Taste: My Life through Food(8)

So when my grandparents set up their home in America, they created not only a very large vegetable garden in the backyard but, when my mother was young, a small farmlet with a couple of goats, chickens, rabbits, and any other animal of reasonable size that was in some way useful or edible. And every bit of those animals that was edible was eaten. When a chicken was roasted, the liver, heart, and feet were all prepared according to old family recipes and the carcass used to make soup or stock. The same went for the rabbits, which I know is hard for a lot of people to hear. (As kids, my sisters and I would visit the rabbits in their makeshift hutches that my grandfather had hammered together himself out of scrap lumber and bits of old screen doors. We would feed the rabbits and ask him their names. He’d find a way to avoid the question, as I guess he knew it’s always best not to name the thing you’re going to kill. But I do remember his intimating that the most plump of the brood was not long for this world.) The goat, whose milk was drunk straight from the teat by the children, would inevitably be brought to the basement and strung up by its hind legs; its throat would be slit, its body drained of its blood, and finally it would be quartered.

I have it on good authority that when my parents were engaged, my father was present at one of these intimate eviscerations. However, on this occasion, his soon-to-be father-in-law unfortunately chose too dull a knife for the brutal task at hand. Upon witnessing the poor beast suffer so, causing it to urinate all over those present, my father promptly passed out. Seeing her future son-in-law prostrate on the floor, my grandmother turned to her daughter and asked, “You’re going to marry him?”

I know it may be disconcerting for many people to hear stories like this, but these events were very much part of everyday life. (Although, why somebody didn’t sharpen the knife is beyond me.) Even though there was a grocery store a couple of miles away, where of course my grandmother shopped for this and that, old habits are hard to break, especially if there really isn’t any need to. The hunting, skinning, quartering, and ultimately eating of all sorts of animals were important traditions to be cherished. I was about thirteen when I entered my grandmother’s back porch one day to find her skinning a squirrel given to her by a friend who had gone hunting that day. I was agog. I looked at her as though she were mad and she looked back at me quizzically, as though I were the one who was mad. I remember many times opening up the freezer to find neat rows of blackbird corpses in plastic wrap, as well as eels or a variety of venison cuts, all gifts from friends who had recently fished or hunted.

In return for these gifts, my grandmother would offer payment. Obviously it would have been an insult to take money for what was considered a gift, but an offer to pay had to be made, and she always did so. After a short, mostly-for-show squabble about money that shouldn’t have been offered and would never be taken, my grandmother would present the gift giver, by way of thanks, with homemade cookies, pizza, a savory pie, or a bottle of my grandfather’s wine, all of which were always on hand. I like these little acts of generosity, as I believe they make for deeper friendships, especially if the gifts are something one has made by hand or done something out of the ordinary to acquire.

Speaking about these moments of giving someone you love a practical gift, my parents never visited their parents without bringing something. (I still cannot bear the thought of arriving at someone’s home empty-handed.) However, in my family, this simple act was never as cut-and-dry as it should have been.

Let’s say that we visit my grandparents on a Sunday and my mother has brought a chicken, some cheese she knows my grandmother likes, and maybe a Fanny Farmer chocolate sampler to satisfy her sweet tooth.

Let’s say that happens.

Usually the person receiving the gifts might react with something like, “Oh, thank you for the chicken and the blah blah, but there was no need for you to do that.”

The other person might reply, “Oh, it’s nothing. The chicken was fresh and on sale and I know you like blah blah.”

The recipient would then probably say something like, “Well, that’s very generous of you.”

And that would be the end of that. And in most families, that would be the end of that.

But, no. No. Not in my family. In fact, very much the opposite inevitably happened during a visit to my grandparents of a Sunday. So that you might best understand it, I have dramatized one of these events below. It’s important to note that these people all love each other very much.





The Departure


We are in a kitchen in a small working-class home in Verplanck, New York, circa 1972.

Around a long table sit my sister Gina, nine; my sister Christine, six; me, twelve; my father, forty-three; and my maternal grandfather, seventies. At the sink are my mother, late thirties, and her mother, my grandmother, sixties.

A large meal has just been completed. My grandmother starts to fill a plastic bag with fresh vegetables.

MY MOTHER: What are you doing?

MY GRANDMOTHER: I’m giving you some of the tomatoes.

MY MOTHER: I don’t want any.

MY GRANDMOTHER: They’re from the garden.

MY MOTHER: I just got some from Grace’s garden.

MY GRANDMOTHER: How are they?

MY MOTHER: Nice.

MY GRANDMOTHER: Well, take these too.

MY MOTHER: I don’t want ’em.

MY GRANDMOTHER: Why not?

MY MOTHER: Because, I already… All right, just give me a few.