I’ve
always thought my mother-in-law was kind of a character, but I never
realized how much until I started writing about her. I don’t
get to see her much nowadays, as she lives so far away, but she has
had a profound impact on my life in many ways.
The
first time I met my future mother-in-law, she was standing at her old
electric stove in her tiny suburban Chicago kitchen, making Bohemian
fruit dumplings.
Imagine
if you will, a hot baseball, dripping water, rolling around your
Corningware plate like a giant wayward pinball. This is a fruit
dumpling – a whole stone fruit, such as an Italian plum, or a
peach, encased in dough and boiled like a bagel in a large stockpot
of bubbling water. Then it’s all hands on deck to subdue this
doughy orb using just a fork to hold it steady and a dull butter
knife to cut it open. The brightly colored fruit-flesh emerges from
its pasty robe; cut through the circumference to the pit, and pull
apart the two halves. The fruit is hot, the dough a little chewy; al
dente might
be a good way to
describe it. Some recipes I’ve seen since call for a
yeast dough, or incorporate a soft cheese like a farmer’s
cheese. All recipes have you pit the fruit before encasing in dough,
but this step is skipped at my mother-in-law’s house.
Your
toppings of choice include sour cream, powdered or cinnamon sugar,
and/or pecans “sauteed in butter” (never margarine –
she grew up in the great dairy state of Wisconsin, after all). I
wanted to make a good first impression, but I had never seen nor
heard of anything like this. I wondered just what I was getting
myself into – not just with this indelicate delicacy, but in
fact with this entire family. You can tell a lot about a son’s
mother by what she feeds you upon your first meeting. A Bohemian
fruit dumpling is a test. I wanted to pass.
My
mother-in-law,
Marjorie, or Marge as she is called, is Polish. The fruit dumplings,
or ovocné knedliky,
were a nod to her
husband’s Czech heritage. Over the years I would be introduced
to many Eastern European specialties, most of them hearty,
starch-heavy dishes, such as šunkafleky (a noodle and smoked
pork butt casserole – pork from the pig shoulder, not the other
end, as I thought for years), kluski (a starchy noodle, usually
served with meat and gravy), and pirogi, a filled dumpling, none of
which I had ever eaten before. I’d never heard of these things,
growing up in a homogeneously American small town in Indiana and with
a health-conscious, vegetable-loving mother, where salad showed up
every night and gravy was made once a year, to go with the
Thanksgiving turkey. When I finally married their son (having passed
the fruit dumpling test) our rehearsal dinner was a Polish buffet.
Delicious, but terribly filling, and not exactly food you want to be
eating when you need to fit yourself the next day into the nicest,
most expensive dress you’ve ever worn, and not act like all you
need is a long nap on the couch.
Over
the years I had
many meals at their old, Craftsman-style house on Garden Street; I
began to learn that Eastern European food was a necessary cushion
against the cold blows of a savage Chicago winter, like a lumbar
support bolster in your favorite armchair that was uncomfortable
without it. A light meal of salad or soup was not going to cut it,
ever. My father-in-law, Bob, was a master of what he called the
“Double-R B”, or Rip-Roaring Breakfast, which he had
often made for my underweight husband-to-be before a tough day of
classes at community college. The centerpiece was usually a giant,
expertly-flipped omelet, filled with salty lunch meats and slices of
cheddar. Other days, pancakes made with baking mix and water might
grace the table – what I imagined eating a Styrofoam disc might
be like – but the array of toppings offered more than made up
for lack of flavor. The buttered pecans made an appearance again,
plus aerosol whipped cream, thawed sweetened strawberries, powdered
sugar, and of course pancake syrup. The sugar high, and lack of
protein, ensured one was ready for another big meal in a couple of
hours.
I
was fascinated by
Marge’s kitchen, which seemed to me to be impossibly tiny,
especially for cranking out three meals a day for five people as she
and Bob raised a family. The small space naturally lent itself to
creative cooking and storage practices. Before her industrious
husband fashioned an additional counter along one side of the room,
the space she had to work in was literally about two feet long, a
bland beige Formica rectangle between the sink and the stove. She had
a walk-in pantry off to the side, like a short hallway, with a narrow
wooden countertop on one side. Heavy drawers that took two hands to
open were below, glass-fronted cupboards above. The volume of
dishware, cooking utensils and accessories, washed-out jars, recycled
plastic containers and hoards of foodstuffs she could fit in this
area, some even piled on the floor, was astounding. However, much of
it was expired by years. I once found a box of
cereal that
had expired seven years previously. The freezer was absolutely
packed with glass jars and baggies, much unlabeled, so it was
anyone’s guess what was inside or how old it was. If you
brought in a pint of ice cream, you had best grab a spoon and eat the
whole thing, whether you planned this or not, as there was no room
for anything new to fit in the frost-coated depths. She could not
throw things away. The same dusty boxes of tea and oatmeal kept their
spots in the pantry for year after year, long after her children hit
milestone anniversaries and began to welcome another generation into
the family. I always thought she just didn’t notice, but once
she admitted that she hung onto the past by hanging onto things.
Even, I guess, stale cereal.
