A gift from my grandmother

By Megan Weltner

Thursday, April 16, 2009

I can’t hear the banging of pots and pans or smell the aroma of roasting pork without thinking of my grandmother, Gigi.

Gigi and I cooked our last meal together seven years ago, but as I sauté olive oil and garlic in my small kitchen in Lawrence, I am once again standing next to her preparing olive oil and garlic in her small kitchen in Montpelier, Vermont. Her short white hair is in a crisp wave atop her head and her long wrinkly fingers peel each clove of garlic with precision and speed. Pork fried rice is on the menu.

photo

Contributed Photo

For Megan, cooking with her grandma, Gigi, was a way for them to bond and spend time together.

In our family, cooking has always been a family affair, with loud music and 15 people screaming to be heard. Everyone in the kitchen has a special task, whether it’s peeling potatoes or garlic or carving the turkey. My grandmother loved these family efforts and the noise that went along with them. For her, each sound in the kitchen was special: the banging of pots and pans, the light whistling of boiling water, the crunch of peppers and onions or the cracking sound an egg makes when it is hit against the sharp edge of the counter.

The last meal I prepared with Gigi stands out most in my mind. It was the one time in my life Gigi and I cooked a meal together without the rest of our boisterous family. I had gone to visit her in Montpelier. Attracted to Vermont’s green mountains and serenity, she had moved to Vermont a few years earlier to escape the noise in Kansas City. My trip was a way for me to connect with her in her new home.

In the kitchen, I always learned something from Gigi—how to chop the onion, how to boil the potato, or how to thicken the aioli. In making pork fried rice with her, I learned how to cook the perfect grain of rice. You can’t time the tiny morsels; they decide when they are ready.

We sat and waited for each individual grain to cook in the boiling water. Her hand circled the pot—her round, deep-set eyes were so focused. The steam rose as we strained the blanched, softened rice. Gigi and I moved on to chopping each brightly colored vegetable. She grabbed the large kitchen knife with care and began to chop the onion. As she cut into the onion, the pungent scent stung her curved nose. It was a nose both she and my mother hated, but she took in the scent so carefully with it, shutting her eyes as though she wanted to remember the smell forever. After we chopped each vegetable one by one, it was time to put them in the wok. Each of the tiny red, yellow, green and purple pieces spattered in the pan.

As we stood at the counter chopping that evening, she told me stories of my mother: the day she ate an entire stick of butter as a child or the first time she came home drunk, expecting my grandmother to be clueless. I still can hear her infectious laugh so clearly in my head. I remember thinking to myself, “I will remember this night forever.”

As we sat and enjoyed our candlelit dinner of pork fried rice, she told me how even on the coldest, loneliest nights in Vermont, she is comforted by the memories of our family in the kitchen cooking dinner. Although Gigi lived miles from our family, she said every night when she would cook dinner in her small, white kitchen, she would think of all the meals we had cooked together as a family.

Only now do I realize what cooking dinner is to me. As I stand, alone, in my kitchen with the dark, creaking, wood floors below me, my family miles away, I feel as if they are next to me, helping me to stir the simmering garlic or reduce the cream sauce. Each member of my family has a hand in cooking my meals, and each adds his or her own ingredient.

I like to think Gigi is with me every time I enter the kitchen, helping me test a new recipe or laughing at me when I burn the shit out of my eggs. Cooking is a way for me to feel relaxed after a day full of anxiety and, most importantly, it is Gigi’s voice still ringing in my ear. The eating is always important, but for me it is the cooking that has molded the real memories.

Comments

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.

Advertisement