Scratchy

I suppose that each holiday has its up and downs; the positives and the negatives.

Thanksgiving requires eating, if you are a kid.  But when you are the adult host it is a different story entirely.  There is the slaving in the kitchen and trying to make a Martha Stewart performance meal.  And always the question of what to do with that little icky bag of giblets inside the turkey.

Christmas is a wonderful event if you are a kid.  But if you are the mom it means buying and decorating the tree (plus dealing with an irritable husband whose patience is tried three fold by the time he tries to straighten the fir for the fourth time.) Then there is the buying of presents—and wrapping them—hanging the stockings and buying the stuff that will go in them, cooking the meals for both Christmas Eve and day.   Oh, and Christmas cards.

No wonder I want a glass of champagne as we open gifts.

Easter is another story.  It was always tied up with church and scratchy dresses and silly hats.  Was it some odd Puritan thing that kids needed to be uncomfortable in their Easter Sunday best in order to get the chocolate? If truth were told, I would much rather have had black licorice and wear jeans.

Lay odl lay old lay hee hoo

I grew up in a family of music.  My mother taught it.  My father played it. I listened to it.  And I was forced to attempt playing it with the piano, guitar and flute.

 My parents sang in embarrassing harmony during church services and played their guitars for Boy Scout gold dinners.  Unfortunately, it went no further as American Idol didn’t exist in those days.

My sister and I were taken to Pasadena to see Florence Henderson in the Sound of Music.  We went to The Man From La Mancha, Mame and A Chorus Line at the Schubert Theater in downtown Los Angeles.

When we got our first “hi-fi” console at Angus Street my father mysteriously disappeared into the hallway closet that had a secret hatch into the attic space.  My sister and I were prudentially warned NEVER to walk on anything but the beams up there.  In a short while my father had carved out a pretty cool music system by placing speakers into the ceilings of the bedrooms.  Frankly, I was rather impressed.

And so it was that on varying holidays my sister and I would be awakened with the appropriate music.  On Halloween, for instance, it was Dans Macabre or Night on Bald Mountain.  Much better than an alarm clock.

One day, sitting in the New Room, (check out an older post) my dad and I were looking at his collection of LP records.  Amidst the Elaine May /Mike Nichols and Bob Newhart sketches and a record made by a woman who made her fame by singing off key (which is surprising difficult if you have a good “ear”) were his favorite singers. He told me whom he liked and why and, other than Burl Ives, he was right.  There was Pete Seeger—who my parents took us to see at Idyllwild.  I’m sorry to say that all I remember of that trip was the swimming pool and an old man with a banjo.  Patty Paige, Julie London, Ella were other favorites of my father.  HE went for the sultry.

 My mom’s records tended toward Leonard Bernstein…and yes, my sister and I had to sit through his Young People’s Concerts. (Bernstein always reminded me of my Uncle Max—and now I know why.) She also liked Matt Munro and anyone singing light opera, especially Rogers and Hammerstein. There was the sound track to Flower Drum Song and musicals that I had never heard of.  My mother also had a thing for tenors. 

Fast-forward many years and this explains why, when driving across the Dolomites in southern Europe with a (thankfully) long gone boyfriend, I suddenly burst into song:

“High on a hill was a lonely goatherd- lay odl lay odl lay hee hoo.”

Beans

Dill Beans

In the early 1980’s we became friends with a woman who lived in a cabin in the Washington woods, taught the deaf and was one of the best cooks I’ve ever known.  When we would arrive at her cabin on the Kitsap Peninsula, we would be greeted with a Bloody Mary that always had a dilled string bean in the glass.  The beans, and the drink, were memorable.

Despite working in a Regensburg pickle factory, I still love a dill pickle. Despite spending six weeks smelling of vinegar and dill and shoving cucumbers into a jar, I feel fortunate that the Hengstenberg Pickle Company made crap pickles.  Therefore, I am still able to enjoy a good pickle—ala Hub Mart’s deli—or more recently, Bubbies. 

Our friend was kind enough to give me the recipe.  I remember when my mother once asked someone (who lived on Los Feliz Blvd. and thought she was the bee’s knees) the woman declined.  My mother was shocked. There are those sorts of women who leave out the key ingredient so that even if they share the recipe, it’s never quite the same.  I can understand if your recipe is from some award-winning restaurant, but in Silverlake,….come on.  Mrs. B.—you should be ashamed.

The making of dill beans became a summer ritual.  First in Seattle, and then in Honolulu.  I grew dill and bought the beans.  Usually I would invite a coterie of women and round up my son and his friends.  We would sanitize the jars, boil the vinegar and salt, boil the lids of the Mason jars and wash and cut the stems of the green beans.  Often it was a domestic assembly line:  one person washing, another cutting, someone else stuffing the jars and another pouring in the brine and sealing the jars. 

I did this for many summers and included many friends.  All of the friends have moved elsewhere.  Then I stopped. 

But this summer I saw a small dill plant and bought it.  It has grown strong and produced many of the heads that are perfect to put in the bottom of the jar of dill beans.

And so, now in my kitchen, there are eight jars of dill beans.

My son visited last week, and the first thing he noticed was a jar of dill beans.  We opened one and, for the first time, shared them with my grandson.  He loved them too.  My son ate too many and even drank the juice.  I ate a few.  We all woke up with swollen eyes from all the salt, but it was worth it.   Thank you, RF.