and what have you. Hell, I would have just told the dame straight out that all Jack Russells are pretty noisy by nature when excited and maybe something like a poodle or cocker mix might be a better choice. But Sally sees a chance for a good home with a reliable family, and explains patiently the various ways any dog can be trained to behave, and oohs and aahs over the way the child and dog are so compatible, and before you know it, the mother seems to have forgotten all about barking and is cuddling the dog like a baby, and telling her husband to write out a donation. Lord, what I’d give to have Sally’s patience. I remember when I was as fat as Sally and trying to lose all that weight, I was so anxious I couldn’t get to the scales fast enough every morning. If that had been Sally, she would’ve probably been real calm about it all, but not me. When I got my mind set on most things, if it happens tomorrow, that’s too late.
3
KNEE-HIGH TO A GRASSHOPPER
Crazy as it sounds, what’s gotten me through my weight ordeal more than anything else is cooking—for myself, for friends, and church events, and SPCA fund-raising picnics, and birthdays, and Lord knows what else. Okay, so I can’t actually eat like I did before the surgery without upchucking, and sometime my willpower’s really put to the test. But believe you me, nothing can keep me out of the kitchen, and now I can be pretty satisfied with just the thrill of tasting all the dishes. I guess you could call cooking a passion with me, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s also some kind of therapy. Always has been, I’d say.
And yeah, put out as I can be with Mama ’bout a lotta things, I gotta admit she gets all the credit for getting me interested in cooking when I was just knee-high to a grasshopper. Gladys never seemed to give a damn about it when we were kids, which I guess is why she and that family of hers nourish themselves today mainly on KFC and Whoppers and junk like that. But me, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Mama when she’d fix a mess of short ribs, or cut out perfect rounds of buttermilk biscuit dough with a juice glass, or spread a thick, real shiny caramel icing over her 1-2-3-4 cakes. And I can remember like it was yesterday (must have been about 4 years old at the time) when she first let me help her bake cookies, especially the same jelly treats I still make today and could eat by the dozen if I didn’t now have better control.
“Honey, start opening those jars on the counter,” she said while she creamed butter and sugar with her Sunbeam electric hand mixer in the same wide, chipped bowl she used to make biscuit dough. Strawberry, peach, and mint—the flavors never varied for Mama’s jelly treats, and just the idea of making these cookies with anything but jelly and jam she’d put up herself the year before would have been inconceivable to Mama.
Everything Mama did caught my eye, but I think what intrigued me most was when she separated eggs by rocking the cracked shells back and forth till the whites plopped into a bowl and then dropped the yolks in the batter. Next, she told me to cover the whites with plastic to use in scrambled eggs later on, and I just couldn’t get over how sticky they were when some got on my fingers.
“Okay, precious,” she said with a small amount of dough in her chubby hands, “help me roll clumps like this one into smooth balls and put ’em on the cookie sheet—not too close together, mind you.” So I rolled and rolled the dough between the palms of my hands the way she was doing, and if the ball was too little or too big, she’d say, “Pay attention, young lady,” and tell me they should be ’bout the size of marbles, and make me start over again. Soon the pan was full of balls the same size, and what Mama did then was take my index finger and push it down real gentle into the ball to make a dent for the jelly, and show me how to seal any cracks around the edges. The only problem was my fingers gradually became sticky again, and when I complained, Mama told me to hush up and just dip them in a little flour or water. And it really fascinated me how well that worked.
“Are we ready for the jelly yet?” I finally asked real impatiently.
“We certainly are not,” she answered as she grabbed the cookie sheet with one hand and stuck it in the oven. “They gotta first bake about 10 minutes.”
“Why, Mama?”
“Just because, child, that’s why,” she sorta huffed. “They gotta set up a little bit. Now stop asking me dumb questions.”
Then the real fun began when she showed me how to fill the holes with jelly scraped from a small spoon with my fingers. First I used some of the strawberry, then the peach, and finally the pretty mint, and when I alternated the fillings to make the cookies more multicolored, Mama smiled and patted me softly on the shoulder and said, “I see we got a real artist in the kitchen.” What she didn’t like too much was when I licked the spoon every once in a while. “Child, you gonna rot every tooth in your head out if you keep that up, so stop this minute,” she scolded kinda playfully.
Of course, Mama never asks, Mama dictates, and it was no different back then when she simply opened the oven door and told me to pick up the cookie sheet with two pot holders and slide it back onto the rack. Well, this scared me to death—that blast of heat from the oven, the fear of being burned, the sight of ugly red scars on Mama’s hands and arms—but when I just stood there, she said, “Go on, sugar. If you’re gonna bake cookies and biscuits with Mama, you gotta get used to the hot oven. Don’t worry, Mama’ll help you.”
And she did help me, and after we took out the first batch of bubbling treats, I don’t think I was ever frightened again of a hot oven. I noticed the way Mama watched the cookies like a hawk till they were just golden brown, no matter when the timer rang. I also learned to imitate her technique of nudging the cookies with gentle stabs of a spatula when we transferred them to a wire rack to cool. But I think what I remember most was the look on Mama’s face when she simply stared at the beautiful treats like she was almost in a trance and mumbled, “Pretty, aren’t they?” Mama was so proud of our jelly treats, and the way she put her arm around my shoulder, you’d never guess in a million years she could be so ornery. Soon as they cooled, we both ate a cookie, then another, then another, and still another, and I thought they were the best cookies I’d ever put in my mouth.
Biscuits were another matter, and nothing was (or is) more sacred to Mama than the hot buttermilk biscuits she served with everything from fried chicken to Brunswick stew to country ham with red-eye gravy.
“Time you learned to make biscuit, young lady,” she sorta proclaimed one chilly fall morning as she stretched a red apron around her big stomach and handed me a smaller white one to tie around my waist. And to this day Mama still uses only the singular word “biscuit” whether she’s referring to one or two or a dozen biscuits.
“Stick your hand in that sack of flour and grab me a couple of big handfuls,” she directed me. Well, I thought that flour I dumped in the chipped, cream-colored biscuit bowl was the softest thing I’d ever felt in my life.
“One more handful, sweetheart,” she then said after she’d studied the mound. “Your hands are a lot smaller than mine.”
I did as she said, and when the amount of flour looked just right to Mama, she next sprinkled on some white powder she pinched from a purple can with her fingers, and another powder from a bright yellow box, and some salt from another box with a picture of a little girl carrying an umbrella, and then told me to stir everything with her wooden spoon. No measuring cups or spoons, no scales, nothing but our hands and fingers and a big wooden spoon.
“Honey, open that can of shortening,” she said next as she held out a large silver spoon, dug it four times into the can, and scraped the messy shortening off with a finger into the flour. She then took a few whacks at the flour with the metal pastry cutter, handed it to me, and said, “Here, Loretta, you cut in the shortening the way you just saw me do.” I began hacking away at the pale gobs, but in no time Mama’s howling, “No, no, no, angel” as she took my hand and guided the blade in more gentle strokes. “Don’t crush those lumps so much, for heaven’s sake. They’re what make the biscuit flaky.”
I noticed before Mama began pouring buttermilk in the bowl how she held the carton up, took a sniff and a few long guzzles, and declared, “Lord, that’s good milk.” Then she sprinkled a little flour on the