Grandma's Love (Revisited)

We all have come from somewhere, and it’s the people we come from that make us and the journey we’re on what it is. I was pretty much raised by my mother's mother--my Grandma Clark. She was one strong, independent woman. At twenty-one, she left Glasgow, Scotland and came to this country via Canada with only a ticket in hand and the guarantee of a job as an upstairs maid. Her friends called her Nettie and she had many. She was married and loved her man for twenty years, having five children with him and living longer without him than with him. He died young and left her with a houseful of teenagers.

I remember all kinds of wonderful experiences we shared from our early morning walks to the day-old bakery and to church on Sundays to her walking me to school every day and making sure we said our prayers before bed every night. We'd go to sleep sharing tales of our day while the world news or a good baseball or hockey game played in the background lulling us to sleep. Later in life, I would still need her comforting arms and I'd run to her with any tragedy I couldn't face on my own. She was my rock. However, it is the story of Grandma’s culinary delights that have caused several family discussions, often disagreements, at family functions years after her passing that I want to share.

Gram’s cooking was quite a controversial topic in our family and still is to this day. I remember when I got back from my Alaska adventure in 1983, I teased her that we could open a restaurant in the Yukon Territory and make a fortune. “We could get over five dollars a slice just for your apple pie alone,” I’d tell her. Mind you, her pies were legendary for their thick, tough crusts and undercooked fillings sometimes too bittersweet to even be successfully washed down with a sturdy brew. But, it's her poor man's stew that will be passed down through several generations. That's how we will best remember her. I have made it for years and anytime I need to remember her fondly, I gather all the ingredients, get the big stew pot out and get cooking.

Now the point of the family discussions were that we all make our version of Gram's hamburger stew but we have all left out or added something, we claim she always used or didn’t use as the case may be. I've had my own, my dad's, mom's, sister's, cousin's, aunt's, and on and on but none will ever really be Grandma Clark's. Hers was love and that's that. Many of our family gatherings, like many of yours, are about food but no matter what the occasion at some point, we’d end up discussing Gram's poor man's stew. We can start off talking about fern cakes, meat pies, sausage rolls, shortbread recipes, whatever, but we all have the best memories of her hamburger stew. We’ve even argued about it being called a stew and not a soup.

One main ingredient that we argue about is the rutabaga. My mom would claim she only used it in season because of the taste or lack there of in the stored roots but we'd counter by saying it is really because she didn't want to have to hunt down that bitter, little, orange root or have to pay the hiked-up price of the imported produce in the off season. “Mom, admit it. You’re cheap,” we’d yell at her and she’d laugh. My sister never put in the rutabaga or the peas because her children "wouldn't eat those foul veggies" but I know it was because as a child she wouldn't eat them either. Only, I know it isn’t Gram’s without the rutabaga. Aunt Jean is the one who always claimed it should be called a soup and not a stew, and therefore, she would thicken hers to make the broth into a gravy. I actually liked her version and I thicken mine a little now, too. I'd never let anyone other than her know that, though. She was an "outlaw” (in-law), after all. She would often make a beef stew that resembled more of a Hungarian goulash and that was her way of treading softly around our family's Scottish traditions.

Dad's version always meant leftovers. He'd been a firehouse cook for years and when he cooked everything would feed fifteen to twenty hungry men. It was nice when he made his famous fudge brownies or those delicious Spanish peanut, peanut butter cookies but the four of us got tired of hamburger stew long before it was ever all gone. But I always loved his stew because I knew how much he loved Gram--his mother-in-law and she him. They were a funny pair, those two.

Doctor Carol, my younger cousin, always insists that Worcestershire Sauce and beef bouillon cubes be added to spice it up some claiming, “That’s how my dad says grandma made it for him.” We’ve all taken her lead and we now add both. No one is debating the truth of her legacy because we like the added flavor and figure Gram would, too.

This doesn't really cover all the controversy concerning Grandma Clark's hamburger stew or her infamous cooking but it gives you a little taste of my wonderful memories of our life together. She lived to be ninety-four and could still shovel her own walk and mow her lawn (with a hand-push mower believe it or not) until the day she "went to join her Jack" as she put it. In the hospital she smiled, quietly closed her eyes and left this world on January 23rd--the same day her husband died fifty-one years earlier. My mother was at her bedside at the time and said it was like he was there in the room calling her to him and she smiled and passed with little or no ceremony. Not a day goes by where I don’t do or say something that touches a place in my heart where Grandma Clark will always live.

Thank you for this opportunity to share a little of myself and the granny who contributed so much to who I am today. JJ