More Treat Than Trick

Weaving my way home on All Hallows Eve I had but one thought in my mind, Do Not Hit The Children.

Little Biebers, Avengers, Taylors and Disney Princesses all whoring themselves door to door for a fun sized candy bar. Not that I'm judging. I sold my soul for pixie stix back in '72 and never looked back.

When I walked in the door dinner was, as always, ready. There were two pots on the makeshift stove. (Our actual stove and oven crapped out ages ago and due to a complicated web of faulty and not so faulty reasoning is not likely to be replaced in my mothers lifetime. We have a two burner electric thing that's really meant for keeping Swedish meatballs warm in church basements but we make do.

One burner held the evenings dinner. You may recall that on Tuesday last week I told my mother that I would make the brown gravy and pork meatballs on Saturday and that I would also make hamburg and macaroni to freeze for later in the week. She had made hamburg and macaroni for supper. Well okay fine Passive aggressive but fine.

The other pot had something I couldn't identify. Not good news.

Mom had started talking months ago about making caramel corn for my work friends. She had found an old recipe that she loved and wanted to use it. We bought the bags for it the moment Halloween stuff came out but the night before the holiday was the night I made the pork meatballs and we'd done a lot that day and were both exhausted. We agreed to do them later in the week.

Apparently one night later was late enough because the other pot on the stove was the sugar and butter required to make the glaze. We had purchased popping corn (yeah, the non microwave kind) the day before so began trying to pop. Well, first she had me get the bag of corn and open it. Easy enough right? Not so much. She was standing in front of the drawer containing the scissors and rather than risk her wrath by squeezing in near her or ask her to stop her rant about I don't remember what I used this super cute kitty that sticks to the fridge and is supposed to open any sort of package. 

I opened the popcorn wrong. Of course I did. She picks up the bag, starts to pour it into the pot she's using to pop and says “You couldn’t just open the corner? You couldn’t just…open the corner?” and gives me a look. For better or worse mom’s a smart cookie and could see the wheels turning in my head, she could just see it in my eyes how I’d be blogging about this later so she changes tactics from bitey to nice.

 Mom insisted the popping could be done with no oil or fat at all. I disagreed but not out loud. Turns out it can be done if what you want is tiny, mostly unpopped popcorn. We added oil and the kernels popped a little larger but still nowhere near what we needed. We have tons of microwave popcorn but it’s all buttered and you can’t use buttered for the caramel corn, the caramel sauce won’t stick.

I remember that they actually have natural microwave popcorn at the store and look at the time. It’s 9:30 so I know a few places will still be open. I take off to the store and buy two GIANT boxes of natural microwave popcorn because I have no feel for how much we need. There are ten bags in each box. Turns out we need 2 bags.

Whatever, we’ll make this again if it turns out well, and we can use some for stringing for the Chrismas tree.

I’m really worried as we throw in the first bag because if it doesn’t pop well we’ve wasted a ton of time and I’ll have picked the wrong popcorn and it’ll be my fault.

Instead it pops up huge and beautiful (it’s Hannaford’s natural if you want to know) and shockingly it’s really tasty all on its own.

We’re both really excited about the nice popcorn so we move on to making the caramel which instead of taking over like she normally would mom did a fantastic job of stepping back and guiding me with good humor.

Because we were working on the church basement burner it took forever for the caramel to come up to the right temperature but it finally did and we were ready to make the corn. We had two bowls of popped corn so I poured caramel into one for her to mix and another for me to mix.

She was way better at it :

But I managed to get it done as well. We spread it out in pans and pushed it down then let it cool. It was actually fun.

When it was cool be broke it up and put it in bags then I tied the bags with twist ties for work the next day.

We snuck a few bites and I thought it was good and it got the Bluff seal of approval as well.

I brought it to work the next day and everyone really seemed to like it but I knew it was actually pretty good when my coworker Katrina who is honest to a fault and known for not eating things cooking in people’s kitchens if she hasn’t seen them not only accepted it but asked for and ate a second bag. (In her defense I had them in tiny bags).

So now I know another thing to make that’s really pretty easy except for the wait time on the caramel that people enjoy.

I’ll add here that I made dinner one day on my own completely but it was just hamburgers and chips. I did remember to cook the hamburger with onions and peppers though so I felt like a freaking Master Chef. It may not look that appetizing but it tasted great!

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It's More Than Meatballs

I realize this is not the most appetizing way to start a food blog but then, this isn't really a food blog. Let's start with some background shall we?

I'm 46. Oh, I know, I look 15 don't I? It's all the Glee I watch. Anyway, I'm 46 and I live with my mother who is 86. She has always done everything around the house. She does the cooking, cleaning, laundry. I started making my own bed in the morning a few months ago. I'm not even joking.

