My Mom's Potato Salad

I've never made a good potato salad.  I haven't had too many that I truly liked either.  Even the store bought is so-so usually.  I don't like it dry and all...white and blah looking.

Yesterday, Memorial Day, I went to the parents to hang out.  Nothing fancy.  As some people know, my mom had been going through a breast cancer ordeal for over a year now, and is in the final stages of chemo.  She's doing remarkably and has endured alot of misery, which isn't over just yet.  But the chemo that she's on now is more mild and has allowed her hair to grow.  So when I got to her house, for the first time in months she was wearing no wig.  It must have been great to have some hair on your head and not have to wear a hot itchy wig on a 90 degree day.  Her hair is about an inch long all over and she dyed it a light brown color.  It was fluffy and cute.  I'm sure she'll be back to her old hairstyle in no time.

So she says, "I don't know why I try to cook.  I tried this new potato salad recipe.  I should have cut the sugar way down but I didn't.  It's awful."  She takes it out of the fridge and I stick my fork in it and take a bite.  Not bad at all.  Kinda sweet, but really creamy and a nice golden color.  I said it was good and that it just needed some kick.  I took some vinegar and some mustard and whipped it together and mixed it in.  Much better.  It cut the sugar down a little and gave it a little tang.  Yummy.  So we ate it and my husband seemed to especially like it.

I guess my thought at this point is that Memorial Day will be the day my mom finally got to show off her new hair and her new potato salad.  This is how memories "become".

When life hands you lemons...

I will tell a story that we laugh about at probably every other family gathering.  Since my brother is one of my four faithful blog followers....

My little brother was a tyrant during his toddler years.  He was infamously clever beyond his two years, and this fact, combined with his devilish personality, earned him a custom made name tag that read "The Terror".  He chased me with a saw once while wearing his footsie pajamas.  That story doesn't involve food, so I won't tell it.  Oddly, he has turned out to be one the most easy-going, non-confrontational, mellow adults I know.  Seven years his senior, I tortured him from time to time.  Not in a mean way, but in a subtle, "I can outsmart you" sort of way.  Was it my superiority (hehe) or his evil streak that was responsible for the few incidents that we both recall very differently?

When he was about...oh, I don't know....four or five maybe....I called him into the kitchen.  How easy it was.  Too easy.   "Here," I said, handing him a tupperware cup with a small bit of liquid in the bottom.  "It's soda.  Have some."  Looking at me with the suspicious expression of Charlie Brown looking at Lucy, he gave in to the call of the sugary bubbles and downed what was only a mouthful.  It doesn't take more than a mouthful of bottled lemon juice though to make a five year old provide his sister with a good three or four minutes of laughter, satisfaction and pure entertainment.

Ask him, of course, and I've scarred him for life.  But that wasn't the last time that getting a mouthful of soda got him in trouble....

school lunch

In St. Francis of Assisi School, there were no hot lunches.  There was a kitchen in the building, but it wasn't until some years later that there were a bunch of mom's (including my own) who helped implement a hot lunch program.  So we brought our own of course.

What you were eating for lunch at school was always an opportunity for ridicule and a matter of interest to your classmates.  The school was tiny and we spent year after year with more or less the same students.  Our class of about twenty became like a close knit, dysfunctional little family.  You couldn't change your shoelaces without someone taking note of it.  What you wore, what kind of notebook you used, the hairclip you had, where you vacationed...all of it was common knowledge among us. What you ate was no exception.  It's not much different in schools today, it's just there are more kids to diffuse things.  You've got to be careful...very careful...what you do or say, or you could become a social outcast within seconds. So I remember one of the moments I almost lost my safe status as the nice girl over a sandwich.

