Every recipe has a story. And some come with a flood of memories.
One of our favorite culinary delights of the summer has a long history in my husband's family. It was passed down from his grandmother Miss Mabel who lived to the ripe old age of 97, living in a patched-together cottage on the edge of a peanut field in southeast Alabama. It was originally built way out on rural route 3, the road just dirt and gravel until it was paved sometime in the late 1950s. No address was needed. Everyone knew her name.
I vividly remember visiting for the first time. It was July, the air thick and still. As a northern girl, I had no idea the reality of the words "hot and humid," until that visit. The temperature didn't change if you stood in the sun or shade. My skin was covered in a continuous glaze of sweat, and clouds of gnats gathered around as thick as the churchyard on Sunday morning. It appeared the only breeze was generated by the motion of the rocking chairs on her tiny front porch and watching an occasional pick-up whiz by on that country road. We pulled our car up onto her property, right into the yard next to her car, no driveway, no garage, not even a carport. Our tires imprinted the sandy soil which was carpeted by the needles of southern pines that towered overhead, lending no shade at all.
The main part of her little house -- a small living room and single bedroom-- were air-conditioned by a solitary window unit which rumbled continuously, trying frantically to keep up. The kitchen was separated by a door that was always kept closed "to keep the cool inside." The kitchen was ventilated by a small window and a back porch which held her gardening tools, a clothesline, and other necessary implements including an old wire fly-swatter and mousetraps for her all-too-frequent uninvited guests. The entire house was spit-polished clean, including the porch, but the structure was so old, every crack was stuffed with steel wool to discourage tiny intruders.
The second bedroom was stuck on the back like an afterthought, no heat, no cooling but for an ancient oscillating fan that tried to stir the hot air like a slow run-down Kitchenaid mixer on life-support. My husband remembers visiting as a boy in the wintertime, smothered under a pile of old quilts with his brothers, drumming up the courage to run barefoot across the porch in the frigid dawn air to the kitchen heated only by the oven. Using Colonial white bread, Miss Mabel would make toast in the oven, and smear it with her own home-made pear honey or plum jelly, made with fruit growing in her yard. She would pour him a cup of milk with a little coffee in it and then sit at the linoleum table with that little boy and talk about life way back when. She moved into the house in 1935.
As a widow for more than forty years, she lived alone and made the most of what she had, scrubbing a living from peanut farming. She kept a garden, not as a hobby, but as a necessary means of surviving through the year. The government chipped in with a block of American cheese once a month. She could have written a cookbook on her creative uses of it. Nothing was wasted. She even rinsed out paper towels and dried them on the line to use again. She froze her garden vegetables in old plastic bread bags. Her grandchildren imagined a wooly mammoth preserved somewhere in the back of that old freezer.
I cherished that determined woman. She loved God and loved people, many of whom stood on the outskirts of that southern culture. There were many who learned to read on her back porch and then moved on to a better life. The word "impossible" was not part of her vocabulary. She would pray and find a way. She appeared as fragile as a twig that could be snapped in two, when indeed, she was tougher than a drill sergeant in the Marines.
I never dared complain about anything within her hearing. Nothing could measure against what she had experienced. She did not just endure, but learned to both survive and thrive in conditions more severe than the sandy lifeless soil her little house stood on. I imagine her responding, "You're going to let
that stop you?" If I ran a marathon, she would acknowledge it and then ask what else I had done that day.
A couple of nights ago, I made her famous squash casserole which has been passed down through the generations. I may have been the first person to write down the recipe. Everyone else learned by just watching her do it. The recipe, I imagine, was cobbled together one hot summer afternoon when she looked at what little she had -- a few squash from the garden, a half sleeve of saltines, a few slices of stale bread, and the government cheese-- and saw the possibilities.
Indeed, the sweetness of a recipe is not measured by how much sugar but the stories that go with it.
It is one of our favorite summertime sides. I don't ever make it without hearing her voice in that hot Alabama kitchen with the crickets whirring outside in the yard. We don't ever eat it without our conversation laden with deep sweet memories of her life.
Summer Squash Casserole
4 yellow summer squash, sliced into coins
1 onion, chopped
2 eggs, whisked
1 cup milk
20 saltine crackers (about a half sleeve), crumbled
1 1/2 cups shredded cheese (I use cheddar)
2-3 slices bread, crumbled in a food processor
1-2 tablespoon butter or margarine, melted
Place sliced squash and chopped onion in a large sauce pan and cover with water. Boil until squash is tender. Drain in a colander. Spread the cooked squash and onion in a 8-9 inch square baking dish. Add eggs, milk, crackers and shredded cheese to the squash and onion mixture. Stir it all together. Combine bread crumbs and butter in a separate bowl or food processor, and sprinkle over the top of the squash mixture. Bake uncovered about 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven.
Serve with a sliced tomato still warmed by the sun and a tall glass of sweet tea. All you need to complement the meal is a little Alabama humidity and a ceiling fan.
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