I'm not saying I do nothing. I do stuff. If you know me you know I do plenty but mom has always done these things and when and if I try to help I get a lesson in all the ways I am wrong. If I do the dishes I put them away in the wrong place (I don't understand how there can be a wrong place. I live here, wherever I put the cup is where the cup goes. It doesn't pay rent, it gets no say. I mean, if I were for instance keeping the silverware in the basement next to the electric drill I'd understand her concern but the fact that I stack the juice glasses to the left of the coffee mugs instead of the right...I'm mystified at how this could be wrong. Her answer, should I ask is either "get out of the way I'll do it right" or "because that's where they go". Logic isn't mom's strong suit.

I used to make my bed before work. When I came home I'd find that she'd remade my bed. I have no idea why she'd even go into my room unless it was laundry day, but nonetheless my bed would have been remade. If you're wondering how I knew she'd remade it she has a real thing for moving my favorite pillow (yeah, I have a favorite pillow, if you don't you're soulless) to the far side of my bed. It grates on me. Why? Because that's not where it belongs, oh never mind I'll do it myself.

Er, let's get back on track. When I was a teen and mom worked nights I cooked dinner for my father and I nearly every night. It didn't usually come out that great but dad loved me too much to complain and I didn't mind puttering around out there. I just felt bad for poor dad having to eat whatever I ruined. It didn't last long and mom was home at night (dad probably offered to pay her twice her salary if she'd just save him from my glue like mashed potatoes).

That was pretty much the sum total of my meal making. When I lived out on my own, or with someone else we ate out most of the time, were too poor to eat more than Ramen or they cooked. I didn't expect other people to cook for me, they just did. I had a boyfriend who would throw absolute fits if I stepped in his kitchen.

For the past few years mom has been complaining about cooking. I always just let her complain because honestly, she wouldn't want me to cook. She'd just come in and tell me everything I was doing wrong and then take over and cook for me anyway and then I'd mutter under my breath about her being a pain in my ass. Despite not hearing the television when it's as loud as it can possibly go, or me  when I'm screaming at her to take her meds she would hear me mumbling throw the pan and tell me fine, she won't help me at all and I can just do whatever I want.

This is my cue to apologize profusely and spend the next few hours in the agonizing position of having made my mother sad. Mom lashes out as angry but I learned long ago that it's just because she's sad and feels put down and not valued and never really got the tools to say those things. The more I apologize the angrier she gets but the more upset she gets the more I need to fix things and then we're in a terrible state.

So I don't cook. I let her complain and then she stops complaining and cooks.

Today she complained for the first time in my entire life about doing the dishes. She feels like she's attached to the sink and always has a sink full of dishes.

I. don't. cook.

The dishes must be throwing themselves into the sink as a sort of weekend out. Looking for the hot tub experience.

Anyway it's my day off and that always means grocery shopping so off we go to the store and while we're there she tells me that she didn't even think of "going groceries" today. We haven't been in two weeks and she didn't even think of it.

As we look at meat she tells me she's sick of being the cook. She's been cooking for 75 years and she's sick of it. She's not just a cook for God's sake.

This is an odd day. She's complaining a lot lately about things she's always just done. Oh, I should mention I started doing my own laundry awhile back. I'd do hers too but she always tells me she doesn't have any that needs doing then does her own a few days later. She's never complained about laundry and to be honest I sort of like doing it. I have an unnatural attraction to the smell of laundry soap. That same boyfriend that would throw me out of his kitchen also smelled like liquid tide when he sweat. It wasn't his clothes. It was him. Sexiest thing EVER.

Ah...yeah, so she's complaining in a very unusual way and my knee jerk reaction is, I go to work, I give you half my check, I'm not going to start cooking and cleaning and doing everything while you sit on your ass. I keep this reaction in my own head. That's where I keep pretty much anything negative I might ever think where she's concerned for 2 reasons, 1 the aforementioned ability to hear me mumble and 2 guilt. I love her too much to say anything mean. In fact I feel guilty for some of the stuff I said above, but we're moving forward here.

I thought that and then within minutes I though, she's 86 years old. When HER mother was 86 she was barely getting across a room on her own and didn't even make her own tea let alone do laundry, clean and cook.  I suck.

I waited a little while and then told her, "I can start learning to cook and make a few meals a week, but I have to do it on my day off, there is NO way I'm starting to cook when I get home from work at 8pm."

She mumbled something I didn't catch because I didn't inherit that particular trait.

We finished our shopping and then stopped at McDonalds on the way home because my energy for this day was GONE. While we sat and ate in the car I asked her if she thought I could make one of her recipes (my favorite, pork meatballs and potatoes in brown gravy) in a crock pot if I baked and froze the meatballs ahead of time.

