When I have a friend in need, I cook. It just feels right to make something nourishing or sweet for someone I care about. Hence, today’s matzo ball soup. The puffy balls dance in the simmering chicken broth, bumping up against bright orange circles of carrots. Last week, I scooped barbequed-pulled chicken straight from the crockpot into a glass dish and sped to a friend’s house to deliver it, still warm, along with take-and-bake rolls, fresh asparagus, and the banana muffins I’d pulled from my freezer.
For me, cooking to ease someone’s pain feels natural. Lately, I’ve been wondering if this instinct could be inherited. My mom’s a great cook, and when I’m sad or sick, all I want is her perfectly poached egg on toast. What about the culinary roots that extend farther back?
On my dad’s side, there’s Grammy Older: My urban, highly educated, world-traveling Jewish grandmother was an obvious inspiration for the matzo balls. But besides the Hot Milk Cake recipe that’s been handed down on her side through generations, I don’t much associate Grammy Older with actual cooking. Instead, I remember card games and Rummikub, gin and tonics, and evenings at the theater.
Foodwise, I think about butterscotch candies glinting like citrine in a crystal dish on the coffee table in her condominium. Eggy French toast for breakfast. Pungent shrimp scampi for dinner at her favorite restaurant, and Bryer’s chocolate ice cream in a cone for dessert.
On my mom’s side is Grammy Lawes, my rural Protestant grandmother, a farmer’s wife who raised six kids, mostly in near poverty in the house my grandfather built. My grandmother planted and tended the vegetables and my grandfather tended and slaughtered the cows, plus an occasional pig. Nothing ever went to waste. (I did ask my mom if Grammy ever made bone broth. She insists she never did).
When I think about Grammy Lawes, I remember homemade doughnuts drizzled with sweet maple syrup, also homemade. I crave her tangy bread-and-butter pickles and zesty tomato, onion, and green pepper “pickalili” relish.
Grammy’s chicken and biscuits combined flakey biscuits and juicy poached chicken smothered with savory gravy. She served cold potato salad with just the right amount of peas and hard-boiled eggs. I loved her country bread, still warm from the oven and slathered with sticky, creamy peanut butter. I remember the opaque Tupperware containers of every shape and size piled high on the back corner of the kitchen counter, always filled to the brim with sweet treats.
My warm, happy food associations blend seamlessly with my warm, happy memories of all my grandparents. Whether I was sitting at Grammy Lawes’ big wooden kitchen table or the modern glass-topped table in Grammy Older’s dining room, I felt safe. Loved. Cared for. And deeply nourished.
That’s how I want my loved ones to feel, especially when life deals them a blow. So today, once again, I’m cooking.
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