Andrew and I spent the bulk of our weekend grocery shopping, which foreshadows how much of this week will be spent in the kitchen. Nearly half of our Thanksgiving feast will be from the Farmer's Market (yay!), and then there were stops at the fish market, the regular grocery store, and one trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond for a deeper pie pan - so hopefully, I won't burn the pecan pie again this year. My blog turned out to be worth its weight in gold, because we printed out a copy and used it as a grocery and to-do list...not before adding a few items.
While I don't post quite as much about cooking as I do about house-related things, food has probably been a much more integral part of our ongoing "nesting" than any building project that Andrew and I have tackled together.
When we were dating and engaged, neither of us was adverse to cooking. I enjoyed it, as I always have, though tiny apartment kitchens and a limited assortment of pots and pans also limited the scope of what I tried to accomplish. After studying abroad in college, I could make a pretty mean Italian dinner, but that was about the extent of my skills. Andrew boasted about his stir-fry (not a favorite of mine) and grilling capablities (which I loved and still do). When I visited Andrew on weekends while I was in grad school, I'd often spend time cooking or baking something while he was at work, since he had a slightly bigger kitchen and a real table where we could sit and eat a meal. I'd make a lot of family recipes, and things that I enjoyed as a kid. I made shepherd's pie and meat loaf, cole slaw, and of course, mashed potatoes. It was never anything fancy, but Andrew and I liked cooking together and figured we wouldn't starve in our years of marriage.
After we'd been married for a few months, Andrew recieved the job offer that moved us to Iowa. I was short on work, which meant we were short on money - so while I had plenty of free time, I didn't have much to do. And this is when the Food Network changed my life. (Kidding...mostly).
I started watching because with no money for the foreseeable future, HGTV and TravelChannel made me lust for what I couldn't have. And because I was curious about what we did have. As newlyweds with a well-stocked registry, we owned every kitchen gadget known to man - plus matching plates, pretty silverware, and one silver spaghetti sever. Adding to the mystique of the culinary realm, our rental house had a decent sized kitchen with a giant formal dining room. While we were short on cash, we still needed to eat. And Iowa has really, really good grocery stores - I'd never seen such appetizing produce and meat. The stars were aligned in my favor.
As I became a student of Le Food Network Bleu, I started noticing that while Paula used butter, Rachel made things quick, Bobby made them cocky, Ina made them classic and Giada made it beautiful, they were all basically doing the same thing. In fact, if you watch 48 hours of the Food Network, you'll see the same recipes and techniques over and over again presented in a bunch of different ways - but at the end of the day, everyone's cake is made with flour and eggs (except for Sandra, who adds a diet coke to boxed mix...ew).
I'd always liked cooking, but I fell in love with cooking during those first few cold months in Iowa. It made me feel pride again because I could contribute to our home and welfare, even though I wasn't bringing home much of a paycheck. There were some failed experiments - like when I'd been cooking for 4 hours and Andrew came home to find me covered in red sauce and sobbing in the middle of the kitchen. My brave husband scooped as much sauce as he could off of the counters to top off his enchiladas and told me that the meal was still good and my effort was worth it.
During this time, I also grew closer to my grandma, who, with my grandpa, now lived closer to us than any other family. I'd call my grandma and ask, "I saw this recipe...how do you make yours?" or "I don't have this...what can I subsitute? What's another way to do that?" My grandma would tell me how proud she was of me when I'd tell her about the meals I'd made and how things turned out. When I'd visit her house, I felt more comfortable stepping in to help in the kitchen, and like a child again, I'd watch what she did closely. I needed to learn.
Though those first newlywed months were hardly idyllic - and God, were they cold - I can't help but smile when I think about them. I no longer have the Food Network in my life, but I do have a beautiful little kitchen that gets plenty of use. And I don't have as much time as I once did, but I'm grateful to have a full-time job. It's not typical for Andrew to come home to fully prepared meals anymore, but he has become an amazing sous chef. And though my grandma is no longer close by for hands-on cooking lessons, she is still the person I happily chatted with last Friday night about the different options for making gravy or whether or not to stuff the turkey before roasting it.
