I’ve been in the kitchen for hours today and as I cooked memories of my father-in-law, known as Olde Fred, have been hovering about, as though I had a cooking partner.
Both my dad and father-in-law loved to eat. At the time I married Olde Fred’s son, my mom was still enthusiastically cooking so mine wasn’t the only meal variety my parents knew. On the other hand, my mother-in-law (known as Miss Beautiful) had stopped venturing to the kitchen secondary to her progressing dementia. She was a bit dangerous and Fred had taken over.
He could cook a thing or two, mostly recipes from his childhood, but his repertoire was limited. When I prepared a meal and sent it to my in-laws or they came to our home, it wasn’t just a night off from galley work for him. It was an extravaganza. He didn’t have to find a recipe, nor shop for its ingredients, then concoct and clean up after it. He merely had to let dinner roll to him. He reveled in a well-prepared, generously seasoned, attractively presented meal. Holy cow. A happy camper. The kind of guy who like a teenage boy had every serving platter scraped onto his dinner plate before completing his meal. And he always had room for dessert.
One summer evening Olde Fred and Miss Beautiful joined us for typical seasonal fare. Grilled meats with cool salads, fresh fruit, and cobbler. I made potato salad.
I wing it with potato salad. I’m generally not a fan. And though my dad loved my mom’s recipe, which originated with his mom, its mainstay was a lot of mayonnaise tossed with overcooked Russet potatoes. No.
When I create a potato salad I add items I enjoy, with just barely enough mayonnaise to hold them together. I like my go-to red new potatoes slightly underdone. When I’m finished I hope it’s delicious and tastes purposeful – as though maybe it did have a recipe, and not like a chemistry experiment gone wrong.
On the night Olde Fred and Miss Beautiful joined us, my potato salad was scrumptious. Should’ve been patented except it can’t be duplicated because I have no recipe. But I have the memory of that one time…
Fred ate abundantly of everything offered and there was quite a bit left. Perhaps, I thought, more than Fred could scrape onto his plate. I would soon see how wrong I was, – sort of. When he determined we were finished with dinner, he pushed his plate aside and replaced it with the platter containing the remaining potato salad. He set about emptying it with a satisfied grin on his face.
There is nothing like cooking for someone who enjoys a meal that much. Someone who lets no crumb or spoonful go to waste, who emits a sound of pleasure with every bite, and who never says, “No, thank you.” Everyone who has fun in the kitchen should have such an individual as an audience. One who finishes with, “What’s for dessert?”
I was fortunate to know when that present unfolded that Olde Fred was special. I didn’t need to wait for the rearview mirror to see it. I wish everyone had a father-in-law like mine, with a twinkle in his eye and a hearty appetite for food and fun. I love you, Olde Fred. And today I felt you in my kitchen. Probably because I was making potato salad.
you go with it. I grew up there and never missed that parade. Each year my dad took us downtown to see the marching bands, baton twirlers, mounted regiments, floats, veterans, scouts, and color guards strut proudly down Main Street and Broadway as we wriggled through the crowd for a better view. As long as my grandmother lived in Redwood City, we stopped at her place to take her with us.
No doubt this daughter of eastern European emigre, born the year after the big quake of ’06, raised in an orphanage, having survived the Great Depression and two world wars, understood better than I ever will the meaning of the day. She understood the depth of courage and decency, resilience and devotion to freedom that parade represented, and all the parades throughout the USA, in cities and townships, villages and suburbs. On floats and in wagons. Fancy and not.
and compact, hairy golden arms and chest, a gray-blonde comb-over, light skin and blue eyes. His stature was exactly what one would expect of an older Italian gentleman while his coloring was the opposite. One of his jobs was to ride herd on the grandchildren and keep order in the yard. With our unwanted help horse beans grew in the daisy and gladiolus beds, and avocado trees (launched from seeds on the kitchen window sill) sprouted almost anywhere. None of this made Grandpa happy.
backed up to a thick hedge that created a border between my grandparents’ yard and the Bonaccorsi’s, next door. Sometimes the vines in the hedge played a weaving game, tangling with other greenery then poking through into the lath house. Pink and red climbing roses grew at its sides among blue hydrangea bushes. Nature provided all the adornment needed against the crisp white back drop of the lath house.
length on each side. During the winter the table was covered with newspapers and screened racks for drying walnuts and fava beans in their variegated pods. As warm summer days slipped into chilly late autumn, walnuts dropped from the orchard trees. The nuts spent winter drying in the lath house and those not carried away by the squirrels made their way inside for shelling, sorting and storing.
