At Home on the Range

The Philadelphia Story

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:28:00 -0400

Art by GOLD Collective (who also designed the cover of the book!)

There are many advantages to having chucked both your federal career and your PhD for the allure of self-employment, but as anyone who has embarked on this path knows, the main perk is the ability to undertake nearly all work-related activities in your underwear while eating off brand ice cream sandwiches, with only your own sense of shame and your cat’s palpable revulsion to goad you into putting on pants.

Self-employment also means that when your aunt from Oregon whom you’ve had little contact with over the last thirty years asks you to join her on an At Home on the Range inspired genealogical expedition to Philadelphia, you can say yes without hesitation. It’s only after you’ve given an enthusiastic “yes” that you wonder what you’ve agreed to. That’s a lot of hours with an aunt you no longer know.

Were it not for Gima and my desire to piece together her life, I doubt I would have bothered with pants. But I’m nothing if not intrepid when it comes to a research junket, and Aunt Ann is a maven when it comes to things genealogical. As it turns out, she’s also a beast when it comes to digging up graves in abandoned cemeteries.

I had envisioned a few days in Philadelphia, cruising around neatly manicured cemeteries and quaint suburbs, with most of my time spent pawing through paper records. Instead we arrived at the ruinous Mount Moriah cemetery in ruinous central Philly for my genealogical trial by fire. Finding the family plot involved GPS, an ATV, and a burly ginger packing heat in case she happened upon “dumpers.” After several hours of fruitless digging, almost entirely on Ann’s part, she was able to locate one of our relations, and some strangers who had decided our stretch of turf looked like a nice place to spend eternity. The entire process was made all the more tale worthy by our guide, who was convinced that every other rock was a Native American artifact. Losing patience, and because I am more often than not a jerk, I crushed her dreams. Sometimes schist is just that. She did unearth a partial femur, though. Not wanting to prolong my time there, I lied and told her it was a petrified branch. I freely admit that I was so hot, tired, and sick of being eaten by bugs that any notion of the sanctity of human remains had long dissipated. Whoever’s femur is now irrevocably disassociated from the rest of its skeleton, I apologize. I was never a responsible archaeologist.

Fortunately Ann went easier on me after that, and we eventually made our pilgrimage to Gima’s grave in West Laurel Cemetery where Gima is buried along the edge of the Dougherty family plot. The Doughertys, her mother’s relations, had owned a successful distillery, and the large family marker, simple yet monolithic, unmistakably spoke of Main Line Philadelphia wealth. As has been established, Potters aren’t remarkably sentimental folk, but both of us were a little choked up once we found Gima—Ann for missing her, and me for having just gotten to know her and liking her so much. She and her other relations lie below a towering sassafras tree, which provides shade, and a hangout for birds (who poop). The raised lettering that someone in the Dougherty line chose for the headstones is a perfect catch all for droppings. I scrubbed Gima with a toothbrush we had for just such an occasion while Ann dutifully documented everyone there.

I felt a bit sad when I realized that she was alone, Gia having been buried with Marie thirty years later in a Sheldon family plot. But she died so unexpectedly, I’m sure that Gia hadn’t made any preparations for such an event. Hell, even if she had lived to a ripe old age, I’m sure he wouldn’t have made plans. It was not his strong suit. But at least she’s with her parents, grandparents, and her uncles Sherborne and Parke.

Ann and I traipsed through at least nine different cemeteries in Philadelphia, each one chock full of our Potter and Simonin relatives. It seems that both sides of the family have always been rather poor at the maintenance of our ancestors, seemingly to the point of forgetting that they’re even there. Many a cemetery staffer gleefully indicated that there was room for at least three full burials and several cremations at each site. Perhaps earlier generations aspired to more fecund offspring, but we’ve failed to fill up a single reservation. Part of me is delighted to know that should I come to Jesus at the end of my days, there is many an earthly home for me to choose from. But I am further burdened by the knowledge that there are now all these ancestors who were once nothing more than names on a handwritten genealogy chart from Gia who are in need of attention. Who’s going to take care of them? As was abundantly clear from the litter of broken stones we came across, the perpetual care that we’d paid for amounts to little more than mowing if there isn’t a living relation demanding customer service. Which I did. Might as well get our money’s worth.

At the very least, Aunt Ann has undertaken the task of documentation, and has done a beautiful job of it. So it seems incumbent on me to finally accept the role of family historian. I just hope that the rest of the family proves to be half as interesting as Gima.

And all those hours with Aunt Ann? Turns out I like her even more now then when she was our babysitter all those decades ago. The trip to Philadelphia was definitely worth pulling on pants for.

You can see photos of Alexa’s trip at her Flickr page.

