One’s life resembles a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. However, you never have a complete picture of it to use as a guide because life isn’t static and cannot be contained in a box. Our lives would contain millions of pieces if we broke them down into their components.
Unlike a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces you can spread out on a table, you can’t turn the pieces of your life right-side-up and neatly sort them into categories the way you sort out bits of blue sky, a roof, a chimney or the green of trees. You probably have some parameters that form edges, and you know your past to the extent that your memory is accurate. However, your present can change dramatically for better or for worse in an instant, and your future is unknowable.
Were I to categorize the pieces of my life, I’d see that cooking, eating, dining at restaurants and reading recipe books and food magazines would fill a large chunk of my personal “jigsaw puzzle.” To discourage guests from eating too much, the miser in Moliere’s play had a plaque in his dining room that said, “One should eat to live, not live to eat!” Alas, the reverse is true of me as I’m a foodie. One of my greatest pleasures in life is food whether it’s simple beans and cornbread or a gourmet meal in a wonderful restaurant such as Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. Since television “news” obsesses on murder trials or features the blathering of puffinguts, I watch the chefs on the Food Network.
I continue to receive e-mails about food memories. One writer rhapsodized about kidneys. Bill’s father was English, so Bill was brought up eating kidneys. Many people would put them in a class with liver, but actually beef steak and kidney pie is tasty. Bill is far more willing to experiment than I. He even ate sweetbreads (pancreas) at The Keys restaurant that used to be in Indianapolis. He used to order liver once a year to remind himself how good other food was.
“The bread they shared was more than bread.” — Jan Karon
This letter from Knightstown chum, Linda Forst Link, illustrates the bond and comfort that food creates. She wrote of her mother Vivian: My mother was a really good cook. I loved strawberry season, as she made my Grandmother Josephine’s sweet biscuit shortcake. Sometimes on a summer’s evening, that’s what we had for supper — a bowl of her sweet (drop) biscuits smothered in luscious sweet strawberries. My dad liked to pour milk on his. The biscuits would be warm from the oven, and the strawberries would be cold and sweet, and juicy. Soooooo good!
Always at Christmas, Mother would make cinnamon rolls for Christmas Eve dinner with whatever else we were having. She made a lot of yeast rolls during the year — always some kind of hot bread for Sunday dinner. I also loved her waffles — she made her own syrup with sugar and brown sugar, water, and maple flavoring. My Grandmother Forst creamed every vegetable and fried in butter. Her pie dough was made with lard. Of course, my dad’s family all had heart problems and died in their 40’s and 50’s. Coincidence? Probably not.
Mother’s French fries were a real treat. When I would come home from school and open the fridge and see the potatoes cut and ready and soaking in cold water before frying them, it was such a happy surprise to know we were having them for dinner. I keep thinking of how Mother always made the holidays special with special recipes and I consider myself blessed to have had all the good food that was so lovingly prepared for us.
Linda’s letter and others that I received are about something more important than food itself. They remind me of the Pillsbury dough boy’s pronouncement: “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven.” wclarke@comcast.net