Sometimes the past still tries to teach us something — even if it’s just to move on.
Late one afternoon, I decided to pick up the ingredients to make my mom’s famous Swedish meatballs. It was a chilly Saturday and they are my definitive comfort food. I was hungry for memories, though I’ll confess, I’d made just a few changes in the recipe since she passed away 16 years ago. The occasional rumblings beneath my feet were undoubtedly her shifting in her grave. Change was not easy for her, so I can imagine how she handled the ultimate transition. A morbid smile creeps across my lips — we had a complicated relationship.
My mother, Thelma, always followed her mother’s recipe with psychotic conviction; half devotion and half terror. This one recipe unlocks the mystery of my ancestry. My grandmother, a bitter woman named Hilda, was everything her name implies — a staunch, strict, steadfast Swede with a strong, taut mouth and pinhole eyes. Veering from her tried-and-true recipe was risky at best.
Hilda could freeze ice with a glance. I know this because her vintage portrait still hangs in my hallway. That stare, even as a young woman, is inescapable. At a time when softness was the feminine ideal, her broad chin and unyielding gaze froze even the most reliable minute hand in its tracks.
Before I dared deviate from the original recipe, I stared at Hilda’s portrait for an hour, chatting. I told her my plans. Her meatballs would always be the best, no doubt, but times had changed. Beef, for me anyway, had fallen out of favor.
“Blame your daughter,” I said, laying responsibility for my distaste for a variety of foods squarely on my poor mother’s shoulders.
Thelma, my mother, was the youngest child of the rigid Swede, hitting the heart of the depression at just 4 years old. She became the forgotten one, the ragged one, the afterthought, all the stigmas later bestowed upon her youngest who now stood pleadingly at her grandmother’s portrait.
Maybe it was too much pressure, having a professional cook for a mother, but Thelma was a nightmare in the kitchen. I could just imagine Hilda, straight-backed, salt of the earth, formidable by every standard, standing watch over her every move. Recipes were state secrets back then and I’m sure Hilda held her kitchen wisdom close to the vest, guarding it even from her daughter.
This explains why my mom always felt like she had to prove something in the kitchen; spending her life clipping recipes with rabid conviction. She’d collect odd sounding concoctions that screamed mid-1960s ingenuity with every teaspoon of gelatin: Chicken Livers Portugal, Tuna Curry Pronto, Honey Marmalade Bubble Loaf, Savory Fish Cheese Puffs, Crescent Billows, Ripe Olive Creole Treats, Potato Chip Tuna Surprise, and anything that quivered, was called jiffy or miracle, or that was pink on purpose was dangerous territory.
When I first started cooking, I wasn’t much better than Thelma and not nearly as blindly experimental. I clearly knew nothing and had no one to guide me. Hilda was gone four years before I was even born, even though her essence lingers like burned popcorn. Any cooking questions I had were met with a stern silence from my mom. I realized many years later, she probably didn’t know the answers. It wasn’t until I got married and moved away that I really learned my way around the kitchen with the dutiful help of my mother-in-law, Betty, one of those prim ladies with crisp hair who was excellent at everything.
With her guidance, I became a fearless culinary sorceress. While some things literally singed with error, I’d brush away the ashes and move on to the next challenge. I stirred, mixed, whipped, whisked, concocted, combined, spilled, splashed, and tasted, tasted, tasted… It was all about flavor, beauty and innovation; all things that Thelma knew nothing about.
Now, it all came down to changing the meat. Seemed simple enough — swap ground turkey for ground beef, and then a dash or two of something extra, a little less of this, a little more of that — all very unobtrusive; subtle, really. Hilda’s eyes blinked, I swear. A protest erupted; she couldn’t sit still at the very thought, even in two dimensions.
Everything is positioned on the counter in mixing order — perfect — 2 lbs. ground turkey, the main ingredient patiently waiting, a sergeant to his eager troops. What next? Perched at attention: onion (sweet now, not yellow); white bread, well, whole grain; cream (heavy instead of light); garlic (fresh/crushed); an egg (organic is okay, right?); salt (sea salt) and pepper (fresh cracked.) Elevated, I thought; tradition be damned. “Don’t you dare blink again, old woman.”
