Cook Book Wisdom

By the time we had kids, the Renken family Thanksgiving was firmly established in Columbia where my aunt Anne and uncle Tony, cousins Tracy and John, opened their gracious home to all comers, adorning the multiple tables with imaginative place cards and setting a glorious spread of food that only encouraged culinary one upmanship among the ever competitive Renken relatives, adding to the general merriment and the tendency to overfill one’s plate.

For several years, Lee and Ann ruled the roost as the only great grandchildren to my Granny.  This privileged position gave them their own bracket in the putting contest, access to the pinball machine in the basement, spots at the card table with Granny, books and art supplies from their doting great aunts, and finally, a chance to soak and steam in the hot tub before we bundled back into the car for the long ride home.  Oftentimes, the girls napped, awaking just as night fell and they could count the Christmas lights that had sprung like mushrooms since morning.

Ben was just three months when we made the trip his first Thanksgiving.  We left before daylight with the grand plan that the kids would sleep a goodly portion of the drive. Back then, almost everything closed for Thanksgiving, so there would be no distracting stops for pop or doughnuts or milk or coffee..just the necessities at the rest areas.  But Ben had a different plan.  He began screaming about Kansas City and continued unabated ‘til we reached our destination.  He was a cute kid and a big hit with his grandma, his aunts, and his granny, and I hoped all that attention would wear him out for the trip home.  No go.  He was nothing if not persistent and wore US all out with his yelling until just north of Kansas City.  As holidays go, it was something less than idyllic.

But I digress.  

One year my uncle Steve rolled out the first edition of the Renken’s Recipes to Die For Thanksgiving 1992. Family get togethers were never quiet: I can remember my uncles castigating announcers, the players, and the officials...on a televised game.  The kitchen at my aunt’s was an open air soapbox of suggestions, despite the fact that each family had already had their say about the menu by virtue of the dish they’d contributed.  There was lots of good natured devil’s advocacy, but at some point in the afternoon, voices would be raised in something pretty darned close to an actual disagreement.

Most of the recipes contain a fair share of editorial content…..

From Steve, regarding “The Best Baked Beans”:

I’m not kidding; these really are the best.  They are far better than anything Liz ever thought about.

From Liz’s corner: “Liz’s Most Requested Baked Beans”.

From Steve, about Liz’s recipe: “You will notice that no one claims these are the best: they are just the most requested.  Probably by Terry and what choice does he have?”

Some recipes are quite brief:

Tim’s Beaver Tail

Take one beaver tail and hold over open flame until rough skin blisters.  Remove from heat. When cool, peel off skin, roast over coals or simmer until brown.

Serves 86

Or this one:

Hard-boiled Eggs

By Laura

Mark’s note: Most of you know that Laura does not have a large cooking repertoire.  However, at this one she is great and you won’t mess it up either.

2 eggs in the shell

4 cups water

1 medium saucepan.

Place eggs in saucepan. Add water and bring to a boil.  After three minutes of boiling, fish one egg out on a spoon and carry to the sink.  Halfway to the sink, drop the egg (accidentally) on the floor.  If it oozes on impact, cook remaining egg one more minute before eating and after cleaning up the floor.

But the recipes I turn to the most often are my mom’s.  Some of them are dog eared and stained, fragile to the point of illegibility. But I keep them for sentiment’s sake, even though those recipes have long since been committed to memory.  

Included in the Recipes to Die For are some of the comfort foods of my childhood, like the Raisin Bars, which my mom made at least once a week for my father’s lunch. I loved the combination of plump, sweet raisins after their bath in boiling water and the layer of sweet frosting atop the spicy cookies.  Or the multiple Jello recipes: the cherry jello with bing cherries that was my favorite, although I also like sliced oranges in lemon jello (not mandarin oranges!) and the apple grape jello with crunchy apples and green seedless grapes.  Yes,I am a kid of the Jello generation.

Some of the notes are windows into my mom’s kitchen after I was grown: the Mulled Wine we  would enjoy during winter visits just before bedtime (Good in cold weather and decidedly beneficial if one has the cold or the flu, ), the Hearty Corn Chowder (I use the microwave and make this in a 4 quart Corningware dish.  Good for a winter supper), the Caramel Corn (This is yummy and freezes well) or the Apple Butter in a Crock Pot (This tastes wonderful on hot toast and makes your house smell wonderful while it is cooking).

