August 23, 2006

How The Asparagus Fern Grew

The bad things about your mother dying far outweigh the good ones, but it does free me up to tell stories about her that I never would have dared to publish before. My mom’s friends all knew her as a wonderful cook, but my sisters and I can attest to the fact than in the 1970’s her culinary instincts were not as finely honed as they were later. I remember sitting at the table, being tickled by the fringe of the asparagus fern that grew like kudzu in the window right behind my chair, squirming before a variety of unappetizing dinners.

My mom made several meat dishes that were awful. She didn’t let us snack after 3:30 so we’d be sure and be hungry for supper. I made it a point to ask what was for dinner at 3:25 every afternoon, in case it was country fried steak, meatloaf, or hamburgers. If those dishes were on the menu, that was our cue to raid the pantry and hide whatever we could find, which was usually nothing more exciting than All-Bran or Fig Newtons, but on a good day might be Oreos, so we’d have provisions to sustain us until morning.

To make country fried steak, my mom took pieces of exceptionally gristly meat and dipped them in a slimy batter that involved lots of pepper, and fried the whole mess in a pan. The batter never got crispy; it simply adhered to the meat underneath. The result was smelly and hard to cut, and took so much effort to chew that after eating a couple of bites your gums would bleed and you wouldn’t be able to floss for a week.

I’ve met many meatloaves I detested, but none sank to the level of my mom’s. Her recipe instructed her to mix meat, ketchup, green bell peppers, eggs, and pieces of bread into a mass and bake it.

My mom wasn’t very detail oriented. She left the pieces of bell pepper in huge chunks, despite my pleas that she chop the offending vegetable just a little smaller so the finished product wouldn’t be so intimidating. Worse, she’d grab a few pieces of white bread, carelessly rip them in half and toss them into the mixture, where they’d soak up a little egg and ketchup during cooking. It was not uncommon to eat a bite of her meatloaf expecting to feel something the texture of ground beef, but have a slithery piece of ketchup-covered bread slide over your tongue instead.

My mom’s hamburgers were equally disgusting. Now I know it was a problem in the patty formation. Instead of forming the meat into something akin to the shape of my breast that would cook evenly, she’d mold it more into the shape of an egg, then grill the hell out of it so that it would be done in the middle.

One summer night in 1974, we were sitting in our orange and yellow kitchen, choking down a hamburger dinner. I bravely took a huge bite of mine, hoping that this time the meat would be flavorful and yummy. I started chewing. I tasted carbon, and dry meat, and bun, and the more I chewed the more I realized I was never going to be able to swallow that bite. I jumped from the table and ran into the den, across the green shag rug, past the aquarium and out the sliding glass doors onto the patio, and I spit the whole thing out on the grass in the backyard.

My father was right behind me, and he looked at the pile of mushed up food lying forlornly on the ground, and then he spanked me for wasting food. It was the most unfair spanking ever administered in the State of Alabama. At cookouts, I mostly eat hot dogs now.

It wasn’t just main courses that caused my mom problems. I’ll never know what possessed her to pour ketchup, mayonnaise and pickle relish into a small bowl and stir it into a pinkish, lumpy goo, which she then served on top of shredded iceberg lettuce, cheerfully declaring it “homemade Thousand Island dressing.” Often she was too busy to mix it thoroughly, and the resulting spread was streaked with red and white, which didn’t seem to bother her or my dad at all.

We live in the south, the birthplace of sweet tea, but my mom had us fix Nestea– instant tea– every night for herself and my dad. Wikipedia is absolutely right when it notes that “instant teas are typically purchased because of their costs and convenience, and are typically of poor flavour [sic] and quality.” It was simultaneously sour and weak, because the ice cubes had always melted by the time the tea made it to the table.

We were clamoring for the instant tea, though, when we tasted our milk. I am firmly convinced that my mother poured those milks and set them on the table as her very first step in preparing the evening meal, long before she preheated the oven or got out the ketchup, mayonnaise and pickle relish. By the time we took a sip, the milk was lukewarm at best.

My mom thought she had a wonderful green thumb and that’s why the asparagus fern she displayed in its macrame holder grew so lush. I know it was the pieces of bell pepper, hunks of meatloaf and gallons of tepid milk hurled into its fronds that really made it grow. In the end, it was her cooking, not her gardening, that made the difference.