Maude McDaniel, Columnist
The New Year season is perfect for talking about first times.
Right now I am still in the clouds about this Thanksgiving, which finally turned out to be the first time I ever made great turkey gravy!
Don’t ask why, but up until 2009, my turkey gravy was awful — thin, lumpy, and disgusting. Thank goodness, my turkeys were always understanding, and didn’t run away from the mess, like the one forced to endure MSG in the canned broth commercial. Still it has been an embarrassment in the eyes of the world, as represented by the 26 to 37 people who’ve attended recent Thanksgivings here. (You have to wonder why they came back, seeing as how my filling isn’t all that great either. Actually, it’s because families can be quite understanding, plus nobody else has this much parking space)
Unfortunately, I can’t say why my gravy turned out so well this year. Being a slow learner, I did everything the way I’ve always done it, used juice from the turkey and stewed giblets, canned broth (no MSG), and mixed flour and water to thicken it — my routine for, um, 60 years. But this time, to everyone’s amazement, it turned out thick, tasty, and terrific.
If you have a theory about this, keep it to yourself. I prefer to think that I am still young enough to learn, and I can’t wait to find out what will be next. Do you suppose I might actually figure out before January 1 (as I write) how to put the license sticker on my car? Hey, someone already did it for me; thank you, my child.
Then there’s fudge. Fudge might seem simple to you but that’s because you live in modern times. Bear in mind that, when I was young, we had no marshmallow cream (or crème, as some call it) to keep it soft. In order to keep fudge from hardening beyond recall, you had to beat it! And beat it! And beat it!
Modern cooks have no idea how much physical labor used to be involved in cooking. The kitchen was a regular hard-labor camp: Fudge, beat it; angel food cake, beat it; whipped cream, beat it; meringue, beat it. No machines - it was all done by hand. (No MSG either). And heaven help you , if your muscles turned into wet noodles. They weren’t on the menu. There was, however, one advantage: the exercise of cooking kept our ancestors buff.
When I was growing up, we did have some primeval form of electric mixer by then, but no one thought to use it for fudge. Teenagers historically have been averse to working hard if they don’t have to. Which is why, when certain girl friends from church and I decided to Support Our Armed Forces (this was WW ll) by sending them fudge, it seems we didn’t beat it long enough to soften it up sufficiently for human consumption.
That is why those acquaintances of ours who were suffering through such experiences as D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and so forth, came home with horrendous tales of the cement-like quality of our well-meant candy. I am sad to say that they actually attributed the end of the war in Germany to its disastrous effects when hurled at high speed into enemy bunkers. One so-called friend even hinted that, given enough sugar and cocoa, we could have defeated Japan without atomic bombs!
And so it was that our efforts to directly support our brave soldiers in the field ended up in well-meant but hurtful jokes that I have not seriously responded to until this very moment in time. (Point I have always pondered: where would a moment be if not in time?)
The last first time I am going to discuss here is one of the happiest of my memories. It’s the first time anyone ever laughed, or anyway smiled, at something I said to be deliberately funny. I was probably about seven or eight, and my whole family of seven including my aunt and uncle (who, though a minister, was a notable joker), was traveling around New England in one car . (Cars were huge in those days.) No cell phones, no iPods, no radios, no TV — just us.
People had to drum up their own ways of passing the time in those days. Our family was not mean, so instead of quarreling we talked a lot and joked a good deal, especially with Uncle around. I loved it. That’s why I felt so deliciously good when I got the first spontaneous laugh of my life. We had passed a whole field full of cows, all of whom were lying down. Mother commented that it must be going to rain soon, because that’s what it meant when cows lay down in the field. And sure enough, about ten minutes later, it started to rain.
That’s when I cracked my first conscious joke. Wait for it, if you can.
I said, “Those cows sure knew what they were lying about.” Okay, okay, it won’t make The Tonight Show, but it got me enough laughs to make me realize that I far preferred to make people smile than to make them cry.
Oh, and, by the way, what is MSG, anyway?
Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on alternate Sundays in the Times-News.
