The Joy of Yummy Cooking

The Joy of Yummy Cooking

By Marsha Ingrao

Julia never claimed to take after her namesake. The fact that her mother hung that moniker on her still chaffed forty years later. Her thoughts roamed back to her past conversations with her mom as she drove to a family St. Paddy’s Day dinner.

Julia Child, indeed. “The only way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Nothing but finding her a “good” husband” seemed to matter to her mother. How antiquated was that, anyway? What kind of a chef were you, Mom?

Julia’s mom had the reputation of being the worst cook in the church. Bake sales and family holiday meals came and went, and her mother’s flat or burned cookies ended up in the trash. At potlucks, everyone else took home empty platters and serving bowls. Not her family. They often had eaten her Mom’s failures until they disappeared. Julia remembered surreptitiously removing some of the remains herself.

 As she continued her accusatory mental conversation with her mom, Julia turned onto the freeway and crossed the Markam Bridge coming from Beaverton onto Interstate 84 towards Northeast Portland.  

Even Grandma Grace teased you about taking that horrendous creamy chili casserole to the church potluck when I was thirteen. You tried a recipe from Good Housekeeping. Now, recipes have ratings and reviews. Were you still trying to win Dad’s heart then?

To be fair, her dad had been no inspiration to any cook. Julia remembered making sloppy joes to earn her Girl Scout cooking merit badge when she was ten.

How could I forget? Dad leaned back in his chair, loosened his tie, and threw it over his shoulder “to keep it clean,” he said. He stabbed at his bun, slathered it in the tomato soup and catsup sloppy joe concoction, and took a bite. As if nothing about dinner was different, he droned on and on about his stressful day at work. Even her younger brother Sammy stared at him, expecting some kind of a comment as he rolled the murdered bun around his plate.

You tried to smooth things for him, Mom. I’ve replayed your conversation in my head so much it’s like watching a sitcom rerun for the hundredth time.

“Didn’t Julia do an excellent job making sloppy joes tonight, James? She’s working on her Girl Scout Cooking Merit Badge,” her mom had smiled, her lipstick smeared only slightly from eating sloppy joes.

“That’s nice. Did you hear what I said, Martha?”

“James, you know how important cooking is to a woman. How else is she supposed to get a good husband?”

“Who cares about some Cooking Merit Badge, Martha? A badge doesn’t make you a cook. If you ask me, Julia,” he looked at her for a split second. “You ought to have a backup plan for your future.”

When he finished the last word of his monologue, he put his napkin on top of the plate. Without a word, he headed for the couch to watch cartoons with her eight-year-old brother Sammy before his news program started. Yes, Mom, that hurt, but I felt numb. Even then, it was like watching someone else’s family on TV.

Julia passed Providence Hospital and took the exit.

You signed the badge requirement, Mom. Finding a good husband was important to you. It stopped mattering to me on that day. As far as I was concerned, Dad had settled the question of my future.

“Come in here and peel tomatoes while I snap the beans,” her mother called to Julia as she threw her wool coat over the mid-century turquoise swivel chair in the living room. The house smelled like St. Patrick’s Day, corned beef and sauerkraut. Bubble and Squeak, her mother called it.

As she walked into her mom’s 1970s olive green kitchen, the dog scratched at the back door to go outside.

“What’s the matter, boy? Do you have bad Bubble and Squeak memories, too?” Julia bent down and scratched Guy’s ears as she opened the back door. The March wind ruffed his wavy golden-red fur and blew loose bits of winter detritus across her Mom’s brown Portland lawn. The lioness wind sucked a tiny stream of the odoriferous steam out the door before Julia could push it shut.

As a teen with braces, she couldn’t bite into the thick slab of corned beef that dominated her plate like a gorilla in a cage of guinea pigs. She couldn’t even gnaw on it like Sammy did, stabbing a hunk with his fork as he attacked it with his canines. He reminded her of their childhood dog, Scrappy, shaking his head, trying to tear apart a piece of meat.