In a lot of ways, those first months of "good eating" set the tone for how we buy food to prepare at home now. Andrew and I do as much as we can to eat natural, locally-grown/raised food. When we first moved to Iowa, I quickly learned that the best way to make good food is to start with good ingredients - and when we moved into our home and started a garden, I realized that the best meals are ones that we grew ourselves. There is something almost spiritual about sitting down to a meal that you planted as a seed, and with the help of the earth, water, and sunshine, it returns to your hands to cook and in turn, nourish your body so your hands can do the work of planting again. If I can't grow my own food, I want to buy it from someone who feels this same way about their work.
As I look forward to making a huge meal for my family, those feelings of pride that I initially felt as a new wife return with even greater emotion. I'm proud of the ingredients that will be on our table - at least 3/4 of the produce on our table will have come from a local farm, which is an amazing feat considering that there's not much currently in season. And I'm proud, simply, that I know what to do with that bounty. During our conversation on Friday night, my grandma said "Thanksgiving doesn't need to be fussy - it's all the foods that your family loves, and usually those things aren't difficult."
And she is right. Nothing on our Thanksgiving table this year will be elegant or difficult or even remarkable. But as I collected our recipes in order to make our multiple grocery trips, I felt like I was collecting together pieces of our family story. These are the foods that I grew up eating, that my parents enjoyed, that my grandparents prepared, and in some cases, the recipes that my great-grandparents gave to my grandparents. This is the food that my family loves.
Last year, this realization was an emotional experience. Initially, I was thrilled to have "survived" keeping track of all of those dishes and planning the meal. But I had a hard time choking back tears when I finally took my seat at the Thanksgiving table, and saw how connected this meal was to our family. Andrew had just used the electric carving knife given to him by my grandpa (who always carved the turkey). We were sitting at Andrew's Grandma Ruth's table, and our plates were filled with Andrew's Grandma Ope's stuffing, my Grandma's oyster dressing and cole slaw. On the ledge in the kitchen, my maternal Grandma's pecan pie was waiting. So many members of the family were missing in the seats, but it felt like both our families were all there at our table.
In a book I read over the summer, the author wrote about how she felt closer to her family members when she cooked, especially during a holiday meal. As she moved throughout her kitchen, she would remember loved ones' hands, voices, and laugher from the years where they had been able to come together for meals. I felt tears streaming down my cheeks when I read those pages, because all I could think about was the mashed potatoes.
Whenever I peel potatoes, I use a paring knife, like my grandma does. As I run my knife under the potato skin, tempting fate as I use my thumb as a stopper for the blade, I can feel my grandma standing next to me at the sink. I think of the years that I stood next to her as a child with the safer (and slower) peeler in hand, as I watched her hands with that wooden-handled knife and how they moved in simple rhythm like folk music - like mine do now. After the potatoes are boiled, I run them through a potato ricer, smiling to myself as I remember Andrew's Grandma Ruth telling me about how her husband, Andrew's Grandpa, insist that she use the ricer so they're creamy - and that he could tell when she didn't! I've learned to make less of a mess using Ruth's ricer than I did the first time when I tried to figure out that contraption in her kitchen. As I spoon the potatoes into a serving bowl, I think of my grandma plopping the bowl in between my cousin and me as we mock argue about who will get to eat all of the potatoes, since clearly there aren't enough to share. Family members, don't be surprised if I put the bowl of potatoes next to me. That's just where they belong.
This year, I have so much to be thankful for. So much has changed since last year's Thanksgiving, and I had so much to be thankful for then, even though my family had gone through a particularly difficult fall. In the year that has passed since I prepared my first Thanksgiving meal, Andrew and I went on a wonderful vacation with my parents, I started a new job, we planted our first vegetable garden, we doubled the size of the living space in our home, remembered how fun it is to ride a bike again, made friends and rekindled old friendships, and as we do every year, we grew older, a little wiser, and certainly happier in our life together. My life is filled with bounty and blessings.
But most of all, this year and every year, I'm just thankful for the mashed potatoes.
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