Cocktails 101

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:07:00 -0400

“Drinking First-Aid Kit” by Allison Sommers

Sarah Gilbert is an international aid worker who has lived abroad most of her adult life, toasting with Rioja in Spain, sipping Grüner Veltliner in Austria, and enjoying Malbec in Argentina before her great grandmother, Gima, inspired her first cocktail in NYC. She’s open to wine suggestions for her next home: Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

That the Gilberts enjoy a good cocktail is hardly a secret. An ex-boyfriend of mine loves telling the story of coming to my college graduation and entering my parents’ hotel room to find my mother pulling out four bottles of different types of liquor from her luggage so that all the invited family members could have their preferred apéritif that night in the privacy of our rooms. I couldn’t understand his amusement; Mom’s packing seemed like logical foresight to me. Who wants to dress up and meet in the crowded hotel bar when the people you want to see are in comfortable adjoining rooms?

Needless to say, I was not surprised to note that one entire chapter of my great-grandmother Gima’s cookbook was dedicated to preparing a good pre-dinner drink. Or to read about her belief that “any halfway intelligent woman should be able to produce a drinkable cocktail.” I was, however, a bit abashed to admit how badly my intellect measured up to my venerable forebear’s definition. I can open a mean beer —whether in a can or bottle—and uncork a wine bottle with the best of them before pouring my guests a glass of red, white or rosé. However, I was surprised to realize, at 35 years of age, I have never prepared a cocktail, drinkable or otherwise.

The reasons behind my ignorance vary. For one, I gravitate toward dense cities where people don’t entertain in their miniscule apartments and instead meet friends in bars and restaurants. Also, the knowledge that alcoholism runs in my family, together with a few embarrassing incidents that need not be recorded here, have led me to stay away from hard liquor and stick to wine. And I believe that drinking habits have changed over the generations. My parents received a martini pitcher for their wedding, complete with a glass stem for mixing. According to Gima’s recipe, a dry martini is 3 parts gin and 1 part French vermouth over ice. Which is 100% alcohol before the any melting occurs. I don’t know anyone who entertains like that now, and when friends come to visit they bring a bottle of wine, which complements the one that I have waiting for them. Then again, neither do we have the cooks that Gima mentions come and go so easily throughout her life. In any case, I resolved to gain Gima’s respect and learn her cocktails. So I decided to attempt the one that seemed the most complicated, the “Strawberry Blossom.”

Some lessons learned? A jigger is not, like the league or a fortnight, an antiquated unit of measurement. It is actually an ounce and a half and can be measured out in the tool of the same name. I’m sure Gima turned in her grave as I exclaimed excitedly over this nugget of information. Also, besides the jigger, cocktail preparation requires a fully stocked bar and a shaker. Luckily I know Brian Ellison, the owner of Death’s Door Spirits, the largest distillery in Wisconsin. And if anyone is going to have a fully stocked bar and the proper tools for a good cocktail, it’s the good people of the industry. So we went to work.

After mulling the strawberries and straining their seeds, I added the requisite tablespoon of lemon and sugar, mixing it all together into a syrupy juice that looked quite professional, in my humble opinion. A jigger of gin and bit of heavy cream is added to the shaker, along with some ice and the fun begins. I can now attest that one has not truly lived until one has shaken a cocktail. The restraint required not to dance around with the improvised maraca! I have to admit I might have wiggled a bit to accompany the “cha cha cha” of the mixing drink. But I’m sure Gima would not only have not minded, she might even have approved. And joined in. I was proud to present my friends with my fledgling efforts. My Strawberry Blossom was declared excellent, tart and creamy with a tint of lemony citrus. The only constructive feedback was that it might be a tad too strong. Which, I’m sure, is just the way Gima would have liked it.

—Sarah Gilbert

Scramble Eggs—The Indian Way!

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:15:29 -0400

A guest post from Diana!

2 eggs, a pinch of salt, some chopped red onions, a pinch of garam masala, some chopped corriander, a handful of chopped tandoori chicken slices

Method:

Beat up eggs in a bowl and add all the ingredients and keep it aside for 5 minutes to settle. Heat up the fire and place a pan on it as you drizzle some oil as you favour. Once oil gets hot, splash in the content of the mixture made earlier and simply scramble up the egg and serve with a cup of Masala Chai once ready!

Long Live Our Livers!

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:25:00 -0400

Cocktails by Marci Washington

I realize there’s a certain irony to writing about your great grandmother’s alcoholism right after you’ve attended your third wine tasting in as many days, but it was Austrian wine, which doesn’t really count, and I think Gima would appreciate it.

Gima was, by all accounts, the life of every party. Unfortunately that cut her life short by a considerable amount, as she was dead at 62, having aspirated sometime during the night of April 25, 1955. As we’ve established, my father didn’t talk much about his childhood, but one of the few things I knew about Gima was that she had died unexpectedly, possibly by her own hand, as a result of a combination of booze and pills. It’s actually a lot to take in when you’re a kid, and your brushes with death haven’t encompassed much more than the loss of your pet hamster, Ms. Bianca. Surprisingly, perhaps, we still didn’t talk about alcoholism when Grampa Shel died after several decades of taking his frustrations out on his liver, and no one mentioned Gima as my brother’s incipient alcoholism reared its ugly head in his late teens. I feel a bit bad about that—while some of us seem to have inherited Gima’s flair in the kitchen or her breezy and intrepid writing style, more than one member of the family inherited her deadly attachment to drink.

