Mom's Knife and Comfort Food

It would be difficult for me to accurately describe my mothers knife.  Oh she had other knives, but to describe  the one she always used that would be impossible.  It was just an old fashioned butcher knife.  She used it clear up until the end when we really had very little choice other than to move her into an assisted living facility.  Alzheimer's or some other hellish thing had come upon her.  Her doctor and those at the assisted living places pinned it on Alzheimer’s.  We did as well, but were also informed they would not really know for sure until afterword and they could do an autopsy.  We chose not to.  She went through several companies and facilities as my dad did as well later.  She was never happy in any of them.  She seemed sometimes to me to go out of her way to be unhappy in any of them.  A sad end to such a person.  At any rate, after they both passed her knife came into my possession.  Oh it was not a thing locked in a vault though it should have been.  We sort of treasure it, I am thinking of framing it when I get my wood shop moved and set back up and in order.
       

I believe mom told me that knife her and dad bought after they were married or it might have came with the deal..  They were together for a long time; over 60 years.  Mom never claimed to be a cook.  Yet she was a master of home cookery and not to be confused with a home chef.  Yet from time to time she would venture out of her comfort zone.  Most of her cooking was from a cookbook from the nation of unpublished featuring the state of unmeasured bordered by untimed.  Her oven was set at 350 and do not ever touch that.  That was an act of war.  The stove I remember the most the timer you never touched, because it would never shut off.  Either it was messed-up broke or we were never smart enough to figure it all out.  Rather she knew when a casserole or cake was done by smell and sight most the time and a toothpick of course which she hardly needed but gave her the benefit of the doubt.

She cooked my kind of comfort food.  I hear people talk about comfort food and I have come to the realization that one mans comfort food is another mans distain.  I guess that distain can change as well over the years however.  I had a huge dislike back then for baking powder biscuits.  I swore that I would never eat another one after I left home.  Well I really never left home because after we were married I still worked for dad for about a year and was always a phone call way afterwords.  In short Ellen and I was around there a lot.  To her I am sure it seemed all the time some times.  There were cattle to sort and hay to harvest or to feed most the time.  Because of mom’s lack of measurements and her special terminology this tended to intimate Ellen about mom’s home cooking.
    

Today I think if I had to choose one meal that mom made a lot that I would so love to have again but at one time swore I would never touch it again.  That would be deer chops, fried potatoes and gravy, fried apples and baking powder biscuits and homemade strawberry jam.  Funny I remember that was served a lot in the late fall and early winter when there was a surplus of cooking apples and venison.  And for some reason that never went well with me.  Now I only can dream.  However that would never been called comfort food by me.  My choice of comfort food if I had to pick one would have to potatoes and white gravy.  The potatoes would need to be boiled (not mashed)  or fried and the gravy home made of course from the scrappings in the pan that cooked the meat be it beef or pork.  A little salt and lot of pepper.  Well most likely a lot more salt than suggested by those who try and run your life by food.  Moms style of cooking without a doubt shortened their lives a great deal.  Dad was 96, mom was like 88 when she passed away.
                     

Mom was a meat and potatoes cook and that was how I learned to cook.  She was a cast iron fry pan cook.  She was the boss of the kitchen cook.  She and the foul mouthed Gordon Ramsey could have yelled at each other all day and never done any good.  She was a peel the spuds with a knife gal never a fancy peeler although she had them in the drawer.  She use the same knife to trim the meat and the peel fruit and I guess anything else that needed cutting.  She was a fried spuds cook and lots of them, or a boiled potatoes person.  Very seldom did she mash potatoes other than Thanksgiving and Christmas now that I think back on it.  She always cooked extra back then.  And then there was alway someone popping in around dinner time.  If you stopped by there at dinner time; you best plan on eating.  (I think they knew that.)  Never mattered to her who you were be it one of the founders of Micron Corp who by the way would on occasion would visit us.   To an old Basque friend from Mountain Home that at one time owned a many bands of sheep before the USFS forced them out of business.  Or be it someone off the road they all sat the same at her table just the same and there was always plenty.  It never went to waste that is for sure.  In Idaho potatoes were cheap as was meat for us.  We raised our own beef and harvested a lot of wild game.  She came from a large family that came to Idaho from the dust bowl of Oklahoma.  To her Idaho was the land of plenty and loved to tell me about all the food they had after they got here.  But she was a died in the wool Sooners fan and an Okie at heart to the end.