Poor Sammy covered his ears every time Julia picked up her knife. She remembered how hard she worked to slice off one bite of corned beef she could chew. Her dull knife scraped across the Corelle plate as she tried to cut through the gristle ribboned through the corned beef. Inevitably, at least one stringy red morsel slid off the plate and splattered onto the floor. On corned beef days, Scrappy never let on that he knew something edible had hit the ground.

Her mom had since learned the secret of crock pots.

“Are you using that crock pot I gave you last Christmas, Julia? You know how important it is to get a few recipes under your belt.”

Crock pots became her mom’s best friend. She had at least ten of them. She could never find where she put them, so she would buy another. Five years ago, Julia had found two of them on the top shelf in the guest bathroom closet, where her mom couldn’t reach.

“Please, Julia, take them home. I insist. Consider them early Christmas presents. They’re a godsend. Meat comes out tender every time, and you don’t even have to watch the timer. Trust me, it’s the best way to win over a man.”

By Christmas of the same year, her mom had forgotten about the bathroom incident and had given her a shiny new crock pot. In the years following, she often forgot and gave Julia another crock pot. They had made great gifts for her friends who had married during the year.

Opening the refrigerator, Julia found a new bag of baby carrots.

“You forgot to put the carrots in the crock pot?”

Ripping into it, Julia took one and crunched as she responded to her mom’s dating advice. “Yeah, Mom. If I get any more recipes stored under my belt, no man will look my way no matter how great of a cook I am.”

Why do I constantly fall into her trap? It’s not like I have to defend my marital status. Or my cooking, or lack of it, for that matter. I’m obviously not starving here!

“That’s for sure,” Sammy said as he sauntered into the kitchen, his two kids on his heels.

“I love you too, Sammy.” Had he been reading her mind again?

“Aunt Julia, did you bring anything chocolate like you promised?” the girls asked in unison.

“There’s a bag on the chair by my coat.”

“You’ll never get a good man, Julia,” her mom started.

I guess not, you didn’t. Not that I didn’t love you, Dad, but you weren’t a great catch, were you? How many husbands were served breakfast in bed every day of their married lives? And who’s dumb enough to eat a half-pound of bacon a day? Mom’s not entirely to blame for what happened to you. As if smoking wasn’t bad enough.

And Julia hadn’t found a good man. She turned forty in July. Her career as a pulmonologist had taken her concentration during the period of time when most young women met and married their husbands and started families.

“Are you still seeing that nice Doctor Franco, dear?”

No, he’s seeing the nice doctor. Give me some credit for the fourteen years I put in to get to this point in life. Not to mention the eight years to get established in my practice.

Her mom handed her a head of lettuce to shred. “After you finish, the potatoes need to be peeled and quartered.”

“Give Julia a break, Mom. She’s a nice doctor, too. Remember how hard she worked to get a fellowship after her internship? Jeez, we hardly saw her. Speaking of breaks, don’t we have enough cabbage in this meal?” Sammy said, sticking a fork into the crock pot to test the corned beef. “Where’s the carrots?”

“I guess I forgot them. Put them in a pan on the stove. I’ll have you know that cabbage improves your cholesterol. Do you want to have a stroke?”

Julia gripped the potato peeler harder as she shot a warning look at her brother.

Read my thoughts, bro. There’s no point in arguing with or blaming her, either. She reads about nutrition, but reading and practice are two different things.

The truth was that Julia was seeing Dr. Franco. She liked him. He still teased her because she served him Costco lasagna on their second date.

“What’s wrong with Costco lasagna?” her brother had asked her after the fiasco. She’d had him and the kids over two nights after her big date to eat leftovers. Sammy would eat anything. He hated to cook as much as she did. The girls knew the inside of McDonald's a lot more than they knew what a kitchen was for.

“He said you don’t invite an Italian over for dinner and serve him Costco lasagna.”

“That’s not as bad as the chocolate cake you made with creamed corn in it.”

“It was moist.” Julia giggled and gave her brother a punch in the arm.

“Seriously, is he still seeing you?” Sammy walked through the dining room into the living room to check out the bag of chocolates.