My parents were never drinkers, but alcohol was an ever-present specter in our young lives. My brother Jeff and I were surrounded by rum punch and champagne cocktails at five o’clock with our maternal grandparents, and postprandial martinis and all day whiskey sour weekends on our paternal side. Even before we were trusted to ride our bikes along at night, we learned to make our own mocktails, pop corks, measure out jiggers, and gently waft vermouth. Cocktail hour seduced us in different ways. My usefulness at all things drink-related, be it refreshing vodka or replenishing hors d’oeuvres, granted me entre to the mysteries of the adult world. Rather than finding myself banished to playing school with my excruciatingly boring maternal cousins, I was permitted to hear tales of adult wonder and intrigue while increasing my youthful vocabulary in not altogether desirable ways. Jeff, on the other hand, found that alcohol was a social lubricant. With a bit in him, he was comfortable; with a lot in him, he was king. And he went the way of many kings, dethroned and in an early grave at twenty-eight.

Needless to say, with all of this not talking about Gima, I was shocked when Dad casually mentioned a few months ago that Gima had done two stints in a sanitarium in an effort to dry her out. And that he had lived on the grounds of said sanitarium while they waited for his father’s next naval assignment. Now, we all have our secrets. But one supposes that by the time they’ve reached the ripened age of 41, one’s father might have mentioned that he’d lived at a sanitarium. Particularly if one’s daughter happened to be staying under one’s roof while conducting archival research on, say, asylums and the like. No sooner had Dad shared the particulars of Gima’s institutionalization than I was off like a shot to Baltimore’s western suburb of Catonsville, where I found the Gundry Sanitarium, very much intact (albeit no longer operational). And forty-seven pestering calls to the city of Baltimore housing office later, I was greeted at the front entrance by one very delightful Ron Frado, city housing manager, clad in homemade wife beater and comely daisy dukes. Together we traipsed through the beautiful Victorian stone manse, marveling at its stained glass windows, ornamental hardware, hand-carved mahogany staircases and tiled fireplaces. I inspired Ron ever upwards, not stopping until we reached the widow’s walk, with its stunning view over the treetops and out to the Chesapeake. I have no doubt that Gima smoked hundreds of cigarettes up on this roof during her unsuccessful confinements from alcohol, enjoying the breeze while ruefully thinking of the dinner she wouldn’t be cooking and the drinks she wouldn’t be having.

I tracked down the last descendent of the Gundry family. Alfred T. Gundry III was startled yet more than willing to chat about old times when I reached him in Annapolis. He was quite well versed in his family’s history, and had a vague remembrance of Gia coming to visit. As is so often the case with private hospitals, it seems that the records of the Gundry Sanitarium are either lost or destroyed, so it’s not certain when Gima stayed there, or what her diagnosis and treatment consisted of, but I’m assuming she was there in the late forties, as my father can remember it and his sister was not yet born. The Gundry didn’t specialize in alcoholism, but was more for women with nervous and compulsive disorders, which may go some way towards explaining why Gima wasn’t helped by her stays there.

While the family line is generally that Gima died from booze, Dad did mention, when I was little, that it was booze and pills, and that it was possibly a purposeful overdose. That she might have been sick. That it had been better to go of her own accord, rather than dragging things out. Dad’s mind is a good one, and I doubt he’d have a notion of suicide if his young and fertile noggin hadn’t tucked it away to mull over later.

I’ve read everything Gima ever published, combing through her lighthearted rhetoric trying to find clues as to what was really going on in her life. And I think there is an inkling to be had in her newspaper columns,where she relates in the midst of a chatty little rundown of shopping on Wilmington’s King Street that her trip to the city was for x-rays, and that she left her happy purchase of calves’ brains in the phone both while telephoning the hospital for her results. While she tells her readers that her news is good, I’m not so sure that she was, or that this wasn’t a precursor of future bad news.

While I can ponder on Gima’s physical and mental health all I want, I’m never going to have those answers. Alcohol is as much a part of the Potter family crest as the wyvern that stands atop the shield; it remains a part of all of our lives, in that some drink it, some like it too much, some studiously avoid it, and some write their dissertations about it. But none of us has the benefit of indifference to it.

Gima’s alcoholism wasn’t hushed up as an embarrassment, or out of a desire to preserve only the happy memories. I believe Gima’s drinking wasn’t discussed because her death—so untimely and so unwarranted—hurt everyone in the family so much, that speaking of it is still painful, decades later. Gima was truly the beating heart of the family, and in an instant, the light and warmth of the hearth was stilled, snuffed out, and forever gone, rending a gash in the family that cannot be mended without a visible seam.