What ever your comfort food is it means a lot to the person.  My grandfather on dad’s side was an old lathery cowboy who went by Rawhide or just Hide.  (That was just his close friends.)  When he was in the ‘nursing home’ dying of cancer his only complaint I heard him voice was the mashed potatoes.  "You can not get a damned fried spud here in this damned place."  Comfort food to some friends we had from Thailand it was sticky rice.  To some it is a thick rich stew and a chuck of crusty bread, or a hot bowl of chowder or Chicken and Dumplings.  Comfort food to me has to be guarded somewhat away from the norm lest it lose its magic and charm and become the norm.

Watching mom in the kitchen cooking was artistry in motion and the timing was magic.  Mom would peel the potatoes with the knife.  Pull out a heavy cast iron skillet and sit in on the stove with one hand.  She would heat up some grease, oil or what every she had on hand.  In went the the potatoes followed by salt and pepper.  She then would cover them with one of several hodgepodge of lids she had.  She would turn the spuds a couple times and then suddenly, almost magically just at the right moment a cast iron fry pan or skillet would hit the stove again with one hand.  A little bacon grease went in to it.  She would toss in a couple steaks, or chops salt and pepper and cover.  She knew when to turn them never a wasted motion or a second thought.  Off came the lid from the fry pan and the meat was turned, salt and peppered,  lid went back on and the heat was cut usually down a couple notches.  It was about here she would put together a salad, she had been a salad chef at he Hotel Boise and was very good at them.  Or she would open a can or two of vegetables that went on the stove.  She did a lot of improvising and on the fly creativity with canned vegetables.  Turn that down, uncover the meat, that went on to a platter.  Mom was a well done cook.  If you wanted rare, medium rare or anything other than done I am afraid you were out of luck.  Just best go some place else.  Funny she might have been a one speed meat cook but it was always cut it with a fork tender.  They were never as burned or dark brown and crusty and tough as shoe lather that one thinks of well done.  They were always moist and flavorful.  Anyone that sat at mom and dad’s table was always truly amazed how she did it.  She said she learned it cooking for a huge bunches all the time.  Be it family or a bunch of cattlemen or sheepmen and their herders it all went on the table at the same time.  I was amazed at how she could pull everything off at the same time no matter what.  When she placed the meat on the platter, she some how had the flour in the skillet and stirred that into the meat grease and thickening that up all at the same time.   She would grab the milk and pour just what she needed into the skillet and turned the heat up.  Grabbed the spatula turned the fried potatoes once more and cut the heat.  Sat that off just in time for the gravy to boil which she would attack with salt, pepper and a spoon stirring for all it was worth.  It was soon thickened and every thing went in to bowls family style.  Made no difference to her if it was just her and dad or ten or twenty.  Her table always seemed to be a talkative place, lots of food and lots of sharing.  Sometimes mom and dad communicated a lot by arguing.  

          

But mom was not a large lady, in fact she was sort of small and petite red head.  She could take a cast iron fry pan full of gravy one handed and pour it in to a serving bowl.  She might have been the queen of her kitchen but potatoes, and white gravy were king in her kitchen it seemed.  And so were the people.  I guess they were in most peoples kitchen back then.  We visited a lot of ranch people back then and it was pretty much all the same.  Or at least they were here in Idaho.
    

That is how her knife ended up in the shape it was in.  She literally wore it almost into before we had to sadly take it away from her and move her into assisted living.  We always figured it was the potatoes.  It was concave and wore out where the spuds were pealed.  But just how many tons of potatoes and pounds of carrots, apples and other things had to be pealed?

Thanks a bunch Mom for the knife and the memories!

Rick