Grandma's Love

I was pretty much raised by my mother's mother--my Gramma Clark. She was one strong, independent woman. At twenty-one, she came to this country via Canada with only a ticket in hand and the guarantee of a job as an upstairs maid. Her friends called her Nettie and she had many. She was married and loved her man for twenty years, having five children with him and living longer without him than with him. He died young and left her with a houseful of teenagers.

I remember all kinds of wonderful experiences we shared from our early morning walks to the day-old bakery and to church on Sundays to her walking me to school every day and making sure we said our prayers before bed every night. We'd go to sleep sharing tales of our day while the world news or a good baseball or hockey game played in the background lulling us to sleep. Later in life, I would still need her and I'd run to her with any tragedy I couldn't face alone. She was my rock. But I want to share the story of several family discussions (disagreements) over Grandma's culinary delights at family functions years after her passing.

Gran's cooking was quite a controversial topic in our family. I remember when I got back from my Alaska adventure in 1983, I teased her that we could open a restaurant up here and get over five dollars a slice for her pies with their tough crust and undercooked fillings. But, it's her poor man's stew that will be passed down through several generations. That's how we will best remember her. I have made it for years and anytime I need to remember her fondly I gather all the ingredients, get the big stew pot out and get cooking.

Now the point of the family discussions were that we all make our version of Gram's hamburger stew but we all leave out or add something. I've had my own, my dad's, mom's, sister's, cousin's, aunt's, etc. but none will ever really be Gramma Clark's. Hers was love and that's that. Many family gatherings end up being about food and most go on and on until we end up on Gram's poor man's stew. We can talk about meat pies, sausage rolls, shortbread recipes, etc. but we all have the best memories of the stew. We even argue about it being called a stew and not a soup.

One main ingredient that we argue over is the rutabaga. My mom would claim she only used it in season because of the taste or lack of it in the stored roots but we'd laugh and say it is really because she didn't want to have to hunt down the bitter, little, orange root and pay the added price of the imported produce in the off season.

My sister never put in the rutabaga or the peas because her children "wouldn't eat those foul veggies" but I know it was because as a child she wouldn't eat them either. My aunt Jean is the one who always claimed it should be called a soup and not a stew, and therefore, she would thicken hers to make the broth a gravy. I actually liked her version but I'd never let anyone other than her know that. She was an "outlaw"/in-law after all. She would often make a beef stew that resembled more of a Hungarian goulash and that was her way of treading softly around our family's Scottish traditional foods.

Dad's version always meant leftovers. He'd been a firehouse cook for years and when he cooked everything would feed fifteen to twenty hungry men. It was nice when he made his famous fudge brownies or those delicious Spanish peanut/peanut butter cookies but the four of us got tired of hamburger stew long before it was all gone. But I always loved his stew because I knew how much he loved Gram--his mother-in-law.

This doesn't really cover all the controversy concerning Grandma Clark's hamburger stew but it gives you all a little taste of my wonderful memories of her and our life together. She lived to be ninety-four and could still shovel her own walk and mow her lawn until the day she "went to join her Jack" as she put it. In the hospital she smiled, quietly closed her eyes and left this world on January 23rd--the same day her husband died fifty-one years earlier. My mother was there at the time and said it was like he was there in the room calling her to him and she smiled and passed with little or no ceremony.

Thanks for this opportunity to share a little of myself and the granny who contributed so much to the me I am today. JJ