So as Gia would query, “is the sun past the yardarm yet?” And if you’re reading this post after 11AM, feel free to pour yourself a drink. But try floating the Scotch on top of the ice, rather than having it neat. Your liver will like you longer.

Kitchn on At Home on the Range

Sun, 27 May 2012 09:53:35 -0400

Entertain Like an Early 20th-Century, Way-Ahead-of-Her-Time Railroad Heiress

Liz Gilbert interviews at Dinner: A Love Story

Sat, 26 May 2012 09:46:51 -0400

She was so ahead of her time. If she wasn’t the editor of Real Simple, she’d have a food truck or she’d be celebrity female artisanal butcher or she’d own a pickle factory in Brooklyn. Other than maybe the food allergies and the veganism she’d be totally on board with everything going on in the food world today.

Couldn’t make it to Frenchtown for the book launch?...

Fri, 25 May 2012 21:32:37 -0400

Couldn’t make it to Frenchtown for the book launch? Don’t worry. You can experience it via interweb video, and then get sucked into a vortex of cat videos, probably.

nypl: Elizabeth Gilbert and John Hodgman came to the library on...

Fri, 25 May 2012 21:06:53 -0400

nypl:

Elizabeth Gilbert and John Hodgman came to the library on Tuesday to talk about Gilbert’s new/old book, At Home on the Range. Here they explore some of the library’s collection items before the event begins.

Bookmark http://www.nypl.org/live/multimedia and come back in a week or so to see video of the conversation, which was sweet and hilarious.

Photos by Jori Klein.

GQ: Is there a dish you think every guy should know how to cook...

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:17:35 -0400

GQ: Is there a dish you think every guy should know how to cook for a woman?
Elizabeth Gilbert: I think that if you can roast a chicken, you can get whatever you want out of a woman. Maybe it’s just me but I would suspect that a man trying to impress a woman would be more likely to bring out the steak—”I killed this for you, now I’m grilling it for you.” Which is just going to remind her of her dad in a bad way. Or he’s going to try and go full Food Network, which just makes you think that if you have sex, he’s going to be performing other stuff that he saw on TV, as well. [Laughs] A man that can cook you a proper meal that is like a weekday meal—which I think cannot be better than in the form of a roast chicken—that’s the greatest.

Read More http://www.gq.com/entertainment/books/201205/elizabeth-gilbert-interview-home-on-the-range-eat-pray-love

A guest post from Sheldon Potter!

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:25:00 -0400

Portrait of Gima’s husband Sheldon F. Potter by Alex Fine.

Sheldon Potter IV is the towheaded little boy that Gima writes about in At Home on the Range and in her cooking columns for the Sunday Star. His hair is now pure white, yet still full. He spent a large chunk of his early years with Gima and her husband, Gia, and hopes to redeem his beloved grandfather a bit. Liz gave him a thorough and deserved scourging as a husband, but he was an adored grandfather with a penchant for plaid. —Alexa Potter

My father was a career naval officer. He tried being a “civilian”—a stockbroker in fact—between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Korean War. But it didn’t take, and he returned to the Navy. So we moved a lot, and I had been in fifteen different schools by the time I was fifteen. As a result, my memories of Gia and Gima are fragmented.

My earliest memories of my grandparents go all the way back to Salisbury, Maryland, when Gia was a ship inspector during the war. Mother and I lived with them for a while, and I didn’t meet Dad until he returned home from the war in 1946. From then until the early ’50s, Mother and I spent our summers with Gia and Gima in Rehoboth Beach in the house on Field’s End Road. Dad would visit on the weekends and help Gia with things like drywall while I acted as “go-fer” for them.

Gia was still practicing law off and on in Philadelphia; my mother was a hostess at Rehoboth’s Corner Cupboard Inn; Gima took care of me. I learned all about boiling the piss out of kidneys for kidney stew and how to wash calves’ brains and lightly dredge them in flour prior to sautéing them, delicately, in butter. I got to play with sweetbreads too. I remember my yellow vinyl stool in the kitchen; it was mine because I was the “stirrer” and I needed to stand on it to do my job. Gima bought me my first fishing rod and used to take me to “Treasure Beach” to search for old coins from a post-Revolutionary War wreck called the De Braak. I actually found one! Many years later Gia told me Gima had planted the coin and led me to it. That’s my Gima!

The family moved from Alexandria to San Francisco and on to Seattle around 1953; Gima passed away in 1955. I moved back to Philadelphia to live with Nana and Pa (my mother’s parents) in the fall of that year while the rest of the family moved to Erie, PA, which was Dad’s final duty station. I never got to see my Gima again after we went to the West Coast. In fact I didn’t see much of Gia either, except the occasional holiday. He was always fun, but got fatter and drank more without Gima in his life.