There are little scraps of paper with random recipes stuck throughout my cookbooks, like the Salsa Cruda with the addendum: I used three little hot peppers. It gets hotter the longer it “ages”.  I used your canned tomatoes.  Easy & yummy with tortilla chips. Every time I bake a Mrs. Peters’ coffeecake, I hear her admonition: Check with a toothpick for doneness.  It is a horrible flop if underdone! The recipe is one I know by heart, but I repeat that phrase like a blessing every time I bake it.

At the very back of my hyperextended recipe box is an assortment of cards that have nothing to do with food and everything to do with life.  When my aunts (Anne and Liz) hosted our wedding shower, they handed out cards to the guests to fill out with their advice for a good marriage.  Forty years later, those words of cheer and wisdom still reside in my box.  My sister: Keep the plants off the windowsill! My mother-in-law: Just talk things over! My Granny: Recipe for marriage 1 woman, 1 man. 1 lb sense of humor, 2 lbs love, 3 ½ lbs. tolerance, Shut up! P. S. Had a big argument with my husband this morning! Ran out of sense of humor…

My granny is gone...and so is Uncle Steve, the witty curator of the Renken Cookbooks….and his brother, my father, though I am certain heaven is a spicier place with the three of them in residence.

My mom was always more of a listener...and the best....letting me chatter on endlessly about whatever was on my mind. So I treasure the little asides recorded in the cookbook, and the tattered recipes she shared as well as this advice from years and years ago about her happy marriage:

Good companionship and conversation...no secrets (almost) Train him right but don’t let him know you are doing it.

Lots of loving!! (with a giant balloon of an exclamation point)

Ma

Be Blessed this Thanksgiving …..

Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey

Tomorrow Blake and I...and Laura and Mark...will tee off at the Tarkio Golf course once again for the CommuniTee Golf tournament.  I don't know how many CommuniTees we've played in; we never remember our score, but we remember the laughter, the camaraderie, and the satisfaction that comes from having a good time in support of our hospital, our county, our people.

The hospital golf tournament is always around our anniversary.  So, sometimes we play golf to celebrate.  Oftentimes, there is a county Farm Bureau Annual meeting on August 26 or 27th.  That gives Blake a chance to tell his audience that he promised to take me out for our anniversary....(laughter from the folks of Ray..or Nodaway...or some other home away from home in Missouri).
I don't know how many years we've shared our anniversary with our Farm Bureau friends and neighbors across the state.

But isn't that a hallmark of a long marriage...one with decades of anniversaries?  The layer upon layer of events and memories: cakes and candles, births, weddings, storms, droughts, photographs, vacations, graduations, jobs?  The trivial...The dramatic....?

Last week the lawnmower belt broke...and the air conditioner leaked water down from the third floor to the living room on the first. I don't know how many lawnmowers we've repaired..or how many air conditioners...or how many times a roof has leaked...Refrigerators can be counted on one hand, but washing machines and dryers? That's another story for a family so close to soil and potting soil.

Our first television was a repo from a Nigerian college student.   Our first computer was a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. We've outlasted several cell phone companies.  The combined mileage of our six Dodge diesel pickups is not the distance to the sun...but its a big number.

Our marriage has been built with paper backs and self tapping screws, PVC pipe and 3/4 inch garden hose, patching tape and Tums and coffee cups and baseball caps.  Long days, long nights, long talks and long trips bind us.  He fixes broke stuff.  I find lost stuff.

There's no way to condense all this time to its essence.   Choosing this anniversary over any other one implies an emphasis that isn't really necessary.  On the other hand, forty is a serious number, and perhaps indulging a bit of sentimentality will be forgiven...and maybe even celebrated.

So...here goes...for Blake, my friend and partner, for all these years and more....

A Man of Few Words

‘Talk less; smile more’, sings Aaron Burr to Alexander Hamilton.  And there are nights I meet my pillow with the melody in my ear wishing I had followed that advice.  