Shimmer. That’s the best way to describe it. A sound, a feeling, a vision, all three. She heard me and even after 64 years since leaving this earthbound plane, she still cares about her damned meatballs.
The stove awaits, pan heating, melted butter, with just enough grapeseed oil to prevent burning. The flame fills the room with buttery richness and my mood shifts to chef-like defiance, clicking through steps with alacrity. This is my world, my zone, my tools, my ideas, my moment.
I slowly realize nothing remained unaltered, unaffected. Meat, board, chop the onion superfine (Hilda’s hearty chunks just didn’t work), the egg, garlic, bread soaked in cream, salt, pepper and a little magic. Yes, magic.
“Stick with me, Grammy.” More shimmer and, I think, a little snicker.
The smell gets me every time. I hold the large glass bowl under my nose and take it in with a ritualistic fervency. It’s an earthy, sweet, oniony, garlicky, emulsion. It’s always the same and it’s how I know I’ve done it right. I set it down next to the stove and roll the sticky substance into perfect little balls — uniform — then carefully set them in the hot pan. The sizzle releases the melting butter and singed meat smell into the room with a warm explosion. I work clockwise, crowding the pan with a labyrinth of flavor until I can fit no more. After they sear, a glass cover steams them in their own juices, assuring fully cooked fowl.
The sweet onions crawl up the walls; the air curls around the garlic. Perfection. As the beautiful simmering orbs turn from a pale red to a mottled brown canvas of the masters, then it’s all about the gravy. Hilda had her way: water, flour, Swedish simplicity. Thelma would make her gravy with an ardent commitment: plain mucilage and a bone broth. They both relied heavily on salt and pepper.
I discovered a broth paste that saves a lot of time and refrigerator space. That, with boiling water, butter (ah, butter!) and flour, a roux to manifest something amazing. The roux is a gift bestowed from the heavens for the greater good of humanity. It’s so universal, I can’t fathom how anyone would overlook it. The pan drippings make it true. While the combined flavors click over the top, I think about the original version. Sorry, Hilda. These are crazy better. That’s what learning is all about: taking, loving and improving.
It just happens — a miracle of incarnation — a complete memory bubbling on the stove. Every thought I ever had about my mom tickled my mind. It occurred to me I had made reminiscence stew with appropriate changes. Just like my memories, I’d fixed it. I made it more me than her, more me than them.
Hilda stared through the wavy, hand-fashioned glass. Something had changed. Softness, that wasn’t there before glazed across her smooth skin and constricted black pupils. Could it be approval? I paused just to draw in the smell of heat and butter and gravy, when it struck. I live for this moment, even before anything would pass my lips or play across my palate. The journey, the gathering, prepping, chopping, measuring, mixing, guessing, molding, heating, searing, scraping, all of it, was heaven to me.
If there were a way to tell my mom, “Thelma, it just wasn’t yours, and that’s okay.” I think she’d finally let go of all the Sweet Anchovy Gelatin Surprise recipes and thousands of tiny newspaper clippings would flit away in a ticker-tape frenzy. The incomplete soul of a little girl who felt less for every day of her life that resulted in a failed casserole is at last free.
Everything finally made sense. I saw my reflection in Hilda’s glass, our faces as similar as they are different. Yesterday, beautifully blurred by time. That which we love, always perfected by the sweetness of memory. Maybe Hilda’s famous Swedish meatballs were not the greatest, but it was her kitchen, warm as a heartbeat in the center of a bleak winter. It was her brow, glistening with laborious sweat, or the delicious smell of home at the end of an exhausting day.
She saw my love for the task. She saw how seconds click into minutes and time slips by unnoticed. She saw that everything about her recipe had changed except the single most flavorful ingredient… passion. It is and always has been all about passion.