In 1961 Gia went to England to visit his distant cousin, Marie Hillyer, whom he would eventually marry. I was almost an adult; Marie was very “British” (although born in Philadelphia and distantly related to the Potter family), smoked a pipe, and never boiled the piss out of kidneys for her kidney stew. She was as unique as Gima in her own way. She also saved Gia from self-destruction, limiting his intake of both alcohol and fatty foods, though she was no more successful than Gima in getting him to eat his vegetables.

Gia was an essential part of my childhood, imparting the skills and knowledge that Dad wasn’t around to give. Dad was a known wood butcher, whereas Gia was a talented carpenter. He taught me how to use woodworking tools while he was building the house in Henlopen Acres, where Gima wrote At Home on the Range. I built my first drafting table when I was twelve, living in Seattle, and would go on to a career building locomotives. He was my guide in all things mechanical and precise—at thirteen I can remember carving ham, as taught by Gia, “so thin you could read a newspaper through the slice by moonlight.”

I still miss them all—Gima, Gia, and Marie.

John Hodgman & Liz Gilbert in conversation at the NYPL

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:30:58 -0400

John Hodgman & Liz Gilbert in conversation at the NYPL:

HINT: Use the code “BROIL”, and get tickets for 40% off. A steal!

Elizabeth Gilbert on Martha Stewart!

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:05:05 -0400

Elizabeth Gilbert on Martha Stewart!:

Liz made some cookies with Martha. In case you missed it!

Split Pea Soup

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:24:08 -0400

A guest post from ManHappenings!

I remember thinking it was a joke. You expect me to eat THAT? Something that color? That thick? That’s not soup, right Mom? It’s gravy…gotta be gravy. Right…?

Yuck.

But it was soup. And I would soon be enlightened to the fact that it was, indeed, the best soup.

A soup that I would come to yearn for in the cold months of every new year. A soup that I would pray for after the Easter ham was picked clean. A soup that I would freeze and eat sparingly so as to let it last.

A soup that immediately transported me back to my childhood—to that first leap of faith that I took in my mother’s kitchen. The first of many. To that initial blossoming of my taste buds, which lead to my ever insatiable and always adventurous appetite.

A soup that I now make, simply, miles from home, out of the wide and rustic country hearth and on the tiny stovetop of my Manhattan kitchenette.

That color. That thick. Just right. My mother’s split-pea soup.

1 bag split peas
8 cups chicken broth
1 onion, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
1 tsp thyme
1 T garlic powder
chopped ham or chicken (optional)

Put peas in a large pan, add broth. Remove anything that floats. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium-low. Add the other ingredients. Check pot to make sure it’s not boiling too much and give it a stir from the bottom to make sure it’s not sticking. It should be done in about 1.5 to 2 hours.

ronniefein: Here’s an oldie but goodie. My Mom’s Marble Cake,...

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:22:11 -0400

ronniefein:

Here’s an oldie but goodie. My Mom’s Marble Cake, which she would bake whenever there was leftover sour cream that was about to get the heave-ho. It’s a moist cake and she served it plain, as a snack or coffee cake. But sometimes she’d frost it with a thick, fudgy icing.

Well, I’ve read so much lately about the benefits of coconut oil, that I wanted to see if I could make various dishes using that instead of the dreaded hydrogenated vegetable shortening (coconut oil is solid at room temperature). The recipe calls for only 1/4 cup shortening so I thought it might be a good place to start.

It was. There is a definite coconut flavor to the cake (although when I served the cake no one was quire sure what that “new” flavor was). Because of that it has more of a sweet quality about it.

I also substituted non-fat plain yogurt for the sour cream.

Maybe that makes this cake a bit of a healthier snack.

But it’s the same old, same old Mom’s Marble Cake. For traditionalists, use vegetable shortening instead of the coconut oil and sour cream instead of the yogurt.

Mom’s Marble Cake with Coconut Oil

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup coconut oil

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-3/4 cups cake flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup plain yogurt (non-fat is fine)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease an 8-inch-square baking pan. Melt the chocolate and set it aside. Cream the sugar and coconut oil together in the bowl of an electric mixer set at medium for 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and beat the ingredients until well blended. Sift the flour and baking soda together. Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture in thirds, alternating with the yogurt. Beat the mixture for 2-3 minutes to blend the ingredients thoroughly. Divide the batter in half. Mix the melted chocolate into one of the halves. Either drop blobs of alternate batters into the prepared pan or spoon in one batter, add the second and swirl it into the first. Smooth the top. Bake the cake for 30-35 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then invert onto a cake rack to cool completely. Eat plain or frost with fudge frosting. Makes one cake serving 8

A Four-Kidney Veal Meal

Thu, 03 May 2012 15:23:00 -0400

Art by Sarah Hunter

After what seems like a lifetime of ham ingestion, I decided to move on to other animals. While I never knew Gima, I can sense her disappointment in me for not devising a plan for that remaining Ziploc of thinly-sliced Virginia country ham. But Gima, I have never known the ravages of war and rationing! I am craven and spoiled! In honor of you, I have eaten ham cold, in eggs, with pasta, on biscuits and in soups. I have eaten ham when hunger called me to the refrigerator, and familial pride caused me to masticate it grumpily while thinking about just making a damn taco. I can eat no more ham! No. more. ham. I thought about it, though. I looked at Gima’s recipe for ham and veal pie, but then all I could think about was veal, and how long it’s been since I’ve had veal, and how much I wanted to eat any farmyard animal other than the pig.