Marge
also would
hang on to what she deemed the countless injustices in the world,
which would often prompt her to “get on her soapbox” and
spout off to anyone who would listen, usually me if I was in the
house. I was fascinated with her strong opinions about everything
from crooked Chicago politicians (if Rod Blagojevich came up in
conversation, she would literally spit on the ground before launching
into an impassioned speech regarding his many shortcomings) to
egregious grammatical errors: if a store flyer advertised a “Grand
Re-Opening” she would practically shout “It should be a
RE-Grand Opening!” while waving said flyer in the air, blue
eyes sparking in indignation, short bob of a haircut swinging as she
shook her head in disbelief. Her husband and son sat mute, having
heard it all before. Whereas I, new to the family, represented an
audience that might commiserate with her opinions with the proper
coaching. Sitting at the big square farmhouse table in the kitchen,
wide-eyed and appreciatively tucking into my Double-R B, I likely
inadvertently egged her on.
Sometimes,
those
Rip-Roaring Breakfasts would include Danish Kringle, which soon
became a favorite of mine. While obviously not Polish in origin, nor
Czech, Marge made an exception for this delicious pastry made famous
in her hometown of Racine, Wisconsin. One of Racine’s claims to
fame was O&H Bakery, and every late fall Marge would drive the
hour or so north to fill the back of her Chevy Cavalier wagon with a
variety of flavors of this official pastry of the state, to give out
as Christmas gifts to fortunate friends and neighbors. While the
traditional kringle is an almond-filled pretzel shape danish, at
O&H
they are oval, 14 inches long, and filled with a variety of flavors,
from cinnamon to raspberry to pecan. They feed a crowd, are buttery
and rich, and fantastic at any time of day, always accompanied by a
cup of strong coffee if you happen to be visiting the house on Garden
Street. They are now sold at my local Trader Joe’s, one flavor
at a time, and every time I see one I think of Marge.
My
husband is
bookended by two sisters, one two years older, one two years younger.
The day I met them both was deemed special enough by Marge and Bob to
warrant a trip to “The Riverside,” a favorite Czech
restaurant near the southern Chicago suburb of Cicero, where Bob grew
up. This cash-only, no-fresh-vegetable-in-sight family restaurant
served big portions of hearty, gravy-covered meats, cabbage in
several forms, dumplings (both the aforementioned fruit, under
“specialties” on the menu, and also bread dumplings,
which always looked to me like slices of pale sponge. I kept this to
myself). All dinners included the option of soup or tomato juice, a
choice I found perplexing. I can’t stand tomato juice, so I
opted for the perpetual soup du jour of beef barley. One other soup
was offered daily, and Thursdays and Sundays it was liver dumpling,
which looked like a
meatball in
broth, but wasn’t.
After
eating out,
coffee and dessert would follow at home. No reason to pay good money
at a restaurant for dessert when Marge could throw together a Baked
Alaska at a moment’s notice – somewhere in that packed
freezer must be a Sara Lee pound cake and a carton of ice cream,
hopefully in the original packaging to assist a quick identification.
I think my own mother made Baked Alaska precisely once, likely for
some mid-century-modern dinner party event, and it must not have
turned out perfectly for she never made it again. Marge, on the other
hand, truly rolled with the punches. Her culinary motto, and in fact
what could be considered her life slogan in general, was something
along the lines of “it’s good enough”. Meringue
burnt? Scrape it off, it’s good enough. Ice cream overly soft?
Eat it anyway, it’s good enough. Cake had freezer burn? No one
will notice, it’s good enough.
One
year Marge sent
all three of her children and their families boxes of Omaha steaks
for Christmas. The ease of buying the same thing for everyone and
having shipping taken care of by the company was a strong selling
point for her, I’m sure. No matter that her youngest daughter
was a vegan at the time. “It’s good enough,” I can
see her saying to herself. That was Marge in a nutshell. Why knock
yourself out?
Bob
left us in 2002,
his funeral procession and graveside service at Clarendon Hills
Cemetery followed by a luncheon in his honor at The Riverside. He
had worked four decades as a radio engineer, often traveling to radio
towers in surrounding states for inspection. Marge chose an image of
an oil tower to be etched into his headstone, the only option
remotely resembling a radio tower. (Close enough. It’s good
enough.)
Marge
has since
moved from her old Chicago area house, where she spent almost 40
years, to a Minnesota apartment to be closer to her older daughter.
She doesn’t cook any more. She gets Meals-on-Wheels, which I
can pretty much guarantee doesn’t offer dumplings of any kind,
Czech or otherwise. I miss those hearty dinners, those Eastern
European specialties, and that tiny kitchen with the big farmhouse
table that held those delicious meals as we held hands around it. Those
meals opened my eyes to a world of new foods, and opened my
heart to a family I am proud to be a part of, soapboxes and all. It
is more than good enough, and it always was.
Suzanne
Caithamer
received a B.A. in English and Journalism from Indiana University and
a B.S. in Food and Nutrition from Purdue. She works in a school
cafeteria, which leaves her plenty of time to pursue projects in
nutrition and food writing. She has been published in Today’s
Dietitian, local newspapers, and Chicken Soup for
the Soul:
The Forgiveness Fix.
