Posted on: Wednesday, November 24, 2004
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Joy of meal began at Grandma's
By Wanda Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
When I lived on the Mainland, I would invariably be invited to someone's home for Thanksgiving. As grateful as I was for these invitations, I always found the status of guest a bit tough to take on this holiday.
I wanted to be in the kitchen, doing. More than that, I wanted the kitchen to be my grandmother's, in her home in 'Iao Valley, Maui. And I wanted Mom and Grandma in the kitchen with me, the three of us circling the small room, bumping butts and reaching across each other as we fussed over the timing of the turkey (an annual mystery in those days before the instant-read thermometer).
I wanted Grandpa wandering in for a nip of medicinal whiskey and Dad and the boys out in the living room whining about when we were going to eat and why they couldn't have something NOOOOW.
I wanted the annual free-for-all during which Dad, wearing a flour-sack towel tied around him by Grandma, carved the turkey with whatever his latest gadget might be (we had the first electric knife on Maui, I'm sure of it). Meanwhile, Mom and Grandma would be madly stirring gravy, whipping mashed potatoes, putting things in and taking things out of the oven and we kids would be ferrying dishes to the table and trying to sneak past Dad's guard for a pinch of crisp turkey skin.
As in most homes, our meal was carved in stone along with the Ten Commandments. The menu broadened over the years, but nothing fell off the list.
There always was a roast turkey with Grandma's simple bread recheado (reh-SHAY-du, "stuffing" in Portuguese) with no sage, thank you; mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice AND rolls; gravy made from the drippings but without the gizzards; celery spread with Cheez Whiz and a steaming bowl of those little LeSeur peas; relishes occupying all the spaces in between, including Grandma's pickled onions, green and black olives and Mom's favorite chow-chow pickle.
When Mom married my step-dad, Grandma learned to roast a duck and stuff it with wild rice, the way he had enjoyed it back in his native Minnesota.
One year, I came home from college a temporary vegetarian and insisted we leave the skins in the mashed potatoes for fiber and flavor. That didn't go over well at all. Neither did my refusal of the turkey or anything that had touched it.
Cranberry sauce was the canned jelled kind. Later, when I was living in the Pacific Northwest, I brought home the idea of a fresh, home-cooked cranberry relish, and it's a standard in our house now.
There was pumpkin pie with Reddi-Whip (or later Cool Whip) and sometimes apple pie, too.
Today, just a bite of recheado — one dish of Grandma's that I can duplicate perfectly — transports me to that table. I hear again Grandpa being hushed in mid-story so we can pray, and see the sparkle in Grandma's eyes as she surveys the table.
"Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts ..."