I realize that veal is a controversial meat for many. I could give a flip. I grew up eating veal. Baked veal cutlet was my traditional birthday dinner. As a chef at Pie in the Sky Café, I sautéed, sauced, and served hundreds of orders of veal marsala and veal picatta. I’ve never tired of veal. If it makes you feel better about it, then buy the even more expensive “free range” veal available at Whole Foods; I’m sure that prior to their inevitable brutal slaughter, the baby cows are allowed to watch a live feed of a sunny pasture while their gelatinous little legs dangle from the comforts of a sling. If it makes them more delicious and tender, then so be it.

Of course, Gima would blanch at the price of veal today, and even if you won’t eat veal no matter how tasty those little legs are, At Home on the Range provides a valuable history lesson. Now uncommon in American households, veal was once cheaper and more widely available than poultry. Regarding curry, Gima says, “made with chicken, it is expensive, but cooked veal or pork can be used to eke out the bird.” I had always assumed an abundance of poultry recipes in Gima’s cookbooks and newspaper articles, but I was wrong—poultry was paltry in her pantry. Her talk of pricey fowl brought to mind a wonderful image I discovered while researching eugenics: a 1940s-era sign for the “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest, which was an effort to interest poultry farmers in selectively breeding chickens for meat quality and flavor. While the disreputable events of World War II put a damper on the American Eugenics Society and their better baby contests, genetics did wonders for making poultry palatable for the American table.

If you ever wish to horrify yourself, read cookbooks that came out just before Gima’s time. They’re all about singeing the feathers off the bird and removing lung tissue. It was up to the average housewife to pluck and eviscerate what was usually a stringy old bird past her laying prime. And while I know that Gima handled this chore with aplomb, most housewives of the day were happy to do without chicken in favor of a few ready-to-bread veal cutlets.

So we’re agreed that veal is tender, versatile, and delicious? If you remain unconvinced, then do try Gima’s Veal à la Mama. It’s an easy introduction to the world of veal for beginners, and a homey reminder of the veal of yesteryear for advanced cooks. Veal à la Mama is a meal that makes me imagine little scenarios of my great grandmother and me in the kitchen in Rehoboth, preparing dinner for our “sunburned trio.” We would make fun of all the wan little vegans that refuse to eat veal out of some confused sense of moral obligation. I would pantomime a veal calf in its darkened Skinner box while she pounded out a cutlet. I would question her, for the hundredth time, as to why my eggplant tastes bitter and hers delicious, even though she doesn’t salt and drain it. Secretly, I would worry about her sneaking wine when she thinks I’m not looking, and she would worry that I’m not taking advantage of my intellect—inherited from her, no doubt—at a time when a woman can do something with it. Neither of us would voice these worries, however, and instead we’d pass our time in happy communion over our shared joy in preparing food for those we love, or at least are vaguely fond of.

And then we would tuck into our veal, which captivates the palate even before it has the chance to leave the oven, as the combination of onions and stewed tomatoes baked low and slow results in a delicious aroma. While I normally abhor the term “mouth feel,” this dish has a great one, thanks to her clever directive to cut the veal and eggplant into comparable slices. Everyone has experienced going to a family-style Italian restaurant with all the hope in the world of eating something worthy of the Italian granny you never had. It smells good—it may even look good—but it’s never quite right. The pasta is overcooked, the sauce too runny or too sweet, and if you’re foolish enough to order the veal parmesan, it’s always reminiscent of something you had the misfortune of finding in your school cafeteria (I’m talking about you, St. Olaf College). Gima’s recipe is worthy of any Italian kitchen. As an added bonus, the leftover sauce, which you will have, is a fantastic addition to plain pasta. Gima would be pleased to know that this recipe is one that keeps on giving well into your workweek.

When I first started cooking from At Home on the Range in earnest, I envisioned a rating system that should have been assigned to the recipes, based not on stars but kidneys, that being the ingredient I most associate with Gima. Veal à la Mama remains my highest rated recipe to date, making it a four-kidney veal meal.

An interview with Elizabeth Gilbert in Bon Appetit!

Tue, 01 May 2012 19:05:56 -0400

An interview with Elizabeth Gilbert in Bon Appetit!

Mrs. William Conrad's Famous Clam Pie

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:04:05 -0400

A guest post from Mara Conrad Tippett!

