheel of a Hummer- think the female version of Mad Max.

She has the 'one strike and you're out' policy.

Now, Sissy is a soft spoken NPR, To Kill A Mockingbird, Southern Poverty Law Center supporter so she's not a yee haw Bud chugging, hair in pink foam curlers type of broad with a mustache and biceps. But put her behind a wheel backed by 3,500 pounds of metal and the Cade Road Rules and you've got the potential for a segment on Inside Edition.

Break the "You Need To Thank Drivers Who Let You In" Rule and you'll see Psycho Sissy spring into action. Fists pound the horn and expletives roll from her tongue with a decidely New York Twang "You Ayseeeee Hole" .

Don't obey the "No Tailgating," Rule? Sissy eases up on the gas, her car slowing to an achingly annoying crawl, while the expletives tumble from her lips.

"Sissy, you're not in a Hummer, " I say. "You're driving a freakin' Hyundai. You're gonna get us both killed."

(note to self- bring helmet and bullet proof vest when riding shotgun with Sissy)

"No one messes with the Cade Sisters," she says, gesturing to the rig behind us.

I look in the mirror and see a 5,000 pound pick up truck practically in our back seat. Is that a gun rack mounted on his hood? A beefy man is griping the wheel. His mouth is moving. And I don't think he's saying howdy.

But sissy doesn't back down. She's a Cade and we Cade Sisters' stand our ground. We come from a family of revoluntaries-men who fought for liberty, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and waged war  in the Battle of Iwo Jima, women who marched in the suffrage movement and became nurses in their 70's. (we do have some real crackpots hanging on our family tree, like our crazy great great Aunt Sally)

The guy eventually backed off  Sissy's bumper and she  and I exhanged smiles.

Another victory for the Cade Sisters'.

No citations written.

And no shots fired.