Now, I cook – and some awesome homemade deals to boot. But for me, personally, the extreme fall and winter are the time when cooking means mmm, mmm, good. Give me gravy, gratins, baked apples, winter squashes, cornmeal, roasts, hearty soups, comforting banana muffins, stuffed cabbage rolls, piping hot casseroles with warm buttered biscuits, savory cooked onions with root vegetables, kale, vats of chili with peppers, comical gingerbread cookies, heavy lasagna, and loaves of zingy cranberry bread.
At last we’ve hit the cooler temps here in Florida. I’m hearing our far northern neighbors are already dealing with snow and I’m lamenting that we haven’t yet had a full 24 hours of cold. I brought out my flannels in defiance and expectations sometime in September. I’ve found them to be handy, now and again, as a sweater might be…but not part of my actual outfit. Last night, however, there was a bit of a chill…and while my less pessimistic Floridian friends have had their windows open for the last week, I’m just now considering opening wide our kitchen windows for the afternoon. The weather outside is delightful with enough of a crisp to find me typing with a blanket draped over my lap.
Tonight is my night to cook for my grandmother - along with my parents, we are taking care of her through these final stages of life. She doesn’t eat much…and I’m hoping to inspire an appetite with my very first fall meal. I’ve a beautiful brisket marinating at the moment, and soon will add the company of vegetables and potatoes. After posting this entry, I’ll be up and about making a homemade crust for the tumble of apples on my counter-top. Cooking seems to be the one thing that I can offer that makes a difference to her…there’s something about a visit around a table with loved ones.
While it certainly doesn’t have to be this way, and I’m sure it isn’t for everyone, but cooking during this season seems to be more than just for eating. The hot dogs, salads and sandwiches during the spring and summer months seem to be more about expediency…because we have to rush from one place to the other. During the winter seasons, maybe it is because we are want to be inside, cooking brings about a binding of the family, both past and present. I’m fortunate enough to have inherited a handful of family recipes as well as favorites clipped from their newspapers. I’ve been blessed to be at the side of two grandmothers in their kitchen – to learn by one how food is a line through our history and how it is can be akin to a Holy Communion, and from the other, balance and portions and placement, the etiquette associated with the serving of meals…how the small touches accompanying the food speaks to the value you hold on the honor of serving. I’ve been touched with the joy of teaching, or attempting to teach, these things to my own children…and to have delighted in stepping back from the counter, allowing them to take over and experiment on their own. What I have added to pass down in our culinary heritage is the delight of experiencing not just the plain and simple, homey tastes of our food, but to expand into various ethnicities, reclaiming those of their own mixed heritage but also to unite with those times in history via spices and techniques. I can already see what each of my children, unanimously, will add to our intangible family cookbook is the unfettered knowing of what to add and when, without the restraints to measuring cups, precise measurements and combinations. For them the family recipes will likely be given a nod when paying homage to an individuals entry. But, they are returning, I smile, to what cooking once was and what should be…a joy of discovery and union of love.
