Stepping Up to the Plate
It was late August when I boarded a plane destined for Arizona with my mom, dad, and little brother. I had been dabbling in the kitchen all summer, relying mostly on cookbooks and advice from friends. The cookbooks would have been a bit much for my carry-on bag, and anyways, I assumed we would mostly eat out on vacation.
We stepped off the airplane and into a time-lapse. In a quarter of an hour the welcoming blue skies capitulated into inky black clouds and torrential rains. Flash flood warnings blew up our phones while we raced to rent a car, buy groceries, and survive the ten mile drive to our VRBO. Lighting animated our faces with striking shadows.
As my dad pulled into the Trader Joe’s parking lot, my mom riding shotgun, my brother and I in the backseat, I felt 15 again. Back then I had longed to take the wheel. Once inside, the past decade, one notorious for rapidly increasing responsibilities, infused itself back into me.
Ten years ago, I would have followed along beside the cart, eyes glazed over. This time, I left my parents to their own devices while I picked out ciabatta rolls, marinated mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and a balsamic glaze. By the time we got in for the night, my parents were exhausted by the long day of travel. I savored this newfound sense of calm and ease in the kitchen, encouraging my parents to rest while I threw together sandwiches.
My parents met in a greenhouse where they both grew plants for a living. They raised me like a cherished seedling among the Foxglove and Columbines, nourished me with scientific diligence. I took in proper quantities of vitamins and nutrients, plenty of water. It was my grandmothers who taught me my mother’s best kept secret: We just might eat for pleasure.
My Grandma Linda raised four children in Alliance, Nebraska. A modest woman, her preferred topic of conversation was the Bible. I, on the other hand, wanted to know how she learned to fly planes or what she did when she worked for the CIA. She never had much to say about those things, besides how tough it was to be a girl when she was growing up.
Every summer she would take in my cousins and I and let us run wild for a few months. We demonstrated gratitude for this precious independence by cooking her breakfast on her birthday each June. She always made us feel welcome in her kitchen.
Grandma Linda taught me to bake chocolate chip cookies when I was still small enough to sit cross legged on the counter while scooping flour into the great big bowl of her shining red KitchenAid. During holidays, I used to help her prepare our family’s sacred recipe: Scotcharoos. The sweet treat combined peanut butter and Rice Krispies on the bottom with chocolate and butterscotch chips melted down and slathered across the top. To this day, she still slips chocolate bars into my palm whenever I come home to visit.
I found all the cookies and chocolate inspiring, but my mom, for her part, did a wonderful job protecting me from the evils of processed sugar and whole sticks of butter. When I wanted to bake brownies with my friends, she complained that we would make a mess, but I think she really just disapproved of the indulgence. Sometimes she gave in and let us whip up a batter, but when we started tasting it she lost her cool. Raw eggs? No! Are you crazy?
We flew to Arizona to visit Grandma Linda and Aunt Vicki and Cousin Jessica. They had recently moved away from our tight-knit PNW unit to sunny Mesa, despite the storms and the scorpions. Still getting settled in their new house, they preferred to come hangout with us at our rental.
In this new suburban neighborhood, restaurants lagged behind residential developments, so we were mostly on our own when it came to food. I started cooking breakfast every morning because I was hungry and no one else seemed to be bothered about it.
Lounging poolside, watching for signs of incoming monsoons on the horizon, reminded me of the hot-headed climates I’d recently traveled to: Tampa, Mexico, Puerto Rico. The next thing you know I was whipping up margaritas and tostones, guacamole with peppers we found at a local market, experimental smoothies with imported tropical fruits I’d never seen before and couldn’t name. Grandma Linda started calling me the “little chef” and my parents shrugged like, “We can’t complain.”
I caught the travel bug from my Grandma Arlene. She always lived far away, so the occasions we spent together were extravagant affairs. A Catholic who never planned to retire, she worked hard her whole life, and still works hard today. From Disney World to Sears Tower, she showed me a great big world out there to explore.
I started flying alone when I was 12. Together we ate Chow Mein in Seattle, Borscht in Chicago, Grouper in Miami. Our meals often stretched late into the night, as she filled my tummy with foreign flavors and my brain with useful knowledge, like how to suck shrimp free from their tails or how to eat rice with chopsticks.
She taught me not only how to eat well, but how to eat with style. In childhood, tea time called for sparkly red dresses and freshly painted nails. When I was in college, she took me to Europe for the first time. Above drinking age in the Old World, I ordered my first cocktail according to her suggestion, a classy drink that would take me years to appreciate: An Old Fashioned.
My parents were hesitant about letting me travel from such a young age. They always warned my grandma not to spoil me “rotten,” but it didn’t matter. I would come home “an absolute monster,” and my mom would spend the next month or so after an excursion reteaching me the meaning of “No.”
Dinners at home were a simple affair. In the summer, we picked lettuce and tomatoes from the garden while dad would grill chicken. In the winter, we ate the exact same traditional Turkey dinner with dressing, yams, and cheddar broccoli casserole for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. I once told my mom I would run away to culinary school (probably after eating another well-done burger) and she refused to humor me. She never understood why I eventually did move out, not for culinary school but for a liberal arts degree. Why would I move to the cramped city, when I could live comfortably at home for free?
It sounds cliché, but I needed to roam, to dabble, to follow my curiosity. I knew where I came from, but I wanted to find out what my role in this tapestry of our family would be. Would I ever look at a plate of food and calculate milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids in my head the way my mom could? Did I want to? Would I ever pass for a Chicago-born Catholic with my appreciation of Italian cooking? Or own a prized possession in the kitchen like Grandma Linda’s KitchenAid?
I’ve always felt so… different. I couldn’t claim any of these perspectives as mine, but from my own vantage point I could see the interwoven relationships between them. Trying to fit in for so long, I hesitated to stake my claim, to say “Here I Stand.”
I am still learning to cook, but I think I now know who I am in the kitchen. I cook with a deep appreciation of fruit and vegetables that my parents instilled in me. I cook with the rich decadence of Grandma Linda’s insatiable sweet tooth, matched with the worldly influence of Grandma Arlene’s knack for adventure.
A few hours before we had to make our way to the airport and catch our return flight, I wanted to cook one last meal for my family.
I wanted to taste the desert.
I began with pureed coconut and sweet potatoes, hot peppers and sweet peppers. Seriously underestimating the spice level of the hot peppers when blended seeds and all, I ended up with a base that made my eyes water. My little brother and my grandma wouldn’t be able to handle a single bite. I started frantically googling. I added every starch and dairy product we had left in the fridge and still, it burned. I added as much butter as I reasonably could and still, it burned.
Expressing my panic to Grandma Linda, she said we could always eat the leftover corn instead. Corn, I thought. Why didn’t I think of that?
I pulled the grilled corn out of the fridge and started slicing off kernels and plopping them into the pot. I stirred them in and waited impatiently for them to warm up and then took a spoonful of the soup into my mouth. To my relief, all the flavors finally struck a perfect balance. I sighed a huge sigh of relief.
Just an hour before we needed to load into the rental car and wave goodbye to our “luxury vacation home,” I ladled out the soup, topped with chopped peppers, sprigs of mint, green onions, radish, and sour cream. Even my little brother and my grandma cleaned their plates.
While cookbooks are a great starting point to improve cooking, that week in Arizona pushed me to break out of the recipe rut. Like a kid who learns from their parents and then eventually treks their own path, anyone who cooks will eventually have their own coming of age moment. We each develop intuition, whether we are aware of it or not, over years of personal experiences with food. For those who dare to improvise, cooking provides an opportunity to tap into that deep well of internalized knowledge and express something unique to who we are.