I do take to heart the admonition in James chapter 3:  “7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind,8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.” But just when a sin of omission would be the proper choice, (Talk less! Smile more!) is when I find all kinds of words to say….repetitive words, superfluous words, and the ever popular foot in one’s mouth words.   Oh, blessed Father, please keep me from offering advice unless someone truly asks for it.  

For the most part,  my parents led by deeds, not words.  We were expected to pitch in during any family task; we were expected to get up on time and take care of ourselves. I know we gave out good night hugs but I don’t remember anyone coming to wake us. We were expected to tell the truth, behave at school, and clean our plates.  Some of those tasks were easier than others; when I was young, I didn’t always get around to my chores.  I didn’t think it was laziness on my part so much as forgetfulness...a distinction without difference in my father’s opinion.  But my mother and father always cleaned up together after a meal; we  attended church and Sunday school together; we finished our work before we played, and somehow, though it wasn’t a topic discussed over supper, we knew our parents saved for everything they purchased.  They practiced without preaching, bringing to mind 1 John 3:18:”Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

All that aside, I can tell you two very specific instances that my father spoke to me very seriously, and, in doing so, set the course for my life.

During high school, I spent all my spare time playing music: giving lessons, playing in jazz band, playing in the pit orchestra for productions.  And I was encouraged by my director...and friends...to pursue a career that included music. But my father had a strong opinion on the subject and what he told me had the solid ring of truth.  He reminded me that one needs more than practice, more than talent, to be a musician: it is a profession that requires, if not genius, then passion...a single-minded devotion to perfection that very few people can sustain.  And I wasn’t one of them. Like him, he said, I could love music...and enjoy it as an avocation all my life.  Better, said he, to choose a profession that would undoubtedly serve mankind..one so encompassing of the various threads of knowledge that a person would find it not just rewarding, but also fascinating, whatever contribution he made.  

So..I got a scholarship that paid for clarinet lessons and enrolled in the College of Agriculture.  My piece of the ag pie may have been a small one, but it has never been boring.

That was vocation.  His second piece of advice was issued after Blake and I were engaged.  I was coming down the stairs into the basement of their house in Jeff City when he turned to me and said: “After you are married, you cannot come back home.”  That wasn’t all the conversation, but that short admonition told me I was on my own, a grownup, and responsible for my own life from here on out.  I guess Blake and I thought at the time that we were grownup, and neither set of parents told us we were foolish, but I always remembered and took to heart the gravity of that exchange.

I cannot imagine better advice than that which yields four decades of happy marriage and satisfying work!

Flowers of the Field

The stove is in the garage; the fridge is on the back porch; the microwave perches on a church pew.  The coffeepot still lives, parked on a plastic Rubbermaid tub with two plaster dusted mugs and a box of Starbucks pods alongside.  Our kitchen, always the heart of our house, is down to bare bones.

Forty years ago, my mother and father sold their land in Calloway county and bought a property with a limestone creek, a gabled barn, a milking parlor, some pasture ground and a couple of fields planted to milo. They had a vision and over the years they realized their plan, seeding the upland field to warm season prairie grasses, building ponds, and fences, and facilities in and around the big barn for handling cattle and storing hay.  The milo fields became a pasture, and an orchard.  The rundown outbuildings were painted red and roofed in silver, jacked up and leveled and put to use.  There was a bountiful garden with soil mellowed by well aged manure carted up a wheelbarrow at a time from the red barn floor.  Over time the rambling old home was remodeled; two greenhouses spoke to the resident green thumbs; a swing set was built for grandchildren and a telescope turned the former milking parlor into a planetarium.  Summertime and wintertime:  holidays and harvests: the farmstead was a lovely busy fruitful place.

But neither a house, nor a farm, really makes a home.  The couple who lovingly restored and improved and transformed the worn out ground and aged house are worn and aged themselves.  The gardens have gradually shrunk and the apple trees are bent and broken.  The place is still lovely; the pastures with well fed cattle, the grasslands without sprouts, the ponds fenced, the little trees planted decades ago now mature.  But there is an air of emptiness this spring as the daffodils bloom unnoticed and the early opportunistic weeds spring up unabated.