The lack of an open floor plan for the house gave them the privacy Julia needed for a chat with her brother. After their dad’s stroke, Sammy became her best friend. No one knew the agony of long-term caregiving as well as he did.

Julia followed him, leaving the potatoes quartered in the pot of cold salty water.

Turning to the girls, Sammy grabbed the half-empty bag of chocolates and said, “Go play outside with Guy. Don’t forget to button your coats. It’s colder than it looks. Dad needs to talk to Aunty Julia, and you need to stop eating chocolates before dinner.”

“Don’t tell Mom, but yeah, we’re still seeing each other.” Julia wanted to talk about Dr. Franko. “Anthony was kind of turned on that I even tried to cook for him. I made him fried chicken and mashed potatoes with peas last week.”

“Aren’t you getting domestic? Is Mom getting through to you after all these years,” Sammy asked, grinning as he held out the bag of chocolates. “Packaged potatoes or real?”

“Very funny. He seemed proud that his parents both loved to cook. He laughed as he told me about their incessant arguments over which brand of tomato sauce was the best for the sauce, how many cups of breadcrumbs to put in the meatballs, and where the butter dish went in the refrigerator.”

“Sounds like a normal family to me,” Sammy laughed chewing on a chocolate covered caramel, as he dangled one long leg over the frayed arm of the faux brocade couch.

“And we’re not normal?”

“Hold on to your horses. I’m on your side, remember? When are you going to see him again?”

“We’re going to a conference in Palm Springs next week. He rented a house for the weekend.”

Sammy whistled, “Doesn’t sound like you’re going to take in much of the conference.”

“’ How to Improve Lung and Heart Function Through Diet,’ um, I probably won’t get too much from it that I haven’t already heard from Mom’s nutrition lectures based on the latest magazine theories.”

“I’m sure you’ll eat well. You want this last truffle?”

“No thanks, you eat it, I’m stuffed.”

After lunch, the family migrated to the family room, plopped into comfortable chairs, and listened to the snapping electric fireplace.

“Let’s play Trivia,” Sammy suggested. “Nineties version.”

“No way! Girls against boys, and 60s version,” her mom announced, putting her arms around the girls.

How ironic is that statement, Mom? Poor Sammy.

“We’ll mix them. You be Sammy’s partner, Mom. The girls and I challenge you both.”

Looking through the clouded windows dripping with condensation at the drab landscape shrouded in gray, Julia smiled at how easily Sammy’s girls were enticed to stay inside. For once, they didn’t mind sitting at the game table in front of the fireplace playing board games with the “old folks.”

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly without any additional “cooking to snag a man” references. The two paper Thanksgiving plates sitting at opposite ends of the game table piled high with her mom’s crunchy dark brown chocolate chip cookies sat untouched.

Before they left, Julia loaded the dishwasher while Sammy and the girls packaged up the leftovers so that everyone had enough Bubble and Squeak to last them for at least a week. Her mother threw the cookies into the trash.

“I should have put green M&M’s in them instead of chocolate chips,” she said as if that explained their rejected status.

Sammy and Julia walked out together carrying their full ziplocked bags. Julia’s scarf whipped like a tail around her face. The wind blasted like a gun, shooting snow pellets and frozen air from straight down the Columbia River Gorge.

Over her brother’s chatter, she heard the frosty spring gusts whispering dreams through the wispy cypress evergreens that lined the street. Julia felt old resentments grow brittle and fall from their boughs and crash to the ground. Glints of stars peeked through the descending fog, promising a new beginning.

Sammy opened her car door and winked. “You know, Julia, if you put these bags in the freezer, they work great as ice blocks in the ice chest. I’m assuming you’re taking plenty of groceries to cook for Anthony.”

“Great idea. Anthony wouldn’t have it any other way. He says he loves my cooking. Don’t tell Mom that I’m rethinking her crazy advice, but I’m so excited. I think he might actually be falling for me. I’m making sloppy joes and tater tots the first night. I can’t wait. I hope there’s a crock pot in the house.”