My grandmother loved food just as much as I do.  She's probably responsible for my love affair with food. Somehow the woman stayed thin til the day she died though.  One thing she made that I LOVED was a pepper and egg sandwich.  You can get one of these in any pizza place but it's rarely made with the love she put into it.  Take some onions and Italian peppers (the long, green ones) and saute them in a little oil.  Add in some scrambled eggs, salt and pepper and make yourself a yummy sandwich on Italian bread.  She'd make me one for lunch now and then, and sometimes there were leftovers.  Several times she asked me "You want to take one for lunch tomorrow?"  I always answered no.  No explanation.  Just no.  I feared when someone saw me eating this mushed up sandwich with green soggy looking things hanging out if it I would never escape the torture my classmates would inflict upon me.  But...she asked the same question whenever she cooked peppers and eggs, always totally puzzled by my inhaling of the sandwich in her kitchen followed by my refusal to bring the leftovers the next day.  I couldn't explain my fear to her of course.  She would merely fling her hand in the air and tell me how nuts that was.  Hell, I knew it sounded nuts, but my fear was NOT unfounded.  Vincent Fasciani, who was a hell of alot more Italian than I was, used to bring marshmallow fluff sandwiches once in awhile, and you'd think he was eating moldy shoe.  It was kinda weird when I think about it, how this kid who spoke fluent Italian was eating this extremely American and unhealthy thing for lunch.  At the time, not too many people even knew what fluff was, and Lord knows my mother would never have let me eat that crap.  That's a whole other story though.

But the allure of that pepper and egg sandwich eventually got me thinking...am I imagining this whole thing?  Would anybody really say something about a sandwich, especially when I explained simply it was just eggs and a vegetable that happened to be green? 

So off I went to school with my sandwich much to Nonny's satisfaction.  I recall sitting there at my desk taking a bite, then another.  Whoever I was sitting with were my close friends at the time and really didn't seem interested in what I was eating.  But by the time I got a third bite in, it began from a couple of others.  "Eew, what IS that?!"  "What.  What's what."  "It's green.  Look.  Isn't that gross?"  "Eew."  "It's peppers and eggs.  What's the big deal?  It's good."  "Eew, gross."  "Yeah, eew.  Snot."  I was mortified and wanted to kick myself for walking right into that one.

Needless to say, I went back to the dry peanut butter and jelly sandwiches my mother usually made.  I'd have to enjoy my grandmother's awesome cooking at home. And these days I know that I must be careful what is in my kids' lunch boxes.  Well, they use brown bags now because lunch boxes aren't cool.  And I can't write Paul's name on his bag either.  "That's a little too kiddish."

In the beginning there was pasta...

You are at some family gathering or you're reminiscing with your spouse during a long car ride, taking a walk down memory lane, sharing, laughing, comparing.  The stories usually start with "there was this time when I was 6 years old...."  or  "remember that night when..."  I started to notice a trend. Almost ALL my poignant memories involved food and no one else's did.  Is this how I catalog the events...or non-events- in my life?  Is my personal timeline measured in flaky pastries and  gooey cheeses?  What the heck is wrong with me?  What kind of person remembers things this way?  Is there anyone else out there who sees the world through sauce colored glasses?
Subsequently, in the dark chasms of my mind, I began to go back in time and comb over these events more and more....trying to prove to myself whether this was, in fact, the case.  Much to my surprise, it is true.  Why should this surprise me though?  I grew up in an Italian American family....and what could be more important than those two things?  Family and food.  When I began to form this food timeline in my mind, I made several interesting discoveries. One is that there is a mysterious food "blank" during my early teenage years....when only one other thing could flood my body with higher levels of serotonin...boys.  Another observation I've made is that after having children, my food memories involve much more of their food experiences.  I think I've told my poor kid a dozen times that he used to loved baked sweet potatoes so much that he ate two for lunch once when he was a baby.
But here I am now with a family of my own, and food is just as important as it ever was.  Sure, there is no more sauce at 2pm each Sunday.  And sure, family "supper" each night (which was never optional) does not take place each night at 5 o'clock on the dot when the husband arrives, nor does it include a perfectly balanced meal with all the food groups, AND bread AND salad. But we do sit down together most nights, and yes, I try to stuff some sort of vegetable into my men at each meal.  Yes, I occasionally make Sunday sauce, I love trying new recipes, live to whip up a masterpiece and serve it to my little crowd, anxiously awaiting their praise....and Lord, I love to eat.  Now, of course, food is my nemesis....meaning, according to Webster  a: one that inflicts retribution or vengeance  (in the form of heartburn, high blood pressure and fatness) b: a formidable and usually victorious rival or opponent (meaning when you are faced with an apple or apple pie, you know which one is gonna win).

So, although I thought I could make this a book for adults, I don't think I'm a good enough writer for that.  My brother definitely got that gift.  But I think a blog is doable.  If for nothing else, it takes a small slice out of the messy lasagna in my head and puts it somwhere else, thus unclogging things a bit.

Now you know what I'm going to be writing about.  My life in food.  If your life is "in food" too, then I look forward to knowing that I'm not alone.