As a gardener I know only too well how quickly our most strenuous efforts at taming the land to our wishes can vanish.  It is a visual manifestation of the Biblical klaxon, a warning that:

15 As for man, his days are like grass;

         As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.

16When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,

         And its place acknowledges it no longer. 
(Psalm 103:15-16)

....or

For, "All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; 

the grass withers and the flowers fall,
(1 Peter 1:24)

  

Our works, our beauty, our efforts...ephemera. 

But... that is not all...  

To paraphrase St. Paul, " I will show you a still more excellent way...." (1 Corinthians 12:31)

In a desk drawer upstairs is a packet of letters tied with black twine addressed to a midshipman in the Navy from a young woman at Greenberry Road.  The bundle of letters has made many moves: from Jefferson City to Columbia to Chicago back to a farmhouse attic in Calloway county to an antique dresser on the other side of the Missouri and now safely stowed in a desk my mother's father made out of hard rock maple.  I haven't unwound the twine string, but the survival of these letters after more than a half century and many more miles attests more loudly than any words to ties that bind.

When memories fail and words won't come, but she looks for him every day; when they hold hands while watching Wheel of Fortune each evening; when my father and mother still kiss good night; these are the times I catch a glimpse of the more excellent way, a merest hint of the eternal within the mortal, a reminder of the next chapter, 1 Corinthians 13: 

 4Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 These two people are not perfect, not always patient and kind, at times provoked, but they are faithful. They care for each other....even when they cannot care for themselves. This and every other long marriage testifies that love bears much and endures all.  Gardens lie fallow and houses stand empty; bodies become fragile and break.....

"for now we see in a mirror dimly...but then face to face." 

 It's a promise.

     

Not a Trivial Pursuit

Some things you don't have to work to remember...some things you know you will never forget. The welling up of tears will subside, the raw woundedness will scab over, but the memory in my mind's eye will remain fresh even as the event itself disappears over the horizon of time.  I cannot write about this week yet; it is too immediate and the vignettes too raw; time will judge and mingle the sweet with the harsh; today we can only reach and strive and hope the light at the end of the tunnel is gentle.

In the midst of this week, there is Valentine's Day, something I've regarded as a Trivial Pursuit in other years, a time for the kids to construct inventive boxes, for the folks in flower shops to stress, and a boon to restaurants at midweek. Our Tarkio HyVee meat case was nearly bereft of steak this Valentine's Eve and the stuffed chicken breasts were entirely gone.  Not everyone is eating out this Tuesday night; some folks...like Blake and me...will have steak and salad....especially those...like Blake and me...foregoing potatoes and chocolate...because they've been Valentines so long....

This year I'll be especially grateful for our humble table even as we skip the 'loaf  of bread' and go directly to the 'jug o'wine and thou'. God willing, I won't distinguish this Valentine's meal from any of the other February 14 repasts I don't remember because next year there will be another, and another, and another to come.  This year, I will thank my husband specifically for being both pillar and pillow: strong and solid and reliant, yet able to absorb all the pummeling and heartache and tears. Valentine's Day will just give me more reason to tell him, in case the steaks and chocolates over the years didn't get the message across.

Maybe next year I'll be frivolous and buy him a giant bag of Cherry Mash....or Peppermint Bonbons.  Maybe next year he won't feel guilty about eating them!   We can hope....

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Forty some years ago...really, that long.... New Years Eve was numbingly cold and crisp in northwest Missouri. I had ( choose one) 1) been invited, 2) invited myself, or 3) made it clear I had no plans.....to stay over and welcome in the New Year with Blake and his friends on Tarkio. We stayed up way too late, had a wonderful time, and struggled the next day to look wide awake and chipper when he dropped me off in Kansas City where my parents were spending New Years Day with my aunt and uncle.