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the clamming adventures my sister and I had with my grandfather, Reginald Conrad. He’d take us out on his boat to explore the harbors near his home in East Hampton: Napeague, Accabonac, and Three Mile. Upon returning with bushels of clams, my grandmother would get to work making clam pies. My great-grandmother’s recipe for clam pie is published in “A Full Century of Tip of the Island Cooking Wisdom 1896-1996” compiled by the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton, NY.

Clam Pie—Open hard clams to make 1 pt., drain clams and chop fine with 1 onion, put over fire and scald in clam juice with 1 pint of milk added; add 1 tblsp. sugar, 1 tblsp. flour with a little water, 6 milk crackers, crumbled. Make a rich pie crust and line pie plate; over the bottom sprinkle 1 tblsp. minute tapioca, fill with clam mixture and top with crust. Bake in 400 degree oven. Serve very hot.

—Mrs. William Conrad

(Mrs. Conrad’s clam pies are famous. One customer orders 20 at a time when leaving in the fall. She puts them down in the deep freeze for the winter.)

Art by Julianna Swaney Thomas Flint Nichols Gilbert is Gima’s youngest grandson, and Liz Gilbert’s...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:59:00 -0400

Art by Julianna Swaney

Thomas Flint Nichols Gilbert is Gima’s youngest grandson, and Liz Gilbert’s beloved Uncle Nick. A retired high school English teacher, Nick is our family’s own Mr. Chips. Only funnier and his wife is still very much alive. Nick shares his memories of Gima on the anniversary of her death. —Alexa

By Nick Gilbert

I don’t see Gima in the kitchen. I always picture her at the bridge table.

Mom told me that as a small child when the household finances really went south, Gima would disappear for a couple days. She’d return and things would be all right for a while. With her main-line semi-aristocratic background, Margaret Potter had entré to most of the swank clubs in Downtown Philadelphia. She’d make the rounds, playing medium-stakes money bridge (a penny-a-point stake can really add up over three days of relatively non-stop bridge) and come back home when she’d won enough to pay the rent … or the grocer … or make a down payment on the kids’ school tuition. (She and Gia may have been broke, but that didn’t mean that her children would ever go to public school.) She’d sit very erect and stare at her cards in a relaxed and contemplative way. I always got the feeling that she liked the cards—liked them the way I liked my stuffed animals or my little cars. She and the cards were good friends, and she liked to be with her friends. I’d come down in the mornings when she was visiting us in Elmira, and the air would smell of stale cigarette smoke and over-flowing ashtrays. Two card tables would be set up in the living room. There wasn’t room for much of anything else. The shades would be down. (Why? Was drinking and smoking and playing cards till three in the morning scandalous in Eisenhower up-state New York?) Empty glasses, some of them sticky, were scattered here and there. It seemed like a wonderland to me. I longed to be grown up, to be allowed to stay up late and drink and smoke and play cards. (I actually did that. I majored in bridge for two years at Hamilton College. After my sophomore year, the dean requested that I not come back. I think he was envious of my game.)

When I think of Gima, I think of Christmas. I avoid thinking of her because the thought of Gima-less Christmases of the past and Gima-less Christmases yet to come is so painful. My first thought—I was ten—when they told me Gima was dead was “Now Christmas is ruined forever.” We all feel that way. I made it through Vietnam okay, and came home and lived with my brother and his wife and his two small children. (The one in diapers became Liz. Trina, the three-year-old is the one my students called “the Dairy Queen lady.”) That first Christmas Mom and Dad finally arrived from Utica and the seven of us—John and Carole, Mom and Dad, Catherine and Liz, and me—all crammed into that tiny dining room in Naugatuck to eat a ten o’clock Christmas-Eve dinner. We were all, I think, conscious of our great good fortune. Wars are wars—even Vietnam, a kind of Junior Varsity war if there ever was such a thing. John and I had both gone through it and survived. Dad’s horses were doing well. Trina was ecstatic to be at a table with her beloved Grandma Nini. Liz cooed. Even as a baby, she liked being around people and food. And then John said, “This would all be perfect if only Gima were here.” Mom threw her napkin on the table and said, “Well, that’s that.” And she was right. That was that. We were still happy to be together, but we were aware that a big chunk was missing.

A big chunk is still missing. Deb and I named our younger daughter Margaret Yardley Gilbert after Margaret Yardley Potter. Sure enough, the younger Margaret has been an ace bridge player from the age of six on up. I heard her tell one of her opponents, an elderly church lady, that she could not remember not being able to play bridge. Sure enough, the younger Margaret can write like a dream. Sure enough, she bakes a mean apple pie—all from scratch—and sure enough she puts on a really mean party.

And sure enough, Gima is still gone.