I believe calling it merely spring cleaning would be to understate the energy and enthusiasm poured into lath house purification. All furniture was removed as walls were swept clean and spiders left homeless. The tangle of vines and webs and crunchy fall leaves trapped between them was removed from the lattice. Debris was broomed from the roof, the concrete floor mopped and rinsed with the hose. The table and benches were scoured before being returned to the lath house.
grandchildren were much actual help. I wasn’t. The idea that soon the table would be covered with lively print oil cloth and set for a family meal invited excitement on par with Christmas dinner. Memory of summers before, Grandma emerging from the back door and down the steps with a platter piled high with steaming 
The lath house no longer stands behind the home on Myrtle Street. A snoop on Google Earth revealed it’s been replaced by a Victorian-type gazebo. In my dreams I buy the little bungalow back for our family, my brothers and me, our children and grandchildren; we erase all evidence that it ever slipped from our hands, or that time has passed. There the lath house stands tall, awaiting the spring flurry that brought summer and stories of clinking glasses, shouts of 
Peanut butter sandwiches with Olallieberry jam and a little mac salad on the side. Daily lunch when staying with my grandparents during the hot summers in Santa Rosa.
Just like her. A free spirit and free-thinker in a generation unfamiliar with and unwelcoming to either quality in women, as if it weren’t difficult enough to be Jewish and raised in an orphanage. Or, maybe because of.
Cooking School. Then I found a recipe in a McCall’s cookbook I’d been given in 1975 by my cousin, Eva. “Fresh Berry Pie”.
I knew. I could taste it. Dimension, another layer of flavor, depth without sweetness. Unexpected. In a berry pie, or in the cookbook falling apart high up on the shelf in my kitchen cabinet.
cool? Did I remember to slide a little 
Right out of a 1950’s diner. Lava-like juices had bubbled through the lattice and cooled around the rim to a shiny, luscious deep purple. Flaky barely sweet pie crust, each bite filled with Olallieberry goodness.
ancient, tiny nun. I described all that had happened the day before. I had some fearsome faith back in the day. I probably thought she could pull up some Catholic mojo and make my grandmother better. I could barely get the words out to explain what I knew, what would be the undoing of my little family. Fanny was the light at the center of everything.
That first Christmas came three weeks after her death. I prayed even harder to the baby Jesus tucked in his tiny manger under the watchful eyes of His parents, nestled in the crisp white sheet at the bottom of our Christmas tree. With twinkling lights and shimmering tinsel, ornaments reflecting its surrounds, our tree stood tall and alone in the corner of our living room. Each evening in the quiet before bed I knelt before the tree. I prayed to atone for Fanny’s death. I hadn’t been good enough in God’s eyes to save her.
operated believing I wasn’t good enough. The ultimate judgment had been rendered and a life was lost. I saw it all in the rearview mirror and was shocked by the depth of the belief, the decision made as young girl based on a teacher’s words.
Hard leather soles make an unmistakable sound scuffling across an old wood floor. There’s a sharp clunk if the back slides off the heel and a little shuffling sound, because slippers are often extra roomy. My grandfather’s were.
Medaligia D’Oro.
Scappa via
American Social Club.
gas stove that still had a cubby for burning wood, and twirl her to him. He’d grab her in dance stance, and lead her around the kitchen floor while singing, Arrivederci, Roma. She resisted every step.
He had a shock of red hair.
Because I was not nearly mature enough to hear that kind of wisdom and probably never had pondered the word ‘ethics’, I immediately reported his statement to my best friend with the closest impersonation of his oh-so-serious voice I could muster. We laughed uproariously restating the phrase often especially before embarking on any kind of shenanigan.
And I think a country fractured by identity politics and hypocrisy mourns Senator John McCain precisely because he practiced ethical congruency with a rigour most don’t know exists let alone understand.
Her Meyer Lemon Mousse pie. Tangy to make your eyes water, smooth as my new grandson’s bum. Add a flaky crust and little dollop of sweetened whipped cream, a blackberry or blueberry garnish. Heaven. Silky heaven on a plate, served with a tart blink while taking in its beautiful, pale yellow hue.
folding in whipped cream. Then the pie hits the fridge for a nice little rest.
Checking the Rearview Mirror 