Her response was to recite how she makes the dish. I interrupted to ask if she didn't think a particular step could be done in the hot pot instead of ahead and she said, "Do you want to know how I do it, or are you just going to tell me how to do it."

And we're back.

I told her, I wasn't TELLING you anything, I was ASKING A CLARIFYING QUESTION.

She replied that she'd never done it in a crockpot in her life so how would she know if it would work that way and did I want to know how she did it?

I didn't really want the whole play by play but I told her I did to keep the peace. Twenty minutes later she was done explaining and I told her my plan.

I'm going to make the meatballs, potato and gravy dish on Saturday before we go out and then freeze the whole thing because her description suggested it would not work as a crock pot dish. See, this is the dicey part, I don't get a day off. My days that I don't work are referred to as HER days off and they are not to be spent inside the house because SHE is always in the house. We need to go out. Another reason it's not so easy to get laundry done or anything else.

I'll cook that this Saturday and maybe some macaroni and hamburger as well which we can freeze and then have either on it's own or with pizza sauce another night. We eat out on Tuesdays,  Friday night and Saturday night as it stands so that only leaves four nights of cooking. I've killed off two of them right there.

I told her, and I wasn't lying that I'm excited about this that I want to do this. Then I told her that she would have to take time to show me things, that I would take over the cooking but she would have to show me how she does things AND she would need to realize that if she shows me and then I decide to do it differently it doesn't mean I'm doing it WRONG it means I'm doing it my way. I made it clear I want to learn from her but I don't want to fight with her.

She's not a fan of the crock pot but I am. Mom and I don't actually like the same foods, though I love her cooking. I like more flavors, more styles. She likes what she knows and that is all. We both love to watch the Chew and bond over it whenever we get a chance to watch together but always disagree about which recipes sound good.

To do this I have  to learn to cook HER food but in doing so hopefully I'll pick up some skills that will help me learn to cook my food. I stated emphatically that I would look up crock pot dishes that she would enjoy (she hates gravies and sauces) and would be buying a crock pot (hint to anyone buying me a Christmas present this year). I assured her that I would do prep cooking on my days off before taking her out and sometimes late at night for the next evening. I'm useless in the morning but you set me to a task at 3 AM and I'm gonna crush it.

The late night thing has the added advantage of the possibility of her sleeping through my prep work. I've never picked up the correct knife for a job the first time. Ever. She will always correct my tool choice. Pot, pan, knife, cutting board.

When we got home tonight she started to put the ground pork away but I stopped her. I needed to make that into meatballs before freezing. She wasn't in the mood for my tomfoolery but I'd already started writing this blog in my head and nothing in the world motivates me like knowing I might get to write about it later.

I asked her where the onions were (legit question, she moves them based on season and we're sort of between seasons) got an onion and pulled out a paper plate to chop it. She quickly let me know I needed wax paper and NOT a paper plate. I got the waxed paper, pulled out a knife and asked pointedly (see what I did there?) if I had the wrong knife. She responded that she didn't care what knife I used as long as I chopped the onion thin. Good, she was getting it.

I chopped the onion, she did not pass judgement. I started making the meatball and she flipped out. "You need to get everything together before you start!!!!"

I have meat, I have hands, I added the onion which she doesn't use but was in favor of. I seasoned with salt and pepper (we argued about that as well, I shook the amount I felt would be sufficient into my hand and then spread over the meat - I'm a scientist, I like measurements- she grabbed the shaker and began dousing).
What could I be missing?

Flour. I could be missing flour. Which I would have known had I been listening to her description of how to make this back at McDonald's.

One point mom.

I get the flour but explain that this is the kind of freak out I meant when I said she'd have to be patient.

Again she got it. She was so instructive and helpful. She did grab the first meatball away from me to finish it but all the rest were mine. Mom managed to encourage rather than discourage and I got them right.

I had to take a picture of me with them. I expected her to be annoyed with this because her generation rarely took photos except on special occasions and she knew it was for the internet and doesn't understand the need to put every little thing online. She was amused. Mom's racking up them points.

So my first ever meatballs are chillin in the freezer (yeah, you can expect a lot of that super clever stuff) and I'm excited to make a meal out of them. It's bittersweet. It's the end of an era and yes, of course it should have been sooner. Most people get here at a much younger age but my mother has always needed to be the mother and I didn't hate being taken care of. I've been taking care of her for a long time now but these things were the last vestiges of the mother/child balance. I'm becoming the caretaker in a much more tangible way and I feel ready but afraid.

I know I can do it. I just hate that I have to do it alone. Most people have a partner in this or even a sibling but it's just me and the dog and she's really very little help in the kitchen.

The best thing though is I know I'm getting these lessons while mom can still share them. This may be a lovely step in our relationship toward learning how to speak to each other with a goal in mind. I'm hoping to come out of the kitchen with way more than meatballs.