Stone Soup

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:49:00 -0400

“Lentil soup prevents goblins and the ‘whoo-ooo’ nights” by Evah Fan

Once upon a time, I lived in Czechoslovakia, with the family of my once fiancée. They were a very nice family, with whom I shared only one thing in common—a love of their favorite progeny. I didn’t speak their language, have an aptitude for medical science, or any hope of medaling in an Olympic sport. They were a family of Slavic gods: tall, athletic, attractive, intelligent, and able to eat vast quantities of food in single sittings. They also did things like run dozens of miles up and down mountains like billy goats after rowing the length of the Czech-German border. Being quite short and averse to waddling through the stinging-nettle-covered countryside, I stayed at home a lot with Bubi and the children. Bubi was the matriarch of the family, and blessedly shorter than me. (True, this was largely the result of a bout of childhood polio, but I was still willing to think of it as a commonality. Desperate, I know.) I adored Bubi, with her wispy white hair and clear blue eyes, and her willingness to talk at me in Czech. Bubi cooked every gargantuan meal on a tiny stove in a tiny kitchen just off her room, turning out one marvelous dish after another, day after day. I was fascinated by the quantity and delighted by the quality, but my favorite thing of all was Bubi’s soup. Hardly a day went by without soup being served for lunch, each delicately flavored yet filling, and topped with thin croutons made from yesterday’s bread. Her grandson, well versed in folk tales, remarked that she could “make soup from a stone.”

As Bubi and I got to know each other over the years, I became braver about spending time in the kitchen while she worked her magic. We had some quiet understandings, and my Czech had developed to the point that we could at least talk about food. On my forays into town, I would procure items that Bubi craved but was occasionally denied by her health-conscious doctor daughter. Her requests were simple: beer, if she had a “bit of indigestion,” and butter. She recognized me as a fellow traveler in fats. I learned that every one of Bubi’s soup recipes were based on a very simple butter/flour roux, to which she added whatever was leftover from the previous evening’s meal. The roux meant that her soups were always somewhere between a broth and a cream, and it was hard to pin down exactly what was in them. When I first met her, she was well into her eighties, and had long ceased to use recipes, if she ever had to begin with. One memorable lunch, I was surprised to find an actual chunk of potato in my non-potato soup, but happily loaded it onto my spoon. Bubi, seeing this, popped out of her chair with a speed I wouldn’t have thought possible for a lame octogenarian, and knocked the spoon out of my hand. Unable to imagine what sort of cultural transgression I had committed, and unable to decipher her rapid-fire Czech, it was eventually explained to me that I was about to eat the “salt” potato. Bubi inadvertently taught me that a soup too heavily seasoned may be corrected by adding a potato to absorb the salt. Bubi passed away in 2004, and I regret that I didn’t spend more time in the kitchen with her. I didn’t keep the fiancée, but the knowledge base from Bubi gave me the confidence to concoct my own soups, and to improve upon my own great grandmother’s.

Unfortunately Bubi didn’t share any secrets to working with lentils (called “čočka” in Czech). Nor did Gima. Which is problematic, because I believe I have some sort of mental block that keeps me from achieving success with dried legumes. Gima’s recipe starts out with soaking dried lentils overnight. I’m not sure if there have been significant advances in dried pulse technology in the ensuing decades since Gima penned At Home on the Range, but I woke up to lentils that resembled maggots, bloated from feasting on gangrenous flesh. Thinking gangrene—rather than, perhaps more accurately, germination—I tossed them and started fresh. Lentils require “picking over.” I am not thrilled about working with a food product that may contain a percentage of non-edible items such as stones, pits, or bugs, and Gima has already had me render suet on more than one occasion. Thankfully, my lentils were free of inedibles, and I proceeded with the recipe, which resulted in a watery, flavorless liquid with a quantity of mushy lentils and carrot nubbins at the bottom, although the addition of sautéed kielbasa slices (“2 frankfurters cut in thin slices”) improved it greatly. Adding stock and a bay leaf, along with some curry powder and a touch of ginger makes the soup less apocalyptic. A poached egg added to each bowl makes it downright luxurious.

If you’re tired of the third-world feel of a steaming bowl of lentils, this sauerkraut soup makes for an interesting change of pace. I love this, and I don’t even like sauerkraut, or have a reason to cook for a Czech any longer.

MIHLA’S SAUERKRAUT SOUP

Bring 24 ounces of sour cabbage to a boil in 1.5 quarts of water or chicken stock. Season with 1 tsp. salt, 1tsp. vinegar, and 1tsp. sugar. Mix 2 tsp. flour and 1 cup of heavy cream; press through a sieve into the soup.

Sauté half a chopped onion in two tablespoons of lard or bacon grease, then add thin slices of kielbasa to the softened onions; season with paprika. Once the onions have turned just golden, add to the soup. Depending on your own tastes, experiment with adding caraway seeds (which I personally hate), or apple for added complexity.

Liz Gilbert cooks Gima's vegetable soup

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:39:00 -0400

Here’s Liz with her take on Gima’s vegetable soup!