It was ...to paraphrase the famous line from Casablanca..."the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Tonight, decades later, I poured batter on the griddle and listened to Aaron, Lizzie, and Josh outbrag each other about the number of pancakes they had consumed. Eight to ten each, to listen to them. Aaron nestled on the couch reading, ignoring the football game just like his grandpa. Josh had a camping lantern under the dining room table where Liz and I turned over pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle of Times Square. Lizzie has mad puzzle skills, a talent she has obviously inherited from her Grandma Millie. Spilling the puzzle out on the table is a throwback to New Years past when the women and kids tapped their fingers each time a new piece was joined and the men reared back in their recliners and snored after lunch was over.
It is a good thing to visit these ghosts of New Years past before the fireworks go off and the future is upon us. I am happy to be home, to set a table for the family we only imagined those forty years ago, to watch movies with grandchildren and to listen to the same guy sleep through football every New Year.

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Sixty is a Serious Number

Even the most mathematically obtuse among us cannot avoid some numbers.

For instance:  April 15 when the taxman takes his pound of flesh. December 25, Christmas and December 31, New Year's, which come around every year, days of celebration, of remembering the past and anticipating the future. Independence Day, July 4, when flags fly and fireworks sparkle. These are common ground, dates and numbers impressed into our heritage and vocabulary.

Then there are personal numbers, the ones writ only on your heart, tied inextricably by some inner measure of significance: when you learned to ride a bike or caught your first fish, your first paycheck,  your first car, your first child...your last child, your anniversary.....

Anniversary.  An anniversary, unlike a birthday, is not an inevitable portion of the human condition.  It takes two to have an anniversary....and the more anniversaries accrued, the greater the sum of accommodations, compromises, deaf ears, bit tongues, comfortable silences, and unspoken understandings accumulated.

Any anniversary is an accomplishment. After one year of marriage you get to eat freeze dried cake.  What?  More leftovers? Doesn't seem like much of a reward for 365 DAYS of adaptation and transformation.  There's no way to build this thing called marriage by following a checklist or bullet points; like Johnny Cash's Lincoln, it takes years, adding one piece at a time.  And if the end result has one headlight on the left and two on the right...well, at least the thing moves.

By the time a marriage has achieved the sixty year mark, it's a classic.  I always read  articles about wedding anniversaries, especially if there is a photo included.  Doesn't matter whether the photo is a black and white a half century or more old, or a church directory picture of a pair of seasoned oldsters. Either way, these couples bring to mind Proverbs 16:31:

Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.

Grandma and Grandpa Hurst celebrated their 60th anniversary in 1987.  Their fiftieth anniversary was the first family event I attended as a soon to be Hurst: at the time, it seemed there were hundreds of folks at the Farmers and Valley bank wishing to celebrate with them, but that could be memory playing tricks on a young and anxious bride-to-be hoping not to embarrass herself immediately.  But their sixtieth anniversary was a smaller get together. Inevitable, I guess.  I took a picture that day: Grandpa in his summer light blue suit and Grandma in a jewel blue dress; they are both smiling and, I'm sure, happy to have their family around a big table with them,even if it was just the Korner Kitchen.

Some people were too little to sit at the table

And some people were more into balloons

My folks used their prerogative as honorees to move their sixtieth celebration from the 5th of June to the 4th of July, giving the family yet another reason to add significance and fireworks to an already auspicious occasion.  Needless to say, with kids and fireworks, horseshoes and rocky creeks...and at least five photographers...the event was well recorded for posterity.

This week Millie and Charlie will share their sixtieth anniversary with a crowd of friends and family. I'm not going out on a limb to say there will be stories told and noise and small children underfoot and plenty of food.  The Community Building will spill over onto the back porch and down the hill when, by special dispensation of the City of Tarkio, we shoot off fireworks down at the Rodeo Grounds.  No doubt there will be a few party crashers by that time, but Millie and Charlie have ever been generous with their hospitality.

We commemorate more than the perseverance and partnership that sustains a marriage well over a half century.  After sixty years, we celebrate being together. We take time to give thanks for what we take for granted every other day: for Joshie days with Grandma Millie when he cooks mac'n cheese and other monstrosities, for another day of harvest with Charlie and some great grandkid in the combine with him, for every Sunday my father plays in the trio at church and my mom makes him peanut butter cookies.  Every big anniversary gives us a chance to be thankful for all the little moments we don't measure.  

Let's celebrate them all!

Actually, Joe Biden is not invited.....